(h/t Howard Knopf.) There is no text for the bill up on Thomas yet. Billboard reports:
As expected the Performance Right Act has been reintroduced jointly to Congress today with Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Bob Corker (R-TN), and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) submitting it in the Senate, while in the House by Representatives, it was sponsored by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Representatives Howard Berman (D-CA), Darrell Issa (R-CA), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Jane Harman (D-CA), John Shadegg (R-AZ), and Paul Hodes (D-NH).
I’ve been dreading this day, to an extent. For whatever reason, the public debate on analog performance rights in sound recordings is replete with legal misconceptions and moral appeals that are, in truth, anything but honest. Over the next week or so, I’ll try to address the misconceptions surrounding the issue; to present what an analog public performance right would and would not accomplish.
This particular topic is one of the most complicated that there may be in copyright law. It has implications on international law, copyight term and the public domain, performance practices, and of course, the broadcasting industry. It is my humble hope that by the end of this series we will have examined many of the misconceptions that are so often raised on this issue.
Recent scholarship from the 
One Comment
As a music attorney representing primarily artists, I am anxious to hear what moral appeals you believe are less than truthful, and what a public performance royalty for masters would not accomplish if required of terrestrial radio (perhaps that’s the more appropriate term, rather than “analog”).
I’ve considered myself somewhat of a student of performing rights for the last 6-7 years and, while it may not be a simple subject, I don’t see it as being the beast you describe. In fact, once one has an appreciation for the various uses in copyright and rights implicated in the use, it’s quite straight-forward, though perhaps you can challenge my notions.
(The only unnecessarily complicated matter, in my view, is the U.S.’ strict adherence to the concept of mechanical and public performance rights in connection with hybrid uses, such as tethered downloads and interactive streams; why not ditch the century-old concepts and just accept that there is a new middle-ground that calls on both rights but compensates on it’s own basis?)
In any event, I would not consider public performance a complicated concept in the overall scheme of U.S. copyright. Have you ever had to deal with termination rights? How about a termination in connection with a work created pre-78 but not formally protected under the 1909 Act, and had to figure out which formula to apply in reaching a termination date, and if under the new Act, actually applying that formula. THAT is complicated!