14 DAY TRIAL // For better or for worse, copyright is increasingly becoming a pressing issue for society, particularly because of the Internet. Which makes it ironic, but perhaps not surprising, that no one actually understands copyright law and much less the principles behind it.
Which is why the dance music label Ministry of Sound is suing Spotify over copyright infringement. Reading that, you'd imagine that Spotify is streaming songs from the Ministry of Sound without permission.
But that's not what this is about; rather, the label is suing over playlists. Ministry of Sound makes compilations, it picks the best dance tracks of the moment, or tracks that go well together, and puts them on a CD.
It doesn't own the rights to most of those tracks, it just licenses them from other labels, which is why the same tracks are available, legally, on Spotify and plenty of other services.
So it shouldn't be too surprising that some people compile these tracks into playlists in the same order as Ministry of Sound puts them on its releases.
This is what the label is suing over, not the tracks, but the order in which some songs are listed. If this doesn't sound ridiculous to you, you're probably a copyright lawyer.
But it's not ridiculous to the Ministry of Sound. It says a lot of work goes into picking the right songs and the right order and that its playlists deserve copyright protection.
This is what's called the "sweat of the brow" doctrine, i.e. the idea that anything that involves a lot of work, effort, and investment, even if it's not creative or original in any way, may be protected. This doctrine has been rejected in some countries, notably the US, but is still upheld in others.
As "luck" would have it, one of the countries that sometimes uphold this doctrine is the UK, where the label is located and where the lawsuit was filed, so the Ministry of Sound may have a chance to win.
For example, a EU court decided, based on British law, that football schedules could not be copyrighted since there were no "elements reflecting originality in the selection or arrangement of the data." But the Ministry of Sound can definitely claim originality in the selection and arrangement of the songs.