On 5th anniversary of Music Modernization Act, streaming services try to redefine their intent (Guest Column)

As the author of the Music Modernization Act (MMA), I am excited about the benefits it has brought to music creators and music streaming services. Rarely has Congress come together in a bipartisan, bipartisan manner to respond to a market problem with a comprehensive, collaborative and entrepreneurial solution.

The bill updated copyright law for digital production, and the cornerstone of the legislation—the creation of the Mechanical Collective Licensing (MLC)—was a shining example of an industry working together to solve big market challenges. However, recent attempts by streaming services to redefine the original intent of the statute to their benefit are troubling and need to be corrected.

MLC was created to solve a huge problem in the music industry. Streaming services often failed to find the right copyright holders and therefore kept large sums of money owed to songwriters and music publishers. This kept profits from the rightful owners and also opened up streaming services to large amounts of liability – from which lawsuits piled up, costing them hundreds of millions of dollars. Both sides had a significant incentive to find a better way forward.

Together with my colleague, Member of Parliament Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), I authored a bill to create a corporation funded by digital streaming companies and run by copyright holders, which would receive all mechanical streaming monies owed and then distribute them based on ownership Copyright. The company would also operate a first-of-its-kind public database so that song ownership information is more transparent than ever before.

To create the MLC, the US Copyright Office held a nonpartisan nomination period where anyone could campaign to run the company. A coalition representing the vast majority of the music publishing and songwriting industry was assembled and selected.

In five short years, MLC was activated and is now a towering example of success. It has distributed over $2 billion in royalties to publishers and songwriters. It has a match rate of over 90%. It operates the world's most accurate, open database of music rights information.

Importantly, as the MLC is responsible for ensuring accurate payments to its songwriter members and publishers, the MMA has made it clear that it not only has the power, but is authorized to enforce the rights of its members if it deems that a service stream does not report or pay properly. Most recently, MLC was forced to take legal action against Pandora for underpayment of royalties.

Unfortunately, this has led DiMA, which represents the major streaming companies and has a seat on the MLC board, to try to reinterpret the original intent of the MMA. They promote the false idea that the MLC was intended to be “neutral” when it comes to enforcing the rights of copyright holders. Nothing could be further from our goal.

This definition of neutral is just another way to remove the voice from those who have fought to be heard when it comes to getting what they are owed for their labors. That was never the intention.

Should the MLC fail to enforce and bring an action when necessary to defend the rights of its members, those members would have no recourse at all to defend their property rights. This concept of neutrality would render the MLC toothless and completely undermine the important role of the Collective. Allowing the MLC to assign rights is integral to its primary purpose of ensuring that those rights are correct.

It is a perversion of the law to try to convince today's legislators that the MLC was intended to give equal weight to the views of digital companies as to the rights of songwriters. Of course, there is a huge incentive for DiMA and its members to want the MLC to abdicate its role as an enforcer of music creators' copyrights. Billions of dollars in royalties are on the line.

The streaming services' vision of a neutral MLC is not in line with the original intent of the MMA, and they know this because they were intimately involved in the lengthy negotiation of the bill's language. The resulting legislation was fair and allowed the collective and the courts to do their jobs when it came to disputes.

The five-year milestone since MMA's signing is an important time for reflection and refinement. However, it is not time to redefine the most important musical legislation of our time.

Doug Collins is an attorney and former member of Congress representing Georgia's Ninth Congressional District. He served as Honorary Member of the House Judiciary Committee as well as Vice Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Judiciary, Intellectual Property and the Internet. He introduced the Music Modernization Act with the bill's lead sponsor, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).