Face Down

 There's a pretty incredible trial going on that isn't getting much press -- Two Live Crew is in court before Judge Gayles.  And Uncle Luke is on the stand.  From Law 360:

Rapper and producer Luther Campbell, also known as Uncle Luke, told jurors Monday that the checks they'd been shown for payments to members of hip-hop group 2 Live Crew were for per diem expenses, not paychecks, and insisted that the group members were not employees of his record label and can therefore claw back their rights to their old hit recordings.

Campbell, who owns record label Luke Records, said he and the other three members of 2 Live Crew were paid advances and received shares of the profits from the group's albums, their live performances and merchandise. None of Luke Records' employees received that kind of compensation, he said.

He pushed back against the assertion by plaintiff Lil' Joe Records — which says it bought the rights to the songs in 1996 through a bankruptcy of Luke Records' assets — that the recordings were works for hire made while under employment by Luke Records.

"This wasn't work for hire," he said. "If someone comes in and plays guitar, that's work for hire. Or someone plays piano on a song, that's work for hire."

Lil' Joe Records, which is owned by former Luke Records general counsel and chief financial officer Joseph Weinberger, is suing Campbell and late 2 Live Crew members Christopher Wong Won and Mark Ross, whose heirs are defending their interests. The music label is trying to stop them from terminating the label's exclusive licenses of their material under Section 203 of the Copyright Act, which allows copyright owners to terminate licenses during a five-year window beginning 35 years after the publication of a work.

Jurors have been tasked with determining whether the 2 Live Crew members were employees of Luke Records when the songs in the five albums at issue in the suit were created. They also will have to find which of three operative agreements — one oral agreement and two written agreements in 1990 and 1991 — granted the transfer of ownership of the subject copyrights.