The US Congress passed a Copyright law, back in 1978, stating that after 35 years, songwriters will be able to reclaim publishing rights from record labels and publishers if they introduced termination notices at least two years before the recoup date. This means that, on january 1st 2013, many artists will have back the publishing rights on songs they wrote, or co-wrote. And we're talking artists as important as Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits and Pink Floyd (for recordings done in 1978) but the list will go on and on as years go by.

That sounds good, no ? But not so fast: some major labels, EMI USA at the forefront, are arguing that the artists were by contract their employees and therefore all works performed as employee belongs to the company (corporate authorship). Which means that EMI USA, along with other labels and publishing companies who did have artists as employees, are fighting to retain copyrights on songs written by the artists who were signed with them...Without getting into the nitty-gritty of things, one-sided unbalanced contracts are already the norm for most contracts, the artists being all too eager to quickly sign a deal, so 35 years seem...