It was years in the making and had the approval of the US Copyright Office and some of the most radical legal minds in America. Yet despite being tailor-made for artists attempting to solve low-figure copyright infringement cases without going broke, almost no musicians have filed claims before the new Copyright Claims Board.
Designed to streamline the legal process and avoid the familiar scenario of artists being compelled to spend more in legal expanses than they can hope to get back in a judgment, the Copyright Claims Board, or CCB, began accepting its first cases in June 2022. As 5 Mag reported at the time, the CCB is a combination of a government-sponsored arbitration and small claims court (monetary judgments are capped at $30,000). It was almost custom-fit for the copyright claims of the internet age — a photo misappropriated, used on mugs or Red Bubble t-shirts and the like. You could hire an attorney or represent yourself. The defendants could opt-out, and the case would be dropped or filed in federal court.
5 Mag wrote in June that the CCB was “one of the great unexplored stories in music media right now.” Judging both by the few stories out there and the few claims brought before the court, it still is.
In the first six months of operation, plaintiffs had brought nearly 300 cases before the court. More than a third of the cases sought damages of less than $5,000. Few of the cases were involved legal counsel — most brought and were defending the cases as individuals. And just 20 defendants opted-out.
The Copyright Alliance has drilled down through the 281 active cases to categorize them by the type of media allegedly being infringed. More than half were grouped under “pictorial, graphic and sculpture” — visual works. Another 16% were “motion picture and audiovisual works” — videos, essentially. About the same amount were “literary works.”
Just 8% of the claims filed by the end of 2022 were disputes over sound recordings. Music — probably the most coarsely cheapened of the arts in the mass internet age — is barely represented.
Almost no musicians or music rights holders, who frequently lament how often they’re ripped off, have taken advantage of a system designed to make protecting their intellectual property affordable.
5 Mag wrote in June that the CCB was “one of the great unexplored stories in music media right now.” Judging both by the few stories out there and the few claims brought before the court, it still is. Almost no musicians or music rights holders, who frequently lament how often they’re ripped off, have taken advantage of a system designed to make protecting their intellectual property affordable.
Outside of ignorance, there are a couple of possible explanations for why this is. A great deal of music piracy is done by “parties unknown,” or at least out of the country in relative safe havens like Russia. Even if a victimized producer could find out who was behind downloadmyshitnow.xyz, CCB has no jurisdiction there. There are also corporate remedies to copyright infringement on large platforms such as YouTube which enables rights holders to literally monetize infringement.
Still, it seems most music producers — among the most isolated of all creators — are simply unaware that the CCB exists. In electronic music, few have covered the existence of the board outside of 5 Mag, likely because of the increasing tilt of editorial toward European markets. Despite the CCB being the talk of the legal industry and its value to independent artists, neither DJ Mag, nor Mixmag nor RA have acknowledged the CCB’s existence in the nearly 9 months since it began accepting cases.
