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By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 28 July 2021

John Lydon’s legal rep yesterday told the High Court in London that the Sex Pistols have always worked on the assumption that licensing deals will only be done with unanimous approval of the band’s members, and therefore an old band agreement that says only majority approval is required should be set aside.

Mark Cunningham presented his closing arguments at the end of a lively court dispute between Lydon and his former bandmates Paul Cook and Steve Jones. They want to license the band’s music to a new TV programme called ‘Pistol’ based on Jones’s memoir ‘Lonely Boy: Tales Of A Sex Pistol’, but Lydon is currently seeking to veto the deal.

Cook and Jones argue that – while they have never previously enforced the old band agreement that denies Lydon a veto providing the rest of the band agree on a deal – that doesn’t mean they ever accepted that that contract was no longer in force. They just didn’t want the hassle of a major falling out with Lydon by forcing a deal through based on that old agreement. Until now.

According to Law360, Cunningham said in his closing arguments that, while every band member had indeed signed that agreement, it was long forgotten about, and band members instead operated according to a unanimous-consent-only model.

Cook and Jones should not now be allowed to employ the forgotten “nuclear button”, the lawyer stated. “The catastrophic deployment of the [agreement] with the aim of achieving the licensing of ‘Pistol’ goes against the grain of what has been achieved” in the past, he added, noting that, since the agreement was signed, “every licence [has been] granted by unanimous approval”.

Needless to say, legal reps for Cook and Jones counter that an agreement is an agreement, even if it is rarely relied upon. “The [agreement] permits decisions regarding licensing requests to be made on a majority-rules basis”, they noted in a closing submission to the court.

“The [agreement] requires that the parties must exercise their rights of approval under any pre-existing agreements with third parties consistently with the provisions and intent of the agreement … and the [agreement] obliges the parties to provide all such consents and execute all such documents as may be necessary to give effect to a majority decision”.

We now await the court’s decision with some interest. Though, presumably, not quite as much interest as the producers of ‘Pistol’, whose show will probably be a bit rubbish without any Sex Pistols music.

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READ MORE ABOUT: John Lydon | Paul Cook | Steve Jones | The Sex Pistols

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Business News Digital Labels & Publishers Legal

By Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 28 July 2021

Hey Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Spain, Finland, France, Croatia, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Slovenia and Slovakia! What’s taking you so long in implementing the damn European Copyright Directive? Catch up slackers of Europe!

Not my words, but the words of the European Commission. Well, technically my words. But the Commission’s sentiment. It has written to all those countries asking them for an update on the implementation of the 2019 copyright directive which – of course – includes the reform to the copyright safe harbour that the music industry lobbied so hard to secure.

With EU directives, each member state is meant to amend their national laws to bring them in line with changes in European law. The deadline for doing that with the copyright directive was 7 Jun. But there have been some delays in many countries. What with some of those copyright reforms being rather complicated and somewhat controversial. And the small matter of a slightly distracting global pandemic. And, of course, all round laziness in the law-making chambers of Europe.

“The Commission has requested Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Spain, Finland, France, Croatia, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Slovenia and Slovakia to communicate information about how the rules included in the Directive On Copyright In The Digital Single Market are being enacted into their national law”, the EC stated earlier this week.

“As the member states above have not communicated national transposition measures or have done it only partially, the Commission decided today to open infringement procedures by sending letters of formal notice”, it went on, adding that the reforms in the copyright directive “modernise EU copyright rules” and “enable consumers and creators to make the most of the digital world”.

“They reinforce the position of creative industries”, it added, and also “allow for more digital uses in core areas of society. It then concluded: “These member states now have two months to respond to the letters and take the necessary measures. In the absence of a satisfactory response, the Commission may decide to issue reasoned opinions”.

Blimey, not reasoned opinions! Anyway, governments and parliaments of Europe, hurry up and implement the copyright directive, will you? We’d do it here in the UK too if we could, but, you know, Brexit, we hate Brussels, fuck the foreigners, you all smell, we don’t care if our copyright regime is flawed, at least it’s British!

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READ MORE ABOUT: European Commission | European Copyright Directive | European Union

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Images & transcripts are copyright to their respected owners.