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The Eastern European country of Belarus has adopted a law that essentially legalizes piracy of music and other forms of copyrighted entertainment, which could make it a hotbed for piracy well beyond its borders.
Under the law, which President Alexander Lukashenko approved in early January, copyrighted music, films and other audiovisual content originating from “unfriendly countries” can be used in Belarus without permission from rights holders.
The law doesn’t provide a list of “unfriendly countries.” But based on the Belarusian government’s previous statements, the legislation primarily targets Western nations, which slapped sanctions on Belarus following mass repressions of people for protesting the rigged presidential vote in 2020 and, more recently, because of Belarus’ support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Belarus has never been a major music market — it does not show up in the IFPI’s ranking of the 62 biggest markets — and the major global labels had traditionally run operations there from their Russian offices. Since the labels pulled out of Russia after the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, they have also cut ties with Belarus. The country, which sits between Russia to the east and Ukraine to the south, backed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine invasion last year by allowing Russia to launch part of its attack from Belarusian territory.
Despite its small stature in the music industry, analysts say that under the government’s piracy-permitting law Belarus could play an outsized role in spurring more global piracy.
“As Belarus is a very small music market — a rounding error in the global market — there will be little direct impact in terms of music revenues for western rights holders,” says Mark Mulligan, music analyst at MIDiA Research.
“What might be impactful though is whether piracy networks start to operate from Belarus, distributing globally but operating under the protection of Belarussian law.”
The music industry is already dealing with a spate of piracy networks based in Russia and surrounding countries that are distributing pirated content to other markets, sometimes on other continents. Among the best-known operations are the stream-ripping websites FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com, run by Tofig Kurbanov, who reportedly lives in southern Russia.
More than two dozen record labels and the RIAA have pursued Kurbanov in the U.S. for copyright damages. Last February, a U.S. district judge in Alexandria, Va., approved an $82.9 million judgement against the Russian for circumventing YouTube’s anti-piracy measures and infringing copyrights of audio recordings. The court found that Kurbanov’s operation drew more than 300 million users from around the world to his sites in a single year. (Kurbanov says he plans to appeal.)
And in Brazil, Paulo Rosa, IFPI affiliate Pro Música’s president, told Billboard in 2021 that most of the fake streams being peddled to consumers in the South American country originate from hacker operations in Russia.
The Belarusian piracy law could nevertheless set an example for neighboring Russia, which for months has been considering a similar move to legalize copyrighted content from certain Western countries. Since the early 2000s, Russia has often followed the example of Belarus in strengthening authoritarian rule.
Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko speaks during a press conference on December 19, 2022.
Contributor/GI
Before the war with Ukraine, Russia had the 13th-largest music market in 2020 with revenues of $328 million, a 58% bump from 2019; it was the fastest-growing market in the world in 2019 and 2020, according to the IFPI.
While Russia’s relations with the West are at their lowest point since Cold War, and many Western companies have left the country, the legalization of piracy would likely further isolate Russia — and could “set back the Russian music industry by decades,” one person at a global music company tells Billboard.
In recent years, Russia had made a substantial effort to shed its reputation as a place where piracy ran rampant. VK, the Russian analog of Facebook, which for years allowed users to share unlicensed music tracks on the platform, eventually cleaned up its act and signed license agreements with global majors a few years ago.
Now that the majors have left Russia, dozens of pirated albums have already been reappearing on VK, including recent releases from Taylor Swift (Midnights, on Universal Music Group’s Republic Records) and Red Hot Chili Peppers (Return of the Dream Canteen, on Warner Music Group’s Warner Records).
The legalization of piracy would certainly make it harder for Western streaming services to start operating in Russia again, says Mulligan. While Russia is still “earlier in its streaming development,” he says, “longer term it could become a significant market and at that stage Western rightsholders would want to ensure that their music is being paid for when it is being consumed at scale.”
New laws legalizing piracy would fly in the face of treaty commitments made by both Belarus and Russia. Both countries are signatories to the Berne Convention and other World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)-administered treaties.
“Suspending IP protection as Belarus is presently considering would violate its obligations under these WIPO treaties and would seriously dampen Belarus’ opportunities to become integrated into the global trade community and to secure [Most Favored Nation] status, or to further integrate with the [European Union], thus minimizing its economic opportunities in the long term,” says Neil Turkewitz, president of Turkewitz Consulting Group.
Also, “any actions legalizing piracy would destroy any chance of investment in local creative industries and would hurt local artists and their fans the most,” the IFPI tells Billboard in a statement. “Such actions would be in clear breach of international copyright law and trade agreements.”
Concord Music Publishing has acquired the majority of country songwriter-producer Corey Crowder‘s catalog and signed him to a co-publishing deal that also includes his future works. He was formerly signed to Tree Vibez.
The acquisition of Crowder’s catalog includes Chris Young’s two-times platinum single “Famous Friends” (featuring Kane Brown) and other hits from Young, Florida Georgia Line and Chase Rice, among many others.
“Corey is a proven, consistent, country hit-maker,” says Brad Kennard, senior vp of A&R at Concord Music Publishing in Nashville. He adds that the signing and acquisition represent “a big leap forward for Concord’s footing within the active country market. We are committed to representing significant real estate in the format. Further evidenced by locating Concord global headquarters here, we aim to continue our aggressive growth in Nashville.”
Kennard adds that Crowder’s catalog “stacks up with the best of the best and fits perfectly” alongside the company’s existing roster of country songwriters, including Hillary Lindsey, Lori McKenna, Andy Albert, Josh Miller and Russell Dickerson.
Crowder, a Georgia native, relocated to Nashville in 2010 and has built a catalog of songs that also includes Young’s Billboard Country Airplay chart-toppers “I’m Comin’ Over” and “Think of You” featuring Cassadee Pope (neither of which is included in the acquisition). He’s also a co-writer on the Florida Georgia Line hits “Long Live” and “I Love My Country,” as well as the duo’s Rice collaboration “Drinkin’ Beer. Talkin’ God. Amen.” In 2022, Crowder earned the Country Music Association’s Triple Play award for his role in writing three chart-topping songs within a 12-month period. He’s spent a total of four weeks atop Billboard‘s Country Songwriters chart.
As a producer, Crowder’s credits include work on Florida Georgia Line’s Life Rolls On album, Justin Bieber‘s “Yummy (Country Remix),” LoCash‘s “One Big Country Song” and the Chris Tomlin/Lady A collaboration “Who You Are to Me.” He’s also enjoyed placements on TV shows including Nashville, One Tree Hill and The Real World.
“The Concord team has such a great vision and passion for great songs and songwriters,” adds Crowder in a statement. “I’ve known a lot of the team and their writers for some time now. So, it felt like a natural fit.”
Bad Bunny has reached a tentative settlement in a lawsuit that accused the Puerto Rican superstar and his collaborators of “unauthorized incorporation” of three DJ Playero songs into his 2020 track “Safaera,” according to legal documents obtained by Billboard.
The “settlement in principle” was reached Jan. 17 after both parties — in this case, Bunny and the Florida-based company AOM Music — participated in a mediation. After notice of the settlement was filed with the court, a federal judge in California suspended future hearings in the case.
The court document notes that the process will “take some time since the settlement is complex and will require the review and approval of multiple corporate and individual parties.” The parties are required to submit a joint report on the status of the settlement if a dismissal of the case hasn’t been filed by Feb. 17.
Filed by AOM Music, also known as BM Records, on Sept. 27, 2021, the lawsuit claimed that Bad Bunny “stole” samples from reggaeton pioneer DJ Playero’s “Besa Tu Cuerpo,” “Chocha Con Bicho” and “Sigan Bailando” for “Safaera,” a global hit that was included on the superstar’s history-making album YHLQMDLG. “No license or authorization was obtained,” the suit alleged.
After the complaint was filed, DJ Playero took to Instagram with a statement clarifying he knew nothing of the lawsuit and had nothing but respect for all the artists involved. “I am proud that I was part of opening the doors to these artists who are known worldwide today,” he wrote, “a song that sounds on the radio and in the world with part of a track of mine is a beautiful feeling that no one can imagine.”
Produced by Tainy, DJ Orma and Subelo Neo, the nearly five-minute “Safaera” — which features Jowell & Randy and Ñengo Flow — is a mashup of old school perreo and reggaetón beats and samples and interpolates various classic hits, including the signature six-note hook to Missy Elliott’s “Get Ur Freak On.”
When it was released in early 2020, “Safaera” was temporarily pulled from Spotify due to a claim that a fragment of the song had not cleared the corresponding rights. In a back-and-forth last year, rapper Missy Elliott weighed in on Twitter after successfully getting her royalties for the song.
Elliott’s response came after Jowell (of Jowell & Randy) claimed his royalties had dropped to 1% after the rapper was properly compensated. “Sadly you mislead all these people to make them think I have 99%,” Elliott wrote at the time. “Now I don’t talk business on line because that’s messy but now we are here I have 25% and there is 6 other samples & 15 other writers on this one song.”
Read the full settlement notice below:
Could Taylor Swift be responsible for breaking up Live Nation and Ticketmaster?
For anyone watching the three-hour U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, aside from frequent quotes of her lyrics, the connection between the pop star and the politicians’ probe is probably starting to feel tangential. And despite Live Nation president and CFO Joe Berchtold’s efforts to shift blame for Swift’s disastrous (yet record-breaking) ticket sale from Ticketmaster to scalpers and bots, most everyone else involved was focused on the m-word — monopoly.
The senators’ line of thinking is that if the Live Nation-owned platform didn’t have such market dominance (around 80% of large venues in the U.S. have exclusive Ticketmaster deals), greater competition would force the company to innovate and improve its services — potentially avoiding the kinds of issues that spoiled the Swift sale last November. But while disruptions to Swift’s highly anticipated North American Eras tour caused such a commotion that Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) felt compelled to call this hearing, by Tuesday it seemed only Berchtold wanted to explore the immediate problems that brought down the sale.
Instead, the lawmakers see taking on Ticketmaster as a winning political issue and an opportunity to reach constituents who have long complained about the ticketing giant. During the hearing, for example, Klobuchar railed against high ticket prices, saying, “To have a strong capitalist system, you have to have competition.” But would competition in ticketing actually drive down ticket prices when it’s the artists who set the price, as Berchtold said, and not Ticketmaster?
For the senators, it hardly matters. Perception is reality and poor perception could lead to serious issues for Live Nation and Ticketmaster. Whether or not the companies’ dominance is a problem in the market, Ticketmaster is widely so despised that it has clearly become an easy target for rare bipartisan political action propelled by incredible public support.
About an hour into the hearing, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) laid out a potential path for Democrats in the Senate, potentially with support from Republicans, to force Live Nation into divesting its holdings in Ticketmaster.
Since merging in 2010, the combined companies have been operating under a consent decree, promising not to leverage Live Nation’s touring content in a way that would punish venues for not signing up for Ticketmaster’s services. A Department of Justice intervention, in which the assistant U.S. attorney for antitrust goes to a federal judge with evidence “of monopolistic and predatory abuses,” Blumenthal said, would be the most obvious path toward an intervention forcing Live Nation to divest Ticketmaster. There’s recent precedent for this, too. In 2019, the DOJ punished Live Nation for the six violations by extending the term of the decree five years and forcing the company to pay the reimbursement of millions in investigatory and litigation costs. The DOJ also appointed an independent monitor and required Live Nation to install an internal antitrust compliance officer. If the DOJ caught Live Nation violating the decree again, the government would have a strong case to take before the government showing that the consent decree wasn’t effective and that the merger would have to be unwound.
Hinting that DOJ anti-trust attorneys appointed by Biden are once conducting another review of the company’s compliance with the consent decree, Blumental warned that any violations found during the current review would be grounds for splitting the company in two.
“If the Department of Justice uncovers violations of the consent decree,” Blumental said, “unwinding the merger ought to be on the table.”
Other senators during the committee threatened to take legislative action if the DOJ didn’t do something about Live Nation and Ticketmaster’s combined strength. Government witness Kathleen Bradish, vp for legal advocacy at the American Antitrust Institute, however, testified that any legislative remedy — like legislation to enhance and clarify U.S. antitrust laws and a regulatory framework to clean up the mostly unregulated ticketing market — would have to be coupled with strong antitrust enforcement action through existing antitrust law in order to break up the company.
Even if there is the political will to unwind Live Nation and Ticketmaster, that outcome is likely still a long shot. Still, even if the companies survive the DOJ probe and can eventually end the consent decree, it’s difficult to see how they repair their image going forward. To most senators on the panel, the company is an illegal monopoly openly operating in defiance of the world’s most powerful legislative bodies. And to most aggrieved fans, it’s screwing up their ticket buying and gouging them to see their favorite acts.
Scooter Braun has taken the title of CEO, HYBE America, the U.S. division of South Korean music company HYBE.
A HYBE representative confirmed to Billboard that Braun is now the sole CEO of HYBE America. Until recently, Braun shared the co-CEO title with veteran HYBE executive Lenzo Yoon. (Braun and Yoon appeared at No. 18 on Billboard’s 2022 Power List along with HYBE chairman Bang Si-yuk.) The HYBE representative declined to comment on Yoon’s current title or any changes to either executive’s role.
Braun joined the company through HYBE’s $1.05 billion acquisition of his Ithaca Holdings in 2021. Ithaca encompasses SB Projects, the management firm behind Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande, as well as the country music-focused Big Machine Music Group. HYBE already had a U.S. presence — the acquisition was made by its state-side subsidiary, HYBE America — but Ithaca gave it the infrastructure and the executive, Braun, to build its presence in the U.S. Today, HYBE America has offices in Los Angeles, New York and Nashville. Braun’s team includes Allison Kaye, president of music, HYBE America and SB Projects; Jennifer McDaniels, president of management, HYBE America and SB Projects; and Jules Ferree, president of brands & ventures, HYBE America and SB Projects.
Yoon has spearheaded HYBE’s efforts to showcase K-pop artists based in the U.S. In a 2021 interview, he told Billboard that the U.S. provided an opportunity to implement the company’s “winning formula” that helped turn BTS into global superstars. HYBE has a joint venture with Universal Music Group’s Geffen Records to search for talent, assemble a girl group and release music. “We will find the most effective way to be successful in this project based on the know-how of the two companies,” said Yoon at the time.
Yoon also said Ithica and HYBE would help one another, but suggested Braun would carve out a distinct role in the organization. “We intend to cooperate in the most efficient way without overlapping in terms of structure,” he said.
A federal judge on Wednesday (Jan. 25) declared a mistrial in the high-profile courtroom battle pitting T.I. and wife Tameka “Tiny” Harris against toymaker MGA over a line of dolls, ending the proceedings after jurors heard inadmissible testimony claiming the company “steals from African Americans.”
A day after attorneys for MGA argued that the “inflammatory” testimony about cultural appropriation had ruined their chances of a fair trial, Judge James V. Selna agreed, granting a mistrial. That means the case will need to be re-tried in front of a new jury at some point in the future.
Following the mistrial, MGA told Billboard that “diversity has always been a key value” at the company: “We are disappointed that the trial was cut short, but look forward to vindicating our rights in the next trial.” An attorney for T.I. and Tiny did not immediately return a request for comment.
The ruling marks an abrupt end for the closely-watched intellectual property trial, in which T.I. and Tiny were trying to persuade a jury that MGA’s line of “OMG” dolls stole their look and name from the OMG Girlz, a defunct teen pop trio created by Tiny and starring her daughter Zonnique Pullins.
In their 2021 complaint, T.I. and Tiny alleged that MGA had committed both “cultural appropriation and outright theft of the intellectual property,” stealing the look of a group of “young multicultural women.” The lawsuit included side-by-side images, aiming to show how each doll was directly based on a particular member of the OMG Girlz, who disbanded in 2015.
On the fifth day of the trial, jurors heard videotaped deposition testimony from a woman named Moneice Campbell, a former MGA customer. According to court documents, Campbell testified that she would no longer purchase the company’s products because MGA “steals from African Americans and their ideas and profit off of it.” She also said that “hundreds” of social media users had agreed with the accusations, citing the fact that “people often steal from the black community and make money off of it.”
Earlier in the case, Judge Selna had already expressly prohibited such testimony from the trial. In one such order, he ruled that statements about “cultural appropriation” were “immaterial and impertinent” to the actual legal issues at play in the case and could not be made in front of jurors.
In a written motion filed after Tuesday’s courtroom proceedings had concluded, MGA’s lawyers demanded an immediate mistrial, arguing that the impact of the inadmissible testimony on the fairness of the case “cannot be understated.”
“There is no way to unring the bell of the jury’s hearing Ms. Campbell’s emotionally charged accusations that MGA has been ‘stealing’ from the African-American community,” the MGA attorneys wrote. “Her improper testimony cannot be challenged, rebutted or cured without drawing further attention to it.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James has sent a letter asking Madison Square Garden Entertainment (MSGE) to explain its reported use of facial recognition technology to bar individuals involved in litigation against the company from its venues, the Attorney General’s office said Wednesday (Jan. 25).
The letter cites reports that approximately 90 law firms comprising thousands of lawyers are affected by a policy that MSG Entertainment allegedly put in place, in which the facial recognition tech has been used to identify and bar attorneys with legitimate tickets from venues including MSG and Radio City Music Hall. The letter says the office has “concerns that the Policy may violate the New York Civil Rights Law and other city, state, and federal laws prohibiting discrimination and retaliation for engaging in protected activity.” The letter also says that the office is concerned that such practices could run afoul of laws prohibiting retaliation and that the technology “may be plagued with biases and false positives against people of color and women.”
“MSG Entertainment cannot fight their legal battles in their own arenas,” James said in a statement included in a press release from her office on the matter. “Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall are world-renowned venues and should treat all patrons who purchased tickets with fairness and respect. Anyone with a ticket to an event should not be concerned that they may be wrongfully denied entry based on their appearance, and we’re urging MSG Entertainment to reverse this policy.”
In a statement sent to Billboard, an MSG spokesperson responded to the letter, saying, “To be clear, our policy does not unlawfully prohibit anyone from entering our venues and it is not our intent to dissuade attorneys from representing plaintiffs in litigation against us. We are merely excluding a small percentage of lawyers only during active litigation. Most importantly, to even suggest anyone is being excluded based on the protected classes identified in state and federal civil rights laws is ludicrous. Our policy has never applied to attorneys representing plaintiffs who allege sexual harassment or employment discrimination.”
In the past few months, the New York Times has reported that MSG Entertainment, owned by James Dolan, has begun using facial recognition software to identify a list of attorneys representing clients that are involved in litigation against the company, and is barring not just those lawyers, but all lawyers from their respective firms, from attending concerts or other events at its venues, which include MSG, Radio City, the Hulu Theater, the Beacon Theatre and others. Events at which the policy has allegedly been utilized include games involving the NBA’s New York Knicks and NHL’s New York Rangers, both of which Dolan also owns.
The use of facial recognition technology is legal in the state of New York, though some lawyers who have sued the company claim that using it to bar a list of attorneys with open litigation against MSGE is not. The public outcry has caught the attention of the Attorney General, who is requesting a response both justifying the policy and detailing attempts to abide by the laws outlawing discrimination and retaliation by Feb. 13.
Inspired by the testimony of the band Lawrence and the struggles it faced as an independent act during Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary hearing on Ticketmaster, Ineffable Music Group CEO Thomas Cussins decided it was time to take action.
“After about an hour watching the hearing, I grabbed the phone and started calling the venues we owned and operated,” says Cussins. His message to on-the-ground managers at California venues including The Catalyst and the Atrium at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz, the Ventura Music Hall in Ventura and Cornerstone in Berkeley: no more merch fees for bands.
Effective immediately, all 10 venues owned and/or operated by Ineffable Live — also including the Golden State Theatre in Monterey, Calif.; Fremont Theater in San Luis Obispo, Calif.; Felton Music Hall in Felton, Calif.; the Mystic Theatre in Petaluma, Calif.; Arcata Theatre Lounge in Arcata, Calif.; and the Chicken Box in Nantucket, Massachusetts — will no longer collect a 20% venue cut from touring artists selling their merchandise at Ineffable venues.
The decision will cost the company “several hundred thousand” per year in revenue, Cussins estimates. but “hopes to make it up via a healthier concert ecosystem,” he adds, noting that the merch fee that venues charge artists is often the one thing touring bands say they most want to see changed about the club and theater circuit.
When bands go on tour, their revenue streams are almost exclusively a share of ticket sale revenue and band merchandise sales. In addition, expenses for travel, production and health insurance have increased significantly, as have the costs associated with printing and shipping t-shirts and other merchandise.
On a good night, an independent touring band with a loyal fan base can sell $5,000 to $10,000 in merch at a 500-cap show. Eliminating the venue fee can save some groups $1,000 to $2,000 per night, Cussins says. That can make a big difference in a business where the margins in merchandise are vital to the economic feasibility of touring. The more diverse a band’s income streams are, Cussins says, the less reliant they’ll be on tour guarantees.
“We are on the ground and hearing from artists every day,” says Cussins. “We are seeing how much the costs of everything have gone up — from buses to hotels to flights. So even though the club business is a marginal business, any action we can take to help to insure a healthy, vibrant concert ecosystem is important. This industry only works if artists of all levels are able to afford to tour. When artists are able to tour sustainably and fans can afford to buy a t-shirt because the all-in ticket price is reasonable, everyone wins.”
Ineffable head talent buyer Casey Smith adds, “We’ve been able to make our live business work even with increased expenses by having a number of venues and being able to create routes for artists, offering them a number of shows in secondary and college markets between their big city plays. Since we’ve made it work for ourselves, we want it to work for the artists as well. This move is fully aligned with Ineffable’s independent spirit, and in hearing the needs of independent artists, we believe it’s important to put them first.”
Penske Media Eldridge — a Penske Media Corporation (PMC) subsidiary and joint venture between PMC and Eldrige — has acquired Dick Clark Productions (dcp), it was announced Wednesday (Jan. 25). PMC is the parent company of Billboard.
The acquisition of the live events and alternative media producer was made as part of a broader strategic alliance between PMC and Eldridge, expanding the latter’s existing partnership with PMC’s entertainment media brands and SXSW, including the SXSW festival, Life is Beautiful, ATX TV festival and LA3C.
Founded in 1957, dcp owns and produces a number of TV’s most enduring awards shows, including the Golden Globe Awards, the American Music Awards, the Academy of Country Music Awards and the Billboard Music Awards. It also produces shows including Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve and So You Think You Can Dance (in partnership with 19 Entertainment).
Penske Media Eldridge will assume full control of dcp’s operations in the coming weeks. As part of the deal, Adam Stotsky will step down as dcp president following a transition period.
“I am thrilled to expand our partnership with Eldridge and Todd,” said Jay Penske, CEO and founder of Penske Media. “I have long admired dcp’s portfolio of iconic and prominent live entertainment brands and look forward to growing and evolving dcp’s footprint and legacy for future audiences across all platforms.”
“At Eldridge, we seek to grow businesses that stand the test of time,” added Eldridge chairman and CEO Todd Boehly. “Our decision to build upon our partnership with Penske Media, with whom we already have a deep alliance around media and publishing, is in service to that goal – so dcp may continue to flourish for many decades to come.”
A federal judge says Kanye West’s lawyers need to keep trying to reach their client a little bit longer before the judge will allow the attorneys to take an unusual step: printing newspaper ads announcing they’ve dropped the embattled rapper.
In an order issued Tuesday, Judge Analisa Torres denied – for now – a request by attorneys from the law firm Greenberg Traurig to take such extraordinary measures to formally cut ties with West (who has legally changed his name to Ye). The firm says it has “exhausted all methods” of contacting the rapper, but the judge is not yet convinced.
“The court finds that GT has not provided sufficient facts to support its conclusion that personal service is impracticable,” Judge Torres wrote. “GT’s latest attempts… do not indicate diligent efforts at attempting to locate Ye.”
Greenberg, one of many law firms to cut ties with Ye in the wake of his antisemitic statements last year, has been trying for months to legally notify the rapper that its lawyers will no longer be representing him in a copyright lawsuit album over a song off Donda 2. Judge Torres already approved their withdrawal, but federal litigation rules and legal ethics require lawyers to personally serve clients with formal notice that they’ve been dropped as a client.
It’s this process that Greenberg says Kanye is evading.
In a Jan. 13 request, they argued that the star was engaged in “deliberate avoidance and obstruction,” including ditching his previous representatives and changing his phone number. Faced with that obstinance, Greenberg lawyers asked earlier this month to let them notify him by mail – or to simply print the notice in public newspapers.
“Given Ye’s public status, publication of the withdrawal order will likely garner significant media attention, resulting in broader publication and provide an even greater likelihood of apprising Ye of the Order,” the Greenberg lawyers wrote in making the unusual request.
But in Tuesday’s order, Judge Torres said she would need to see more proof that Greenberg had truly run out of options. She suggested that the firm could show that it had used databases to search for a new address, or even “hiring private investigators” to locate the star.
The judge gave the firm a Feb. 15 deadline to either successfully serve notice on Kanye – or offer more detailed proof to support the newspaper plan. Kanye’s former lawyer at Greenberg did not immediately return a request for comment. A press representative for West could not immediately be located for comment.