The Music Industry's New Copyright War

6:00 AM PST 2/7/2012 by Matthew Belloni , Eriq Gardner

A law from 1978 is suddenly the labels' No. 1 threat as everyone from Village People to Tom Petty can now snatch back their music rights.

The music industry just can't catch a break. Major record labels, which cautiously celebrated a slight uptick in U.S. album sales in 2011 after revenue from recorded music fell a whopping 52 percent from 2000 through 2010, are now facing a new threat to their bottom lines -- and it's not online pirates or an Apple device. It's a quirk in U.S. copyright law that is about to allow a whole bunch of top artists to snatch back rights to their music, potentially forcing labels to pay big money to reacquire songs they have owned for decades.