A US jury has ruled that 2 Live Crew are entitled to reclaim the rights in their early albums by exercising the termination right in American copyright law.
They rejected arguments put forward by Lil Joe Records, the label that currently owns those copyrights, that the termination right didn’t apply because the group had made the recordings in the late 1980s and early 1990s as employees of the label under a ‘work for hire’ agreement.
According to Rock The Bells, 2 Live Crew member Luther Campbell confirmed the win outside the courthouse yesterday. “We won, we got all our shit back from Lil Joe Weinberger … all our albums”, he said, before adding, “God is so good, you just gotta believe in him”.
Quite what involvement God had in the proceedings is unclear, but there were some facts that everyone agreed on. It was Campbell’s label Luke Records that originally owned and released the 2 Live Crew albums. The recordings were then acquired by Lil Joe Records – run by Joseph Weinberger – in 1996, when both Campbell and his label went bankrupt. Weinberger had previously worked as general counsel and CFO for Luke Records.
Summing up his arguments in court earlier this week, attorney Scott A Burroughs, speaking for the 2 Live Crew members, criticised Weinberger’s treatment of the group, both now and back in the 1990s. According to Law 360, he told the court, “They trusted this gentleman, and what did he do? He betrayed them and steered them into bankruptcy”.
The termination right is a provision in US copyright law that allows an artist who transfers ownership of the copyright in their music to another party – like a record label or music publisher – to terminate the transfer, or assignment, after 35 years and reclaim the rights.
However, the termination right does not apply if the music was made as a ‘work for hire’, for example where a label organises a recording and hires artists and musicians to perform on it.
Three of the four members of 2 Live Crew, including Campbell, began the process of exercising the termination right in 2020, hoping to reclaim the copyrights in their early recordings.
However, Weinberger said that 2 Live Crew were on the Luke Records payroll when making those records, so had a work for hire relationship with the label. He even managed those payroll payments in his role as CFO. As a result of this, he argued, there was no termination right to exercise because the band were employees.
There have been various disputes in the record industry over whether or not conventional record contracts are work for hire arrangements as artists have sought to reclaim rights via the termination right. It was therefore interesting to see one of those disputes get to court.
However, with this dispute, there were two contracts, one from 1990 and one from 1991, and the case depended in no small part on which contract covered the albums subject to the termination claim. Lil Joe Records’ case was stronger if the 1991 contract was being interpreted, while the 1990 agreement favoured the group’s claim.
According to Law 360, a legal rep for the label, Richard C Wolfe, honed in on that part of the dispute in his summing up arguments. He told the court that it was the 1991 agreement that “contains the grant of rights” and therefore that was the contract that mattered. Under the 1991 deal, he insisted, “it’s perfectly clear that 2 Live Crew were employees”.
Burroughs disputed those claims, stating that his clients “were paid profits from the albums – employees don’t get paid profits”.
After the jury reached its decision, Burroughs told Law 360 he was “thankful that the jury reached the right conclusion”, while Wolfe said, “The appeals will start now, that’s all I can say”.