I’ve had the date circled in red for 35 years, and now it’s time to move. Year after year after year you are going to see more and more songs coming back to songwriters and having more and more influence on the market. We will own that music, and it’s still valuable.

—Rick Carnes, president of the Songwriters Guild of America, remarking on the prospect of exercising termination rights as allowed by the 1976 Federal Copyright Act. The rights allow performers to reclaim copyright for songs after 35 years. Because the Act was passed in 1978, the earliest expected termination will be in 2013: via NYT

This is a life-threatening change for them, the legal equivalent of Internet technology.

—Kenneth J. Abdo, chair of the termination rights working group for the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences: via NYT