Re: Performers Right in Sound Recordings

>Eugene Volokh wrote:
>
> The composers or writers' rights are alienable.

I take it that this is legally true. My question is, then, why does it seem to be custom in the music industry not to ever "alienate" them? Performers on a record routinely give up all rights in the master to the record company in exchange for royalties, yet writers/composers get to cash in on "publishing" royalties which they could have just as easily turned over to the record company, as well. (A real world example: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, who write most of the songs performed by the Rolling Stones, are multiple times richer than Bill Wyman or Charlie Watts.)

I have been puzzled by this assymetry in favor of writers for some time. Are there any entertainment lawyers out there who can explain why this is accepted practice and record companies don't demand 100% of publishing revenue, as they do of reproduction of the sound recording revenue?

This may be a simple issue of negotiating leverage, but I'm wondering how it got started? It seems a somewhat anachronistic custom in favor of writers and it is this assymetry which I think probably lends fuel to the fires for a "performance right" lobbied for by non-writer musicians.

scott fedewa
stanford law school
<fedewacs[_at_]leland.stanford.edu> Received on Sun Dec 18 1994 - 20:39:13 GMT