Abstract
As major American record labels continue to tackle online piracy and declining reve-nues, another potentially devastating battle over some of their most valuable assets is lurking in the very near future. The Copyright Act provides artists with the right to terminate any transfers of copyrights to their works. In order to protect themselves from termination notices in the future, record labels should revamp their business model and commission sound recordings for music videos rather than albums. Doing so is important given current realities in the music industry, and it will allow labels to take advantage of the work-for-hire exception to the termination right, thus allowing them to retain ownership of copyrights in sound recordings for the full duration of the term.
Recommended Citation
Jay Patel,
Viral Videos: Medicine for Record Labels in the Fight Against Copyright Termination?,
32 Loy. L.A. Ent. L. Rev. 47
(2011).
Available at: https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/elr/vol32/iss1/3
