In September 2024, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ruling that the Internet Archive’s book scanning program infringed copyright law, rejecting its "fair use" defense. The court found that scanning and lending digital copies without permission harmed authors’ ability to earn revenue. This case mirrors challenges in the music industry, where unauthorized digital reproductions and AI-generated content threaten artists’ rights. MESA uses blockchain technology to ensure musicians retain ownership and receive fair compensation, offering a solution to protect creators in the digital age.

The rise of AI-generated music presents both opportunities and challenges for the music industry. At MESA, we believe in the importance of maintaining the integrity of human creativity. Through the use of Web3 attestations and smart contracts, we ensure that the music distributed on our platform is authentic, original, and rightfully attributed to its human creators. As the industry evolves, we will continue to innovate and protect the interests of artists worldwide.

"Continuing Water & Music’s exploration of the legal maze around music and Web3, this article takes a closer look at nascent smart-contract developments around collaborative splits for Web3-native music releases. Informed by interviews with artists and developers, we present an overview of on-chain music splits tools including 0xSplits, Slice, Reveel, and Revelator, comparing their capabilities and limitations to what’s possible with Web2 distribution rails. We also explore projects that are working on processes that bridge Web2 and Web3, i.e. integrating music royalties from the traditional legacy industry into on-chain structures like Stem and Bridg3. We conclude with a spotlight on an underused setup of a multiplayer, consensus-driven wallet that can deploy and control a “split” contract. We were able to deploy a custom artist smart contract via Zora, a split contract, and mint an NFT using a “multisig” wallet (which you can view here), but only after months of research and direct support from platforms to help troubleshoot. The process is unattainable for most, and up until this point, we have been unable to find another example of a music NFT being deployed using such a wallet."