‘WATERSHED RULING’: APPEALS COURT SAYS MUSICIANS CAN WIN BACK THEIR COPYRIGHTS GLOBALLY, NOT JUST IN THE U.S.; Billboard, January 13, 2026

 Bill Donahue, Billboard ; ‘WATERSHED RULING’: APPEALS COURT SAYS MUSICIANS CAN WIN BACK THEIR COPYRIGHTS GLOBALLY, NOT JUST IN THE U.S.

"A federal appeals court issued a first-of-its-kind ruling that says musicians can enforce U.S. copyright termination rules across the globe, adopting a novel legal theory that record labels and publishers have warned will disrupt “a half-century of settled industry norms.”

Upholding a lower court decision last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled Monday (Jan. 12) that songwriter Cyril Vetter could win back full global copyright ownership of the 1963 rock classic “Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love)” from publisher Resnik Music Group.=

What makes the ruling notable is the overseas reach. Termination, a crucial copyright provision that allows authors to recapture their rights decades after they sold them away, has only ever applied to American copyrights and had no effect on foreign countries. But the appeals court said that was not how Congress intended termination to work."

How a Single Court Case Could Determine the Future of Book Banning in America; Literary Hub, June 17, 2025

 Anthony Aycock, Literary Hub; How a Single Court Case Could Determine the Future of Book Banning in America

"Bottom line: in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi–the states covered by the Fifth Circuit–libraries are free to remove books for any reason. 

The plaintiffs now face a choice: accept the Fifth Circuit’s ruling or appeal to the Supreme Court. If there is an appeal, the court may not accept it. Over 7,000 cases are appealed to the high court each year, and it hears only 100-150–less than two percent. Yet I think Little v. Llano County has a good chance of making the docket. 

For one thing, the Fifth Circuit’s en banc reversal of its own panel’s ruling suggests the need for the high court to step in. Second, this Supreme Court has been eager to revisit earlier precedents. In the last few years, it has curtailed abortion protections, ended Chevron deference, and canceled affirmative action in college admissions–all long-standing, seemingly bedrock principles. Why not target Pico, especially since it wasn’t a decisive ruling to begin with?

Third, unlike most book ban cases, Little pertains not to a school library but a public one. Public libraries, according to UCLA professor Eugene Volokh, are not like school libraries. “I tentatively think a public school,” Volokh wrote, “is entitled to decide which viewpoints to promote through its own library,” whereas public libraries “are much more about giving more options to readers, rather than about teaching particular skills and attitudes to students.” 

Public libraries also serve more people–an entire county rather than a school system. Remember Judge Duncan’s belief that anyone who wants a certain book “can buy it or borrow it from somewhere else”? Llano County is small and rural, and many of its residents may not have the purchase option. For them, a book being unavailable in a library is a de facto ban. The pro-library organization EveryLibrary agrees, writing that the Fifth Circuit’s opinion “reveals an indifference to the lived reality of millions of Americans for whom public libraries are their only or primary means of access to books.” 

Here’s hoping that, if Little or any other book ban case ends up before this Supreme Court, those nine justices will consider the issue thoughtfully, creatively, and most important, impartially."