The Supreme Court declined to take up a petition...
The Supreme Court declined to take up a petition from Intercollegiate Broadcasting. It had asked the court to review the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s decision to invalidate and sever the restrictions on the librarian of Congress’s…
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ability to remove the copyright royalty judges in Intercollegiate’s case against the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB). The action stems from Intercollegiate’s appeal of CRB’s determination of the default royalty rates and terms for webcasting. Intercollegiate, a noncommercial webcaster association, argued that because the CRB judges’ rate determinations aren’t reversible by any other entity within the executive branch, they are “principal officers” who must be appointed by the president with Senate confirmation, said its petition (http://bit.ly/172LTPR). The appeals court agreed with Intercollegiate and decided to remove restrictions on the ability of the librarian of Congress to remove the judges (CD July 9/12 p4). “With such removal power in the Librarian’s hands, we are confident that the judges are ‘inferior’ rather than ‘principal’ officers, and that no constitutional problem remains,” the appeals court opinion said (http://1.usa.gov/KY9wK5). Intercollegiate urged the Supreme Court to determine that appellate judges shouldn’t demote officers and allow Congress to decide how to fix Appointments Clause violations. Intercollegiate is disappointed the court didn’t agree to hear its case, said CEO Fritz Kass. “We hope Congress will go forward with broad reforms to the music royalty rules that include making the Copyright Royalty Judges presidential appointees who are able to set fair royalty rates without the constraints in the existing law, particularly the requirement that the judges must ignore rate agreements unless the record labels authorize them to consider the agreements."