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Business News Digital Labels & Publishers Legal
US publishers sue Fullscreen MCN
By Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 7 August 2013
America’s National Music Publishers Association has launched litigation against Fullscreen Inc, one of the so called ‘multi-channel networks’ that represents a growing number of content makers on YouTube.
As previously reported, the way most MCNs work means that their content sits outside YouTube’s blanket agreements with labels and publishers, so that rights owners are not automatically paid if their content is used in videos via the existing YouTube Content ID system.
To that end the MCNs have been looking to secure their own deals with music rights owners, and Fullscreen does has such deals in place with some publishers, most notably Universal. But critics in the US industry have said the firm has made too little effort to strike up agreements with even the bigger independents, and Matt Pincus of SONGS Publishing wrote an op-ed on the issue for Billboard back in March.
Confirming that the American publishing sector’s trade body was now going legal on the issue, mainly in the interests of the indies, NMPA boss David Israelite told reporters: “The problem of copyright infringement is endemic to the MCN industry. Fullscreen’s success and growth as a digital business is attributable in large part to the prevalence and popularity of its unlicensed music videos. We must stop the trend of ignoring the law, profiting from someone else’s work, then asking forgiveness when caught. It is not only unfair, it is unacceptable”.
Presumably the NMPA hopes the litigation will also force all MCNs into line, not just Fullscreen. Meanwhile another big player in that market, Maker Studios, is close to reaching a deal with the publishers’ trade organisation.
