EMI Sneakily Trying To Pretend Many Of Its Artists Can't Reclaim Their Copyrights

[Flurry]

Ooh you dirty rat, mouse trap time!

We've talked plenty about the coming legal battles over termination rights in various works. If you're not familiar with it, under the 1976 Copyright Act, content creators have a guaranteed right to terminate any copyright assignments after 35 years. That is, if a musician assigned the copyright to a label, as is standard, they can take that copyright back after 35 years. This is not a right that an artist can give up. Even if they sign a contract saying they give up their termination rights, it doesn't matter. Those rights cannot be taken away from the artist under the law. The exception to termination rights, however, is if a work is classified as a work made for hire. However, the definition of what qualifies as a work made for hire is very, very narrow:

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