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September 2017 WINES&VINES 19 WINE INDUSTRY NEWS Your Online Source for Durable and Reliable Wine Shippers Distribu on Centers: Lathrop CA, Galesburg IL, Kernersville NC, Rochester NY Gorilla Shipper LLC - 6085 Song Breeze Trace - Duluth GA - 30097 - PH 866.447.4737 - Fax 770.622.6436 www.gorillashipper.com email: info@gorillashipper.com Eco Friendly Molded Pulp Wine Shippers Designed to Protect and Deliver Your Wine Safely To Your Customers Durable Foam Shippers for Summer and Winter Shipping - Best Industry Pricing Always Eco Friendly With a Low Carbon Footprint- Gorilla Shipper KRAFT Wine Shippers The Green Way To Ship Wine Wineries & Distributors buy our wine shipping products because we make wine shipping easy, affordable, and friendly to the environment. W ashington, D.C.—One of the prob- lems for wineries who want to play music or have musicians perform live in their tasting rooms is they have no way to find out which songs are copyrighted and which performing-rights organization protects the copyright of a given song. U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin and co-sponsor Rep. Suzan DelBene of Wash- ington introduced legislation July 20 in the U.S. House of Representatives that would re- quire the Register of Copyrights to establish and maintain a searchable digital database of historical and current copyright ownership and licensing information for musical works subject to copyright law. Once the bill, the "Transpar- ency in Music Licensing and Ownership Act," is passed, it will be easier for wineries (or any other venue) playing live or recorded music to comply with copyright laws. According to Tara Good, vice president of WineAmerica and an expert on music licensing for wineries, "Under the current music-licens- ing system, there is no centralized location to find out which performing-rights organizations (PROs) represent which songwriters. Under industry pressure, the four major PROs (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC and GMR) currently offer separate online databases. These databases are gated by heavy-handed legal language stating that its contents may not be up to date and there- fore should not be used to make licensing deci- sions. Because wineries cannot reliably find out which PROs represent which music, they often are forced to purchase licenses from all four PROs. This drives up the cost of offering live music and, in many cases, exceeds a small venue's budget, forcing them to cancel their live music program. Under Sensenbrenner's legislation, the Register of Copyrights must hire employees and/or contractors to create and maintain the database, enforce requests for informa- tion and spend the funds necessary to do so. The database must be accessible without charge on a website maintained by the Copy- right Office, and that office will provide ac- cess to the website from copyright.gov. It also must be searchable by any of the identifying fields set forth in the legislation and export- able in whole or in part to standard spread- sheet programs or in Extensible Markup Language and other formats as determined by the Copyright Office. Other sections of the bill define who will sup- ply the data for the database. If a winery makes a good-faith effort to use the database, and the PRO has not updated their information, the PRO can now only sue for actual damages rather than statutory damages, and that can be a difference of up to $150,000 per infringed song. —Linda Jones McKee Congress Will Write Next Verse in Music-Licensing Saga "Under the current music-licensing system, there is no centralized location to find out which performing-rights organizations represent which songwriters." —Tara Good, WineAmerica