Article 1 Spotify hit with $1.6 billion copyright infringement lawsuit A music publisher administering songs by Tom Petty and others sued the service. By Lesley Messer — January 3, 2018 1:32 pm — — Spotify has been sued for at least $1.6 billion by a music publisher claiming the streaming service has been using songs they administer without license and compensation. Wixen Music Publishing stated in paperwork filed on Dec. 29 and obtained by ABC News that Spotify has been improperly using more than 10,000 of their songs, including Tom Petty's "Free Fallin'," The Doors' "Light My Fire" and Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You." Wixen is seeking $150,000 for each work infringed, or at least $1.6 billion total. "Spotify brazenly disregards United States Copyright law and has committed willful, ongoing copyright infringement," the publisher stated in its lawsuit. "Wixen notified Spotify that it had neither obtained a direct or compulsory mechanical license for the use of the works. For these reasons and the foregoing, Wixen is entitled to the maximum statutory relief." A representative for Spotify had no comment when reached by ABC News. Spotify, which is expected to go public this year, according to reports, has faced this type of legal trouble in the past. In 2016, the streaming service settled with The National Music Publishers' Association over unmatched and unpaid royalties, according to Billboard magazine. Last May, the magazine reported that Spotify reached a settlement with songwriters who sued for copyright infringement and set up a fund worth $43.4 million to compensate those whose compositions were used without mechanical royalties. Wixen's lawsuit indicates that United States District Judge Alison J. Nathan has preliminarily approved the plan. Two months later, Spotify was hit with two other copyright infringement lawsuits, brought by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons member Bob Gaudio and Bluewater Music Services Corporation, who, like Wixen, chose not to participate in the settlement. Billboard reported that Spotify's attorneys argued that the company didn't need mechanical licenses. "The act of streaming does not reproduce copies of sound recordings or musical compositions, and equally does not distribute copies of either sound recordings or compositions," read a memo from their attorneys from that time, according to the magazine. In court papers, Wixen called the settlement "grossly insufficient to compensate songwriters and publishers for Spotify's actions, as well as procedurally unjust." Wixen Music Publishing President Randall Wixen said in a statement Tuesday that his company is "not looking for a ridiculous punitive payment," but rather, are "just asking to be treated fairly." “We estimate that our clients account for somewhere between one percent and five percent of the music these services distribute. Spotify has more than $3 billion in annual revenue and pays outrageous annual salaries to its executives and millions per month for ultra-luxurious office space in various cities," he said. "All we’re asking for is for them to reasonably compensate our clients by sharing a minuscule amount of the revenue they take in with the creators of the

product they sell. Music fans should be able to enjoy Spotify, knowing that their favorite artists are being treated fairly."

Article 2 Eminem Publisher Sues Spotify Claiming Massive Copyright Breach, "Unconstitutional" Law August 21, 2019 2:35pm PT by Eriq Gardner Eight Mile Style alleges "Lose Yourself" and many of the rapper's hits aren't licensed by the streamer. Now comes a suit eyeing Spotify's billions. Eminem's publisher Eight Mile Style has filed a major new lawsuit claiming Spotify has infringed hundreds of song copyrights and challenging the constitutionality of a recently passed music licensing law. In a suit filed Wednesday in federal court in Nashville, Eight Mile accuses Spotify of willful copyright infringement by reproducing "Lose Yourself" and about 250 of the rapper's songs on its service to the tune of potentially billions of dollars in alleged damages. The suit also targets the Music Modernization Act, a federal law enacted last October that was intended to make life easier for tech companies and to get songwriters paid. The suit accuses Spotify, the $26 billion Stockholm-based streaming behemoth, of not living up to its obligations under the MMA, while also making a frontal attack on one of the few legislative accomplishments during the Donald Trump presidency. According to the complaint, a copy of which was obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, Spotify has no license for Eminem's compositions, and despite streaming these works billions of times, "Spotify has not accounted to Eight Mile or paid Eight Mile for these streams but instead remitted random payments of some sort, which only purport to account for a fraction of those streams." The suit adds that Spotify has placed "Lose Yourself" into a category called "Copyright Control," reserved for songs for which the owner is not known. Eight Mile attacks the "absurd" notion that it can't be identified as the owner of such an iconic song, which was the centerpiece of the 2002 film 8 Mile, hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and won an Oscar for best original song. According to chart data, Eminem is among the most followed artists on Spotify with monthly listens on par with Bruno Mars, Coldplay and Taylor Swift. Eight Mile is being represented by Richard Busch, a Nashville attorney whose appearance in this matter is notable. A decade ago, he handled a trailblazing case on behalf of the company that produced Eminem's early work. That dispute against Universal Music Group explored whether digital downloads should be treated as "licenses" or "sales" — a meaningful accounting difference that changed the economics of distributing music in the iTunes era. More recently, besides famously representing Marvin Gaye's family in its successful copyright suit over "Blurred Lines," Busch took on Spotify in a pair of cases that alleged rampant infringement. Those recently settled cases may have played some role in the passage of the Music Modernization Act by convincing Spotify and other music distributors to come to the negotiating table for new legislation.

Before the Music Modernization Act, a persistent problem for those digitally distributing music was identifying and locating the co-authors of tens of millions of copyrighted musical works. Under copyright law, Spotify could obtain a compulsory license for its mechanical reproduction of a song, but it needed to send out a "notice of intention" and make required payments. Spotify, like others, works with the Harry Fox Agency to comply, but past class action lawsuits alleged Spotify had fallen short on efforts. The new law was meant to alleviate the difficulty of "matching" songs with their owners through a database run by a Mechanical Licensing Collective, which will grant blanket licenses beginning in 2021. At a signing ceremony, Trump was flanked by such musicians as Kid Rock and John Rich, and he talked how the new law is good for the music community. "I've been reading about this for many years and never thought I'd be involved in it, but I got involved in it," said Trump. "They were treated very unfairly. They're not going to be treated unfairly anymore." The Music Modernization Act was hailed by both song publishers ("We are humbled by the extraordinary progress propelled by compromise," said National Music Publishers Assn. president David Israelite at the time) as well as the Digital Media Association, the lobbying voice of the streaming industry. "The MMA will benefit the music community and create a more transparent and streamlined approach to music licensing and payment for artists," said Horacio Gutierrez, Spotify's general counsel and vp business and legal affairs, upon the law's enactment. Streamers may have thought their copyright troubles were ending, but that sentiment might have been both optimistic and premature. Eight Mile (but not Eminem, not a direct party in the new case) now alleges Spotify's attempts to serve notices of intent for Eminem's music are "untimely and ineffective" and that the streamer can't demonstrate compliance with the Music Modernization Act. "First, by its terms, the MMA liability limitation section only applies to compositions for which the copyright owner was not known, and to previously unmatched works (compositions not previously matched with sound recordings), and not to 'matched' works for which the DMP [Digital Music Provider] knew who the copyright owner was and just committed copyright infringement," states the complaint. In other words, Eight Mile asserts that Spotify knew exactly who owned these Eminem songs, and even if it didn't, Spotify "did not engage in the required commercially reasonable efforts to match sound recordings with the Eight Mile Compositions as required by the MMA." Spotify will surely have its own interpretation of the Music Modernization Act once it files its court papers. THR reached out for comment on the suit. In a security filing earlier this year, the company discussed how between October 2018 and Dec. 31, 2020, the mechanism for obtaining a compulsory license was no longer operative and there was "risk" in situations where it had no direct license and couldn't locate the owner of a composition. Additionally, Spotify warned that the Music Modernization Act, when fully implemented, could actually increase the cost and difficulty of obtaining licenses, especially upon any delay in adoption of new regulations.

Eminem's publisher is doing more than merely questioning Spotify's compliance with copyright law. The lawsuit also makes a pretty bold argument regarding a new law's constitutionality. The Music Modernization Act held out a carrot for streamers in the form of essentially a blank slate for past copyright infringement. Those who didn't sue by the end of last year were out of luck (which explains why Tom Petty's publisher Wixen filed a since-settled case against Spotify on New Year's Eve). But as Eight Mile contends, the attempt to retroactively wipe out a copyright holder's ability to recover profits, statutory damages and attorneys fees amounts to "an unconstitutional taking of Eight Mile’s vested property right," basically meaning the Music Modernization Act is allegedly in violation of the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Spotify and others participating in the tech industry's lobbying efforts "knew what they were doing," asserts the Eight Mile complaint. "Given the penny rate for streaming paid to songwriters, the elimination of the combination of profits attributable to infringement, statutory damages and attorneys’ fees would essentially eliminate any copyright infringement case as it would make the filing of any such action cost prohibitive, and ensure that any plaintiff would spend more pursuing the action then their recovery would be. In addition, with the removal of these remedies, it cleared the last hurdle for Spotify to go public, thereby reaping its equity owner’s tens of billions of dollars. The unconstitutional taking of Eight Mile’s and others vested property right was not for public use but instead for the private gain of private companies." The application of the Takings Clause to copyright reform is, in the words of a 2015 article in the Harvard Law Review, "largely unexplored" territory, with scholars at times having "expressed concern that applying Takings Clause scrutiny to intellectual property might inhibit legal change." The issue of an unconstitutional taking did come up during the legislative process, though it was mostly geared towards discussion of a different aspect of the Music Modernization Act — treatment of pre-1972 recordings, which have now become eligible for digital royalties. The lawsuit from Eminem's publisher is now set to put tough issues before a court. As relief for alleged copyright infringement, Eight Mile seeks Spotify's substantial profits, which the complaint painstakingly attempts to attribute to sweeping copyright theft of songs like "Lose Yourself." (Universal, Sony, and Warner Music own big equity stakes in Spotify.) If the plaintiff runs into trouble demonstrating how Spotify has benefited from failing to secure licenses, the lawsuit seeks in the alternative the maximum amount of statutory damages — $150,000 for each of the 243 works at issue, which computes to $36.45 million. The lawsuit also seeks a judicial declaration that Spotify does not qualify for limitation from damages under the Music Modernization Act as well as a second declaration that the law's retroactive elimination of damages available for copyright infringement is unconstitutional.

Citations Article 2 Gardner, Eriq. “Eminem Publisher Sues Spotify Claiming Massive Copyright Breach,

‘Unconstitutional’ Law.” The Hollywood Reporter, 21 July 2020, 2:35 pm,

www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/eminem-publisher-sues-spotify-claiming-massive- copyright-breach-unconstitutional-law-1233362. Retrieved July 25, 2020.

Article 1 Messer, Lesley. “Spotify Hit with $1.6 Billion Copyright Infringement Lawsuit.” ABC News,

ABC News Network, 3 Jan. 2018, 1.:32 pm, abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/spotify-hit- 16-billion-copyright-infringement-lawsuit/story?id=52104636. Retrieved July 25, 2020.

R# Rubric Yes / No

CTH Module – Computer Person Project

D: Word Document I: Infographic Creation

1

I: Create an infographic and save with the name ComputerPerson_I.pdf where

"I" stands for Infographic. (a) The name is in camelCase and is shortened from

the full assignment name. (b) A link to the online creation of the infographic

will not be accepted. (c) The person may be from the list or another that you

chose that has added to computer technology progress. The infographic is of

the person's work in technology, not a full bio.

2

I: The infographic contains your name in small letters (8 font) in the bottom

right hand corner. Your name should not detract from the infographic as this

is not a focal point

3

D: One pdf created from the word document that you create to answer the

questions in this rubric. (a) Name the document you create

ComputerPerson_Q.docx and answer all questions. "Q" stands for the

question document. (b) For upload to GaVS, save the document after

completion using Save As the name ComputerPerson_Q removing the .docx

and selecting the pdf as type of file. The pdf name will be

ComputerPerson_Q.pdf. Note the name is in camelCase and is shortened from

the full assignment name.

4

D: Your name, course name, teacher name, assignment name, and the

computer person's name, and the name of the software you used to build the

Infographic are on the top left corner of the document, each on their own line.

5 I: The infographic is one page only, not a slide show and does not look like a

slide show. More of a collage feel with multiple images on the page.

6

I: The infographic is visual using many images (minimum 3 – 5) to create

interest in the computer person allowing for viewer interpretation

(information is shown through images with few words – a caption as needed).

Images are illustrations of at least some of the key points of the questions and

the person's life working with computers. For example an illustration of the

purpose, function, benefit, etc.

7 I: The infographic contains a short title in some form to highlight computer

person's accomplishment.

8

I: All images are cited with unique IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic

Engineering) reference numbers (different from the document IEEE numbers

used to cite information found in your question source answers). (a) IEEE

numbers should not detract from the infographic, these are not a focal point.

So use 8 – 10 point font. (b) Remember you are not the expert.

GaVS Fall 2023 1 of 3

R# Rubric Yes / No

CTH Module – Computer Person Project

9

I: Captions are in use (3 – 8 word phrases) as needed. (a) Words are kept to a

minimum on the infographic using images as much as possible for

interpretation of the topic. (b) No paragraphs or sentences. These belong in

the word document only.

10 D: Appropriate grammar, sentence structure, capital letters and spelling are in

use in the infographic and document.

11

D: Question document answers the questions posed using (a) the rubric

number for all questions prior to their answer. (b) the stem of the question to

guide the reader to the computer person's information. (c) For example: R12.

The purpose is … or … is the purpose, etc. R12. with at least one space after is

part a, the rubric number, and part b is the use of the word purpose in the

answer. The stem word of the question was purpose.

12

D: Describe the purpose (what did the user gain because of this person's work)

of the Computer Person that brought them to the world's attention as shown

in your infographic. What end result did the person provide through their

efforts for users?

13

D: Describe the function (the workings) of computer person's innovation work

for the user. How does a user use the innovation to achieve the purpose of the

innovation?

14

D: Describe what you meant the overall visual infographic to portray to the

reader and what each of the images portray. Use the IEEE citation numbers to

identify the image you are discussing.

15

D: What is at least one beneficial effect of the Computer Person's innovation

on society, culture, or the economy and why? One or more of the stem words

society, culture or economy must be used in your answer.

16

D: What is at least one harmful effect of the Computer Person's innovation for

society, culture, or the economy and why? One or more of the stem words

society, culture or economy must be used in your answer.

17

D: Why did you chose this person? What attracted you to using this person?

Explain some of the biographical detail of the person in a few paragraphs.

Paragraphs consist of 5 quality sentences minimum.

18

D: What did you do to create the infographic? (a) Name the software tool that

you used (b) Name the functions / methods, (internal tools within the

infographic tool builder) that you used to build the infographic and how did

you use them? Ex: insert, upload, copy, paste, etc. and explain how they were

used.

GaVS Fall 2023 2 of 3

R# Rubric Yes / No

CTH Module – Computer Person Project

19 D: Reference page is a new page after the question answers with a title of

References.

20 D: Two sections are provided on the References page: Image Citations and

Works Cited.

21

D: Question answers contain at least 3 MLA references from different sources

that will be cited noted in the document with a unique IEEE number just prior

to the period of the sentence in ( ) or []. (a) The same IEEE number from the

document reference could be used on the infographic for word(s) cited (not an

image). (b) Cited does not mean must be quoted, the information may be

paraphrased. (c) A word citation on the infographic does not count towards the

3 required in the question answers.

22

D: IEEE numbering does not contain the same numbers in the Works Cited

section and the Image Citations section as these are different types of

citations. Example: If the Image Citations use the numbers 1 – 5, then the

Works Cited would start with the number 6 upwards.

23

D: Images use Direct URL's to the image (no words are on the page only the

image) vs the works cited uses the URL to the page the information was found

on.

24 D: All citations (document and image) contain the URL (hotlinked) and the date

accessed, mm/dd/yy for each IEEE number present on the Reference page.

25 D: All citations in the Works Cited or Image Citations sections are in numerical

IEEE order.

GaVS Fall 2023 3 of 3

Example Infographic

Notice the Title of the Tool at the top

Short captions (3 to 8 words)

Citation numbers next to picture

Student name at the bottom right corner

Example Question Document

Identifying info at the top of the page

Each question is identified by rubric row number (ie R12)

IEEE citation numbers for paraphrase or quoted text

Example Reference Page

Title for the page and each section

Access date included for online sources

URLs are hotlinked in both sections

Works Cited uses MLA formatting

No duplicated citation numbers

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