Legal News
Chris Brown has filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros. Discovery, alleging the media giant defamed him with a 2024 documentary claiming that the R&B star had a long history of sexually abusing women.
Filed Tuesday (Jan. 21) in Los Angeles Superior Court, the complaint accuses Warner Bros. Discovery and Ample Entertainment, the production company behind Chris Brown: A History of Violence, of “promoting and publishing false information in their pursuit of likes, clicks, downloads and dollars and to the detriment” of the R&B star — all while “knowing that it was full of lies and deception and violating basic journalistic principles.”
“They did so after being provided proof that their information was false, and their storytelling ‘Jane Doe’ had not only been discredited over and over but was in fact a perpetrator of intimate partners violence and aggressor herself,” reads the lawsuit, which was filed by attorneys Arnold Shokouchi and Levi McCathern. “Mr. Brown has never been found guilty of any sex related crime…but this documentary states in every available fashion that he is a serial rapist and sexual abuser.”
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The Jane Doe who made sexual assault accusations against Brown in the documentary — whom he identifies in the lawsuit — is also named as a defendant in the complaint, which alleges the woman “completely disregarded the facts in an attempt for fame and fortune — all at the cost of Chris Brown and the reputation he has worked diligently in redeeming over the last decade.”
The “sensationalized, unfounded, and defamatory allegations” in the documentary “have been discredited, dismissed by the courts, or outright fabricated,” Brown’s lawyers write. The lawsuit further alleges that the Jane Doe filed a “frivolous civil lawsuit” against Brown in January 2022 in which she accused him of sexual assault and battery — but that her claims “were determined to be entirely fabricated, leading to the withdrawal of her attorneys and dismissal of the case” that same August “after a Miami Beach Police detective uncovered text messages…that exposed her dishonesty.” It adds that while an investigative report published by Rolling Stone in March 2022 “further discredited her claims,” the ID documentary nonetheless portrayed her “as credible, ignoring her established lack of veracity.”
Later in the complaint, Brown’s attorneys break down the Jane Doe’s alleged “history of violence and erratic behavior [that] should have raised red flags for any responsible journalist.” The suit includes a copy of an alleged restraining order filed against Doe by an ex-boyfriend in 2021 “after she physically assaulted him, threatened him with a knife, and engaged in online harassment.”
“These incidents, detailed in court records and leading to her arrest by the Los Angeles Police Department, were disregarded by the Defendants, who instead framed her as a reliable source to bolster their sensationalized portrayal instead of the physical aggressor in a romantic relationship,” the complaint reads.
Key to the lawsuit is the accusation that the companies behind the documentary moved forward with its release even though they allegedly knew it “contained false claims and violated journalist professional standards” — claims Brown’s lawyers now say “caused significant harm to Mr. Brown’s reputation, career, and business opportunities.”
Several individuals who appeared as talking heads in the documentary are also named as defendants in the lawsuit.
Brown is asking for $500 million in damages, “a portion of which will be donated to survivors of sexual abuse.”
Warner Bros. Discovery and Ample Entertainment did not immediately respond to Billboard‘s requests for comment.
The independent label and publishing company Artist Partner Group (APG) sued Create Music Group on Tuesday (Jan. 21), accusing the company of violating copyrights by uploading and monetizing songs it didn’t actually own. APG also accused Create of interfering with its artists’ contracts.
“Create’s ‘business model’ is to steal the intellectual property and contractual rights of innocent rightsholders,” APG’s attorney writes.
APG’s complaint argues that Create has engaged in several forms of copyright infringement, including by “unlawfully uploading” APG artists’ songs to streaming services” and “collecting royalties for them” as well as releasing a song called “Montagem Diamante Rosa” “which flagrantly copies” another composition that is owned by APG.
The suit also argues that Create approaches acts who have signed with APG and offers them YouTube monetization deals despite the fact that this service is already part of APG’s agreements with its artists. (Recording or publishing agreements typically give an artist’s partner the right to collect royalties across all the different platforms.) “Create and its subsidiaries wrongfully induced these artists to sign these bogus ‘contracts’ by falsely asserting that [APG was] purportedly doing a bad job exploiting their works and leaving money on the table (thereby damaging Plaintiffs’ reputation),” according to the complaint. “Create and its subsidiaries further falsely induced these artists by telling them that these ‘contracts’ do not violate [APG]’s rights.”
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In a statement, Jeff Movit, head of litigation for Chaudhry Law, said “our complaint demonstrates that APG will aggressively protect its contracts and copyrights.”
A representative for Create was not immediately available for comment.
Create was founded in 2015 and built its profile in the music industry through its YouTube royalties collection business. It has also branched out into other areas: Create owns other companies including Label Engine, a distributor; Flighthouse, a TikTok-focused digital media studio; and a majority stake in The Nations, a collection of popular YouTube channels.
While APG’s complaint is multifaceted, part of it focuses on Create’s business practices on YouTube: “Create and its subsidiaries have falsely filed claims with YouTube in which Defendants baselessly assert that they own rights in sound recordings and musical compositions that third parties have posted.”
This is not the first time that Create’s tactics on the popular video platform have drawn criticism. More than 10 executives told Billboard in 2022 that they knew of instances where Create claimed YouTube royalties it had no right to, sharing email threads and screenshots to back up their claims.
In an interview at the time, Create co-founder Jonathan Strauss denied these allegations. “We’ve never been sued by a lawyer or manager for this activity,” he added. “You would have to think if there was any truly egregious activity they would do that.”
Lawsuits are expensive and time-consuming. In October 2023, however, the music management company DigiGlo — whose clients include the rapper Chief Keef — sued Create, alleging that it “lost out on years of payments for its content monetization” for more than 400 works on YouTube because of Create’s refusal to honor contracts. DigiGlo estimated that it had lost “hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue.”
Create filed a terse answer to DigiGlo’s complaint two months later, denying “each and every allegation.” The suit is ongoing. (Create also faced a lawsuit from Cinq Music Group in 2022 that revolved around the use of a Shiloh Dynasty sample, though a judge dismissed Cinq’s claims last year.)
Meanwhile, Create has been raising money. In June, the company announced that it had received a $165 million investment from the private equity firm Flexpoint Ford. “Flexpoint’s investment will support our ambitious acquisition strategy,” Strauss said in a statement at the time, and “allow us to expand our market presence and create the scale to continue to provide unparalleled services to our clients and partners.”
This is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between.
This week: Drake sues Universal Music Group for defamation over Kendrick Lamar’s diss track “Not Like Us”; the Supreme Court upholds a ban on TikTok but President Donald Trump says he’ll delay it; Nelly demands punishment for a “frivolous” lawsuit over Country Grammar; and more.
THE BIG STORY: Drake v. UMG
Two months after Drake shocked the music industry with court filings suggesting he might file a lawsuit over Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us, the superstar rapper did exactly that — seemingly unswayed by public ridicule that he had hired lawyers during a rap beef.
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In a case filed in Manhattan federal court, Drake accused Universal Music Group of defaming him by promoting Lamar’s song — a brutal diss track that savaged Drake as a “certified pedophile” and became a chart-topping hit in its own right. The star claimed that his own label had “waged a campaign against him,” boosting a “false and malicious narrative” even though it knew it was false.
“UMG intentionally sought to turn Drake into a pariah, a target for harassment, or worse,” the star’s lawyers wrote. “UMG did so not because it believes any of these false claims to be true, but instead because it would profit from damaging Drake’s reputation.”
Can Drake really sue over a diss track? While the term “slander” gets thrown around a lot these days, actual legal defamation is pretty hard to prove in America. Drake would need to show that Lamar’s statements were provably false — a tricky task in a lyrical context where listeners have come to expect bombastic boasting and obvious exaggerations.
“The public … has to believe that the speaker is being serious, and not just hurling insults in a diss fight,” Dori Hanswirth, a longtime media law attorney, told me last year. “If the statements are not taken literally, then they are rhetorical hyperbole and not considered to be defamatory. The context of this song-by-song grudge match tends to support the idea that this is rhetorical, and a creative way to beef with a rival.”
That’s essentially the same argument that UMG made when it responded to Drake’s “illogical” lawsuit: That all parties involved in rap beefs, from the artist to the labels to the fans, have always known that it’s all part of a game — until now.
“Throughout his career, Drake has intentionally and successfully used UMG to distribute his music and poetry to engage in conventionally outrageous back-and-forth ‘rap battles’ to express his feelings about other artists,” UMG wrote in its response. “He now seeks to weaponize the legal process to silence an artist’s creative expression and to seek damages from UMG for distributing that artist’s music.”
For more, go read our entire story on the lawsuit, featuring a detailed breakdown of the allegations and a link to Drake’s full complaint.
THE OTHER BIG STORY: TikTok Ban
The TikTok rollercoaster continues. After the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a federal law effectively banning TikTok over national security concerns, newly-inaugurated President Donald Trump quickly claimed to have delayed the ban — a move that restored the app for users but left plenty uncertain.
In a unanimous ruling Friday, the high court said the law — set to go into effect on Sunday (Jan. 19) — was fair game because the U.S. government has valid fears about China’s control over TikTok, a service with 170 million American users that has become a key promotional tool for the music industry.
As a result of that ruling, TikTok briefly went dark for users on Saturday and vanished from Google’s and Apple’s app stores. Service was restored on Sunday after Trump announced that he was planning an executive order to delay the ban.
In an order issued Monday (Jan. 20), Trump (who once led the charge against TikTok but later reversed course) instructed his attorney general not to enforce the ban for 75 days to give his administration time to “determine the appropriate course forward.” Trump had previously said he would “negotiate a resolution,” potentially for an American company to buy TikTok — the explicit goal of the ban.
Trump’s move was a win for TikTok and its many U.S. fans, but it raises difficult legal questions.
Under the Constitution’s separation of powers, the president cannot outright ignore laws passed by Congress. In practice, enforcement priorities can sometimes be a bit discretionary — like with federal drug laws in states that legalized cannabis — but does that leeway extend to flatly refusing to enforce a national security law? The TikTok law does contain a provision allowing for a 90-day delay if a sale is imminent, but it’s unclear if Trump’s order triggered that option, or if he was even legally eligible to do so.
For now, that uncertainty has left things in limbo. Trump’s assurances clearly allayed fears, but the app remains unavailable for download on the app stores — likely because the law threatens huge financial penalties against service providers like Google and Apple that violate the ban.
What happens next? A lawsuit challenging Trump’s executive order? An act of Congress to repeal the ban? A sale of TikTok to an American firm? Stay tuned…
Other top stories…
NELLY NOT PLAYING – Nelly (Cornell Haynes) asked a judge to issue legal sanctions in a copyright lawsuit filed by his former St. Lunatics bandmate Ali over Nelly’s 2000 debut album Country Grammar. The case claims that Nelly has failed to pay his former St. Lunatics bandmate Ali for his work on the album, but the star’s lawyers argued in the new filings that those decades-old allegations are so “frivolous” that Ali and his lawyers must face penalties for filing them: “Plaintiff’s claims should never have been brought in the first place,” Nelly’s attorneys wrote.
“THOROUGHLY ENJOYED HERSELF” – Attorneys for Sean “Diddy” Combs argued in new legal filings that key evidence disclosed by prosecutors — videos of the alleged “freak off” parties at the center of case — show only consensual sex and “fundamentally undermine” the charges against him. Far from the “sensationalistic media reports,” Diddy’s attorneys wrote, the videos at issue “unambiguously” show that the alleged victim “not only consented but thoroughly enjoyed herself.”
GYM MELEE LAWSUIT – Tekashi 6ix9ine (Daniel Hernandez) filed a lawsuit against LA Fitness, claiming the gym chain is legally responsible for a 2023 “violent assault” in which he was attacked in the sauna at one of the company’s South Florida locations — and owes him at least $1 million in damages for his trouble. The lawsuit claimed the assailants were members of the Latin Kings criminal gang and that LA Fitness should have had measures in place to prevent the entry of “affiliates of violent gangs” and people with “aggressive and dangerous propensities.”
BERLIN — In June, the three major labels sued the generative AI music companies Udio and Suno for training their software on copyrighted music without a license. Now, GEMA, the German PRO, is also taking legal action against Suno, in a case filed today (Jan. 21) in the Munich Regional Court.
In an announcement, GEMA said that it documented that the Suno system outputs content that “largely corresponds to world-famous works whose authors GEMA represents,” including “Forever Young” by Alphaville, “Mambo No. 5” by Lou Bega and “Daddy Cool” by Milli Vanilli creator Frank Farian, among others.
“AI providers such as Suno Inc. use our members’ works without their consent and profit financially from them,” said GEMA CEO Tobias Holzmüller in the announcement. “GEMA is endeavoring to find solutions in partnership with the AI companies. But this will not work without adhering to the necessary basic rules of fair cooperation and, above all, it will not work without the acquisition of licenses.”
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This case is very different from the litigation Suno faces in the U.S., which is spearheaded by the RIAA and involves recorded music owned by the major labels. Assuming that Suno has indeed trained its software on copyrighted recordings, as seems likely, that case will involve a determination of whether this would qualify as “fair use” – the legal doctrine that allows the unlicensed use of copyrighted works in some situations, including quotation and criticism. That can be notoriously complicated and it involves both specific facts and case law. It can also involve a great deal of money, since statutory damages for willful copyright infringement can reach $150,000 per work.
GEMA’s case involves the copyrights to songs, which it represents as a PRO, rather than those of recordings. The relevant legislation would be the European Union’s AI and Copyright directives, which allow copyright owners to “opt out” of having their works scanned in order to train AI software, and require “fair remuneration” if they are used. This is one of the first big cases involving this issue in Europe, as well as the first against a big generative music company. Any damages would almost certainly be more modest than they would in the U.S., but the case could establish whether AI companies need to license copyrighted works for software training purposes. Whatever the result, it is easy to imagine it being appealed to higher courts in Germany.
In November, GEMA also sued OpenAI for using lyrics of songs to which GEMA has rights in order to train its AI software. That case, also filed with the Munich Regional Court, only involves lyrics.
In its announcement, GEMA said Suno “outputs content that obviously infringes copyrights.” However, the issue in this case is not this output, but rather the music Suno has scanned during the process of training its software. If Suno has indeed scanned music for training purposes, it would presumably be infringing the rights in the songs as well as the recordings. Although a U.S. court could determine that this is fair use, that doctrine is a feature of Anglo-American law – the UK and British Commonwealth countries have “fair dealing,” which is similar but more limited – European laws are more strict. The EU Copyright Directive lays out “exceptions and limitations” to copyright, but it also provides authors and rightsholders the ability to opt-out of having their work scanned – or, as is more likely, to opt out until a license agreement is reached.
“The lawsuit against Suno Inc. is part of an overall concept of measures taken by GEMA,” said GEMA general counsel Kai Welp in the announcement of the case, “at the end of which there will be fair treatment of authors and their remuneration.”
A British teen pleaded guilty Monday (Jan. 20) to murdering three girls and attempting to kill 10 other people in what a prosecutor said was a “meticulously planned” stabbing rampage at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in England last summer.
Axel Rudakubana, 18, entered the surprise plea as jury selection had been expected to begin at the start of his trial in Liverpool Crown Court.
The July 29 stabbings sent shock waves across the U.K. and led to a week of widespread rioting across parts of England and Northern Ireland after the suspect was falsely identified as an asylum-seeker who had recently arrived in Britain by boat. He was born in Wales.
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The attack occurred on the first day of summer vacation when the little girls at the Hart Space, a sanctuary hidden behind a row of houses, were in a class to learn yoga and dance to the songs of Taylor Swift. What was supposed to be a day of joy turned to terror and heartbreak when Rudakubana, armed with a knife, intruded and began stabbing the girls and their teacher in the seaside town of Southport in northwest England.
“This was an unspeakable attack — one which left an enduring mark on our community and the nation for its savagery and senselessness,” Deputy Chief Crown Prosecutor Ursula Doyle said. “A day which should have been one of carefree innocence; of children enjoying a dance workshop and making friendship bracelets, became a scene of the darkest horror as Axel Rudakubana carried out his meticulously planned rampage.”
Prosecutors haven’t said what they believe led Rudakubana — who was days shy of his 18th birthday — to commit the atrocities, but Doyle said that it was clear he had a “a sickening and sustained interest in death and violence.”
Rudakubana had consistently refused to speak in court and did so once again when asked to identify himself at the start of the proceedings. But he broke his silence when he was read the 16-count indictment and asked to enter a plea, replying “guilty” to each charge.
He pleaded guilty to three counts of murder, 10 counts of attempted murder and additional charges related to possessing the poison ricin and for having an al-Qaida manual.
Rudakubana faces life imprisonment when sentenced Thursday, Justice Julian Goose said.
Defense lawyer Stanley Reiz said that he would present information to the judge about Rudakubana’s mental health that may be relevant to his sentence.
The surviving victims and family members of those killed were absent in court, because they had expected to arrive Tuesday for opening statements.
Goose asked the prosecutor to apologize on his behalf that they weren’t present to hear Rudakubana plead guilty.
He pleaded guilty to murdering Alice Da Silva Aguiar, 9, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Bebe King, 6.
Eight other girls, ranging in age from 7 to 13, were wounded, along with instructor Leanne Lucas and John Hayes, who worked in a business next door and intervened. Fifteen other girls, as young as 5, were at the class but uninjured. Under a court order, none of the surviving girls can be named.
Hayes, who was stabbed and seriously wounded, said he still had flashbacks to the attack and was “hugely upset at the time that I wasn’t able to do more.”
“But I did what I could in the circumstances,” he told Sky News. “I’m grateful to be here, and by all accounts I’ll make a full recovery, at least physically. … I’m going to be OK and others won’t be, and that’s really where I I think the focus of attention should be.”
Police said the stabbings weren’t classified as acts of terrorism because the motive wasn’t known.
Several months after his arrest at the scene of the crime, Rudakubana was charged with additional counts for production of a biological toxin, ricin and possession of information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing to commit an act of terrorism for having the manual in a document on his computer.
Police said they found the evidence during a search of his family’s home in a neighboring village.
The day after the killings — and shortly after a peaceful vigil for the victims — a violent group attacked a mosque near the crime scene and pelted police officers with bricks and bottles and set fire to police vehicles.
Rioting then spread to dozens of other towns over the next week when groups made up mostly of men mobilized by far-right activists on social media clashed with police during violent protests and attacked hotels housing migrants.
More than 1,200 people were arrested for the disorder and hundreds have been jailed for up to nine years in prison.
Tekashi 6ix9ine has filed a lawsuit against LA Fitness, claiming the gym chain is legally responsible for a 2023 “violent assault” in which he was attacked in the sauna at one of the company’s South Florida locations.
In a complaint filed Wednesday (Jan. 15) in Florida court, the controversial rapper (Daniel Hernandez) says LA Fitness owes him more than $1 million in damages over the March 2023 attack by three assailants, which he says left him hospitalized.
Attorneys for Tekashi say the gym failed to prevent the attack, including by “failing to implement reasonable security measures” and taking other steps that might have stopped it.
“As a direct and proximate result of the negligence … Hernandez was brutally beaten, assaulted and robbed, suffered bodily injury and resulting pain and suffering,” his attorneys write.
In the days after the incident, three men — Rafael Medina Jr., 43; Octavious Medina, 23; and Anthony Maldonado, 25 — were arrested and charged with carrying out the attack. According to court records, both Medinas quickly reached plea deals with prosecutors and were released on probation; the charges against Maldonado were later dropped entirely.
In his lawsuit Wednesday, Tekashi said the assailants were members of the Latin Kings criminal gang — and that LA Fitness should have had measures in place to prevent entry of “affiliates of violent gangs” and people with “aggressive and dangerous propensities.”
“Defendant … knew or should have known that LA Fitness was located in an area where crime statistics, including violent crime, had increased substantially in recent years,” his lawyers write. “Defendant had a duty to adopt and implement reasonable security measures commensurate with all attendant circumstances, including the prevalence of criminal activity.”
A representative for LA Fitness did not immediately return a request for comment.
The 2023 attack was hardly Tekashi’s first dust-up with criminal gangs.
Once a rising star in the world of hip-hop and social media, Tekashi was charged in November 2018 with federal racketeering and murder conspiracy charges over his involvement with a New York street gang called Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods. Prosecutors claimed the gang “wreaked havoc on New York City” by “engaging in brazen acts of violence.”
But just a day after being arrested, Tekashi cut a deal with federal prosecutors to flip on his crew in return for lenience. Taking the witness stand during a 2019 trial, he offered detailed and frank testimony about his involvement in the gang and his former gang mates.
Under the deal with prosecutors, Tekashi was sentenced to two years in prison and five years of supervised release. The sentence was set to run until July 2020, but Tekashi was released early, in April 2020, after his attorneys argued that the coronavirus pandemic posed an increased risk to him because he has asthma.
Tekashi recently spent another month in prison after prosecutors accused him of breaking the terms of his supervised release.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday (Jan. 17) upheld a federal statute that will effectively ban TikTok from the country over national security concerns, rejecting the company’s arguments that the law violates the First Amendment.
In a unanimous ruling, the high court said the law – set to go into effect on Sunday — was fair game because the U.S. government has valid fears about China’s control over TikTok, a popular social media service with 170 million American users that has also become a key cog in the modern music industry.
Attorneys for TikTok’s Chinese-owned parent ByteDance had argued that the law was clearly unconstitutional because it violates the First Amendment’s protections for free speech. But in Friday’s decision, the high court was unswayed.
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“There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community,” the justices wrote. “But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary.”
The ruling has major implications for the music industry. TikTok has become a key part of the modern music ecosystem – a core promotional tool for labels and a jumping off point for many new artists, albeit one that has occasionally butted heads with rights owners and can sometimes prove difficult to harness into lasting success.
Friday’s decision will allow the ban to go into effect on Sunday, but it’s unclear exactly what will happen next. President-elect Donald Trump, set to take office on Monday, has vowed to “negotiate a resolution” to save the platform. And even outgoing President Joe Biden, who championed and signed the law, has reportedly signaled openness to prevent TikTok from going dark.
The TikTok law, which requires the app’s Chinese-owned parent ByteDance to either sell the app to a U.S. company or face a total ban on January 19, was approved by wide bipartisan majorities in Congress last year and signed by President Biden in April. Proponents have argued that TikTok presents a national security threat because of its connections to the Chinese government and access to millions of Americans.
TikTok and ByteDance sued in May, calling the law “unprecedented” violation of free speech aimed at “silencing” more than 170 million Americans. But in December, a lower federal appeals court rejected those arguments, ruling the law was aimed at protecting Americans from a “foreign adversary nation.”
Friday’s decision upheld that ruling, repeatedly stressing concerns about the Chinese government’s control over TikTok and the information it could pull from it.
“Petitioners do not dispute that the Government has an important and well-grounded interest in preventing China from collecting the personal data of tens of millions of U. S. TikTok users,” the justices wrote. “Nor could they. The platform collects extensive personal information from and about its users.”
Much of the ruling – a so-called “per curiam” decision that was not signed by any particular justice – was spent deciding on the level of “scrutiny” that such a ban should face under the First Amendment. While TikTok’s attorneys argued it was the kind of egregious intrusion into free speech that merits “strict scrutiny” by judges, the high court instead ruled that the law was the kind of less-problematic restriction that warrants only “intermediate scrutiny.”
Under that looser standard, the justices ruled Friday that the TikTok ban passed constitutional muster — deciding that the law served an “important government interest” and didn’t restrict free speech any more than was necessary to accomplish that goal.
The federal government was clearly justified in preventing a foreign adversary from “collecting vast swaths of sensitive data about the 170 million U. S. persons,” the justices wrote. And they said the TikTok ban was sufficiently limited in addressing that specific goal to avoid violating the First Amendment.
“Rather than ban TikTok outright, the Act imposes a conditional ban,” the justices write. “The prohibitions prevent China from gathering data from U. S. TikTok users unless and until a qualified divestiture severs China’s control.”
The government had also separately argued that the TikTok ban was fair game because of the power China could wield by using TikTok’s algorithm to influence Americans. But the justices effectively sidestepped that argument in their decision, saying it was not necessary to decide the case.
Ahead of Friday’s ruling, the music industry was already preparing for such an outcome. As Billboard‘s Elias Leight writes, record labels have been gearing up for the potential of life without TikTok: “Where is new artist discovery happening in 2025 if this app completely disappears?” The live music business has also been preparing to lose the platform, Billboard’s Dave Brooks writes, since festivals and other promoters have increasingly relied upon TikTok in recent years to reach ticket buyers.
Read the Supreme Court’s full decision here.
Nelly is asking a federal judge to punish the lawyers who recently sued him over his 2000 debut album Country Grammar, arguing the case is “objectively frivolous” and should “never have been brought in the first place.”
The lawsuit, filed last year, claims Nelly (Cornell Haynes) has failed to pay his former St. Lunatics bandmate Ali for his work on the album. But in a new motion Thursday (Jan. 16), Nelly’s attorneys say those decades-old allegations are so “baseless” that Ali and his lawyers must face legal penalties for filing them.
“Plaintiff and his counsel should be sanctioned in the full amount … that Haynes has been forced to incur in defending this action,” the rapper’s lawyer Ken Freundlich writes. “That is because plaintiff’s claims should never have been brought in the first place.”
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Freundlich says that if Ali’s attorneys (Gail M. Walton and Precious Felder Gates) had done “even the barest factual investigation and legal research,” they would have found fatal flaws in the lawsuit — most notably that it was filed years after the statute of limitations had expired. Instead, he says they doubled down after such shortcomings were exposed.
“Plaintiff and his counsel’s failure to withdraw their fatally flawed claims, and their insistence on pressing forward with frivolous assertions and legal arguments require a substantial sanction,” Nelly’s lawyers write. “[This is] not only to compensate Haynes for the substantial legal fees and expenses he has been forced to incur in defending this action, but also to deter plaintiff and others who would flout the Copyright Act’s rules and clear undisputed court precedent.”
In a response statement to Billboard on Thursday, Felder Gates said Ali’s legal team would “vehemently defend” against Nelly’s motion and would continue to pursue their client’s “undeniable right to be properly compensated” for his alleged work on Country Grammar: “It is both unethical and unlawful for artists and their corporate partners to exploit the creative work of writers, deceiving them out of their rightful credits and fair compensation.”
Nelly rose to fame in the 1990s as a member of St. Lunatics, a hip-hop group also composed of St. Louis high school friends Ali (Ali Jones), Murphy Lee (Tohri Harper), Kyjuan (Robert Kyjuan) and City Spud (Lavell Webb). With the June 2000 release of Country Grammar — which spent 5 weeks atop the Billboard 200 — Nelly broke away into a solo career that later reached superstar heights with his 2002 chart-topping singles “Hot in Herre” and “Dilemma.”
In a copyright lawsuit filed in September in Manhattan federal court, all four of those bandmates accused Nelly of cheating them out of compensation for contributions they allegedly made to Country Grammar. They claimed that he had “manipulated” them into falsely thinking they’d be paid, then never made good on the promises.
But a month later, the lawsuit took a strange turn: Nelly’s lawyers filed a letter warning that Lee, Kyjuan and Spud had never actually wanted to sue Nelly and that they had not given legal authorization to the lawyers who filed the lawsuit to include them as plaintiffs.
“They are hereby demanding you remove their names forthwith,” Nelly’s lawyers wrote in a letter to Walton. “Failure to do so will cause them to explore any and all legal remedies available to them.”
In November, Ali’s attorneys filed an updated version of the lawsuit listing only him as a client and vowed to fight on: “While others may have chosen to withdraw, his dedication to his artistic legacy and his rights as a creator remains unwavering,” Felder Gates said in a statement to Billboard at the time.
But in Thursday’s motion, Nelly’s attorneys argue that the case has deeper problems than simply improper plaintiffs.
They say the lawsuit was filed many years after the Copyright Act’s three-year statute of limitations had expired since Nelly had clearly “repudiated” Ali’s demand for payment years before he filed his case. And they say that when Ali’s attorneys refiled the case under just his name, they tried to sneakily remove certain dates to “hide” that fatal flaw.
“Plaintiff omits the dates of repudiation in his [amended lawsuit],” Freundlich says. “This ruse does not save the claim from being time-barred. In fact, all it does is elucidate how Plaintiff and his counsel are engaging in sanctionable conduct.”
As a penalty, Nelly’s lawyers want the judge to order Ali and his attorneys to repay all legal fees and other costs that the star has incurred defending the case. Even for just a few months of copyright litigation, that figure could reach thousands of dollars when top law firms are involved in a case.
Universal Music Group (UMG) is firing back at Drake’s lawsuit accusing the music giant of defaming him by promoting Kendrick Lamar’s diss track “Not Like Us,” calling the case “illogical” and accusing Drake of trying to “weaponize the legal process.”
In a strongly-worded statement issued Wednesday afternoon (Jan. 15), UMG flatly denied the allegations in Drake’s lawsuit — filed earlier in the day in New York federal court — and sharply criticized its superstar artist for bringing it.
“Not only are these claims untrue, but the notion that we would seek to harm the reputation of any artist—let alone Drake—is illogical,” the company wrote. “We have invested massively in his music and our employees around the world have worked tirelessly for many years to help him achieve historic commercial and personal financial success.”
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The lawsuit claims that UMG knew that “inflammatory and shocking allegations” in Lamar’s scathing diss track were false, but chose to place “corporate greed over the safety and well-being of its artists.”
But in UMG’s response, the music giant said that Drake himself had often engaged in rap beefs featuring bombastic claims about his opponents — the very thing that he now claims is illegal.
“Throughout his career, Drake has intentionally and successfully used UMG to distribute his music and poetry to engage in conventionally outrageous back-and-forth ‘rap battles’ to express his feelings about other artists,” UMG wrote. “He now seeks to weaponize the legal process to silence an artist’s creative expression and to seek damages from UMG for distributing that artist’s music.”
Drake’s case repeatedly makes clear that he is not suing Lamar himself, and that he holds UMG responsible for releasing a song that it allegedly knew was defamatory.
In its statement, UMG denied that claim — and said it would defend Lamar or any other artist if they were hit with such a lawsuit.
“We have not and do not engage in defamation—against any individual,” UMG said in the statement. “At the same time, we will vigorously defend this litigation to protect our people and our reputation, as well as any artist who might directly or indirectly become a frivolous litigation target for having done nothing more than write a song.”
Drake and Lamar exchanged stinging diss tracks last year, culminating in Lamar’s knockout “Not Like Us” — a track that savagely slammed Drake as a “certified pedophile” and reached the top of the charts. In November, the star filed stunning legal petitions suggesting that he planned to sue UMG, claiming that the company had artificially boosted a song that contained defamatory statements about him.
Earlier on Wednesday, Drake made good on those threats — filing a federal lawsuit that claimed UMG had boosted a “false and malicious narrative” that the star rapper was a pedophile, severely harming his reputation and even putting his life in danger.
“UMG intentionally sought to turn Drake into a pariah, a target for harassment, or worse,” the star’s lawyers wrote in their complaint. “UMG did so not because it believes any of these false claims to be true, but instead because it would profit from damaging Drake’s reputation.”
The accusations — and Wednesday’s response statement — represent a remarkable rift between the world’s largest music company and one of its biggest stars. Drake has spent his entire career at UMG, first through signing a deal with Lil Wayne’s Young Money imprint that was distributed by Republic Records, then by signing directly to Republic.
Drake has filed a lawsuit against Universal Music Group (UMG) over allegations that the music giant defamed him by promoting Kendrick Lamar’s diss track “Not Like Us,” claiming the label boosted a “false and malicious narrative” that the star rapper was a pedophile and put his life in danger.
Hours after his attorneys withdrew an earlier petition, they filed a full-fledged defamation lawsuit Wednesday against his longtime label – claiming UMG knew Lamar’s “inflammatory and shocking allegations” were false but chose to place “corporate greed over the safety and well-being of its artists.”
“UMG intentionally sought to turn Drake into a pariah, a target for harassment, or worse,” the star’s lawyers write in a complaint filed in Manahttan federal court. “UMG did so not because it believes any of these false claims to be true, but instead because it would profit from damaging Drake’s reputation.”
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In one of the lawsuit’s most vivid accusations, Drake claims that the release of “Not Like Us” has subjected him to risk of physical violence, including a drive-by shooting on his Toronto area home just days after the song was released.
“UMG’s greed yielded real world consequences,” his lawyers write. “With the palpable physical threat to Drake’s safety and the bombardment of online harassment, Drake fears for the safety and security of himself, his family, and his friends.”
Notably, the case does not target Lamar himself — a point that Drake’s attorneys repeatedly stress in their filings.
“UMG may spin this complaint as a rap beef gone legal, but this lawsuit is not about a war of words between artists,” Drake’s attorneys say.
A spokesman for UMG did not immediately return a request for comment.
Wednesday’s lawsuit is yet another dramatic escalation a high-profile beef that saw Drake and Lamar exchange stinging diss tracks last year, culminating in Lamar’s knockout “Not Like Us” — a track that savagely slammed Drake as a “certified pedophile” and became a hit in its own right.
Drake shocked the music industry in November when he filed petitions suggesting he might sue over the fued — first accusing UMG and Spotify of an illegal “scheme” involving bots, payola and other methods to pump up Lamar’s song, then later claiming that the song had been defamatory. But those cases were not quite full-fledged lawsuits, and Drake withdrew one of them late on Tuesday.
Now it’s clear why: In Wednesday’s lawsuit, he formally sued UMG over the same alleged scheme, claiming the label “unleashed every weapon in its arsenal” to drive the popularity of Lamar’s track even though it knew the lyrics were “not only false, but dangerous.”
“With his own record label having waged a campaign against him, and refusing to address this as a business matter, Drake has been left with no choice but to seek legal redress against UMG,” his lawyers write.
The filing of the case represents a doubling-down for Drake, who has been ridiculed in some corners of the hip-hop world filing legal actions over a rap beef. It also will deepen further his rift with UMG, where the star has spent his entire career — first through signing a deal with Lil Wayne’s Young Money imprint, which was distributed by Republic Records, then by signing directly to Republic.
In his complaint, Drake’s lawyers said the label opted to boost “Not Like Us” despite its “defamatory” lyrics because they saw it as a “gold mine” — partly because UMG owns Lamar’s master recordings outright, but also because it could use the song to hurt Drake’s standing in future contract talks.
“UMG’s contract with Drake was nearing fulfillment … UMG anticipated that extending Drake’s contract would be costly,” his lawyers write. “By devaluing Drake’s music and brand, UMG would gain leverage to force Drake to sign a new deal on terms more favorable to UMG.”
This is a breaking news story and will continue to be updated with additional details as they become available.