Legal News
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A talent manager who allegedly helped artists like Vampire Weekend and Marshmello gain access to $200 million in COVID-19 relief funds is the target of a new lawsuit that claims he stole the idea to tap those government funds — aimed primarily at helping venues, not artists — from somebody else.
In a complaint filed Wednesday (Nov. 30) in Los Angeles court, longtime music agent Laurence Leader says he was the first to realize that artists might also be able to access Shuttered Venue Operators Grants, a COVID-era federal program that gave out more than $14 billion to help live venues shuttered by the pandemic.
But Leader claims his “novel idea” was quickly stolen by talent manager Michael Oppenheim, who then allegedly used the same scheme to secure more than $200 million in SVOG funds for his own clients at the talent firm NKSFB, including Vampire Weekend, Marshmello, Common, Lil Wayne and many others.
In a complaint seeking more than $30 million in damages, Leader called Oppenheim’s conduct “despicable” and an “outright betrayal” of his trust.
“This lawsuit is brought due to the blatant and brazen theft by defendants of [Leader]’s novel idea for popular mainstream artist and band clients to obtain a grant under a specific government program,” wrote attorneys for Leader’s company, London Calling Entertainment.
Oppenheim did not immediately return a request for comment. Leader’s lawsuit, filed by veteran music litigator Richard Busch, was first reported by the news outlet Puck.
Launched by the U.S. Small Business Administration in April 2021, Shuttered Venue Operators Grants were designed to do exactly what they sound like — provide financial aid to live venues and others companies closely related to them, like vendors that provide services for live events. According to the last report issued by the SBA in July, more than $14 billion was handed out to more than 20,000 businesses.
Though the SVOG funds were a lifeline during COVID for many venues, some have argued they were left out. Dozens of venues have filed lawsuits against SBA over the past two years, claiming they were unfairly denied millions in aid.
In his lawsuit, Leader claims he was the first to discover that touring artists might also qualify for the program. Even though he says others doubted him, he believed that one definition of SVOG eligibility — “performing arts organization operators” — sounded “precisely” like the so-called loan-out companies that artists use to handle their touring businesses.
When Leader used that approach and tried applying for an unnamed jazz musician in June 2021, it was an immediate success: He says his client was quickly awarded nearly $10 million in SVOG money.
Leader says he soon shared his grant idea with Oppenheim, whom he says he’s known professionally for more than 40 years. But Leader claims he shared the SVOG concept “confidentially,” with the clear understanding that he could only be used if Leader was paid a 15 percent commission on grants secured.
Oppenheim initially believe the plan would not work and voiced “skepticism,” Leader’s lawyers say, and eventually went “radio silent” on the entire thing. But Leader claims he later discovered that the talent manager and his firm NKSFB had in fact boldly embraced the idea — allegedly filing successful SVOG applications for more than 70 of their client artists.
“As a direct and proximate result of defendant’s misuse of plaintiff London Calling’s idea … defendants obtained SVOG program grants totaling well in excess of $200 million,” Leader’s lawyers wrote.
Leader doesn’t claim that his idea is a piece of intellectual property, like a patent, copyright or trade secret, since it almost certainly wouldn’t qualify for any such formal protection. As the case is litigated, Oppenheim’s attorneys might argue back that no single person should be able to claim proprietary rights to the process of merely applying for a public government aid program.
But Leader says he and Oppenheim forged an “implied contract” that his valuable idea — helping artists access an otherwise off-limits program — would remain confidential unless Leader was compensated. By using the same scheme for his own ends without payment, Leader says Oppenheim breached that contract.
In monetary terms, he’s seeking $30 million in damages — or a 15 percent cut of the $200 million that Oppenheim allegedly secured in grants. Leader also wants an unspecified amount of “punitive” damages on the grounds that the breach of contract was “willful and malicious.”
Read Leader’s entire lawsuit here:
Before Jay-Z became embroiled in a nasty dispute with Bacardi over their D’Usse Cognac brand, he offered to buy out Bacardi’s half of the business for $1.5 billion, according to newly unsealed legal documents that reveal the sweeping size of the ongoing legal battle.
In the new filing, attorneys for Jay-Z’s SCLiquor LLC disclosed that the star made the offer last year after Bacardi offered him just $460 million for his half of D’Usse. Bacardi quickly rejected the offer, the filing said, even though the star had proposed to pay more than three times what the liquor giant itself believed a 50% stake in the business was worth.
The new document also reveals that Jay-Z believes his share in the business is worth $2.5 billion, the first public hint at how much the star is seeking from Bacardi amid the acrimonious split.
Taken together, the disclosures offer an early glimpse into how much could be at stake in the now-sprawling legal battle over Jay-Z’s efforts to exit D’Usse, which spans at least four lawsuits in two states as well as a private arbitration case.
A rep for Jay-Z declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Bacardi did not immediately return a request for comment on the disclosures.
The legal battle over D’Usse centers on Jay-Z’s exercise of a so-called “put option” — a legal mechanism in the joint venture’s operating agreement that, when triggered, requires Bacardi to buy out Jay-Z’s half of the business. Once invoked, the two sides are supposed to negotiate in “good faith,” exchange information and agree on a fair price for Bacardi to pay.
In this week’s unsealed documents, Jay-Z’s lawyers said he triggered the clause in September 2021, but that when the two sides exchanged figures in December 2021, they came in with vastly different valuations. The rapper suggested his half of the business was worth $2.5 billion; Bacardi said the number was just $460 million.
That was when Jay-Z apparently made his counter-offer: Rather than continue to invoke his put option requiring Bacardi to buy him out, he would offer to go vice-versa. “SC formally offered to buy Bacardi’s 50% interest in D’Usse for $1.5 billion, three times Bacardi’s declared valuation of its share (but less than SC believed it was worth),” his lawyers wrote in the new documents.
When Bacardi turned down that offer, the legal battle began.
As a first step, independent experts at JPMorgan were hired to appraise Jay-Z’s stake in D’Usse, but the process quickly became bogged down in disputes over what processes and data the bank should use to do so. Those disputes were submitted to a private arbitration panel, which then led to multiple New York court lawsuits challenging the arbitration panel’s rulings. Two separate lawsuits have also been filed in Delaware court, accusing Bacardi of “stonewalling” and demanding more access to information from D’Usse.
Those cases are all ongoing, including with a testy hearing in New York court on Thursday (Dec. 1) and a potential arbitration hearing on Friday (Dec. 2).
Notably, the newly unsealed document appears to have been made public accidentally.
Like much of a legal battle that’s been shrouded in unusual secrecy, the filings were originally submitted on Nov. 22 under seal. But on Tuesday (Nov. 29) evening, they were suddenly made public on the court’s digital docket. Letters to the judge indicate that the move was unexpected and that the filing should not have been published until it was further redacted. The document, first reported by Bloomberg Law and independently obtained by Billboard, was then fully re-sealed by Thursday afternoon.
Along with Jay-Z’s massive offer, the filing also revealed other key financial information about the dispute.
For instance, Jay-Z’s lawyers say they wanted JPMorgan’s appraisal to be based on an internal Bacardi document that forecast D’Usse to sell more than 2 million cases of cognac and earn $142.8 million annually by 2026. Bacardi apparently objected, saying those figures were “aspirational” and not a good indicator of the brand’s actual value.
Whether or not JPMorgan can cite the Bacardi forecast is now one of the major points of contention in the litigation.
Read the entire unsealed document here:
A new lawsuit claims that CNN used more than 100 different songs in international segments without paying for them, constituting copyright infringement on a “breathtaking scale.”
Freeplay Music, a company that sells so-called production music for use in web videos, television segments and other content – and hasn’t been afraid to sue over it – claims the cable news giant used the company’s library of music as “their own personal cookie jar” for segments on CNN Philippines, CNN Indonesia, CNN Chile.
“As high-profile news media companies which strive to provide the best news product all across the world, CNN and the international parties know they must obtain a license to use other’s intellectual property,” Freeplay’s lawyers wrote in the complaint. “Despite this, they willfully and consciously did not do so here on a breathtaking scale.”
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in California federal court, claimed that CNN used 115 songs across 283 segments. And Freeplay’s lawyers say they were “not minor uses” but rather “essential to each of the segment” – allegedly often used throughout entire segments.
Discovering the illicit use of their music in foreign media segments was like “finding a needle in a haystack,” Freeplay’s lawyers say, but that CNN knew that when it allegedly stole the music: “CNN apparently counted on the difficulty of being caught in deciding to engage in this massive willful copyright infringement.”
Freeplay is seeking at least $17 million in damages, saying anything less “would not get the attention of these media goliaths that continue to commit widespread infringement of FPM’s intellectual property.”
A spokesperson for CNN did not immediately return a request for comment on Thursday.
The case is hardly Freeplay’s first. Court records show that the company has filed dozens of similar copyright lawsuits over alleged unauthorized uses of its music, including cases against online retail giant Alibaba and guitar maker Gibson. Most recently, Freeplay sued Ford Motor Co. in 2020 over accusations that the car company had used 54 different songs in online promotional videos but was was “too cheap” to pay for them.
Ford later countersued in that case, accusing Freeplay of actively seeking out litigation with “bait-and-switch” practices. The carmaker said Freeplay falsely advertises that its music is free to lure companies and individuals to the platform, only to later sue them “to extort vast amounts of money” when they used the music.
“Freeplay has asserted copyright infringement claims in dozens of lawsuits, extracting settlements in these litigations and … in an untold number of other instances where the simple threat of litigation was enough to shake down Internet users who mistakenly thought they were getting exactly what Freeplay advertises – music that was “free” to use,” Ford’s lawyers wrote at the time.
The case between Freeplay and Ford ended in a settlement last year.
Esteemed law firms Mark Music & Media Law and Roberts & Hafitz have merged to create one bicoastal entity under the name Mark Music & Media Law, P.C. The combined firm will host 15 lawyers, based out of offices in Los Angeles, New York, and Nashville.
Courtesy Photo
Over the years, attorneys under the newly merged MMML have represented clients like Billie Eilish, Guns N’ Roses, The Chainsmokers, Tool, Smokey Robinson, Benny Blanco, Amy Allen, Andrew Watt, New Kids on the Block, Pink Sweat$, Ice Spice, Danny Elfman, Atticus Ross, Lauren Spencer-Smith, Finneas, among many others. They have acted as advisors for film companies’ in-house music divisions, including Warner Bros. for its A Star is Born, Elvis, Space Jam: A New Legacy, and Suicide Squad and MGM for No Time to Die, Respect. Members of the team have also worked with Arthouse Entertainment, Loma Vista, and Epitaph Records.
The New York-based Roberts & Hafitz is helmed by father-son duo Jaimie Roberts and Harry Roberts as well as Michael Hafitz. Now the two films have merged, the MMML New York bureau will comprise of the three leaders as well as Katelyn Wicks, Marisa Masters, Stephen Goldstein, and Leon Morabia.
The Los Angeles hub will host longtime Angelenos Doug Mark and David Ferreria — both partners at MMML — as well as Jared Tankel, Marisa Novak, Eric Morris, Todd Thorson, and Blake Leeper. Elizabeth Gregory will be Of Counsel out of Nashville.
Mark, MMML Founding Partner says of the merger, “we wanted to further build an exciting presence in New York to complement our West Coast group, and now with Harry and his team together with Leon, our firm further establishes itself as the “go-to” for the next generation of superstar talent and entrepreneurs looking for counsel in this ever-changing industry.”
Roberts, MMML Partner adds, “having gotten to know Doug, David, and the MMML team in both a personal and professional capacity, it was clear that they shared the same values and vision as we do. The synergy that the joining of our two practices creates, particularly in terms of resources and firepower, will instantly benefit our clients and colleagues as we continue to build a progressive and modern entertainment legal practice.”
More than a year into litigation over the deadly Astroworld music festival, attorneys for the event’s organizers say that nearly 1,000 fans who sued over their alleged injuries have ignored deadlines and failed to hand over “critical evidence.”
In a filing last week, attorneys for the defendants in the case — Live Nation, Travis Scott, Apple and many others involved in the festival — alerted Judge Kristen Brauchle Hawkins that 956 alleged victims had “not provided any response whatsoever” to basic requests for information.
“There is no excuse for the non-responsive plaintiffs’ complete disregard of their discovery obligations,” the lawyers for the organizers wrote in the Nov. 23 filing. “They should be compelled to comply immediately.”
Some lawyers for victims quickly pushed back, though. In responses on Monday (Nov. 28), attorneys repping dozens of purported non-responders said many of their clients had in fact filed the necessary papers — or had been dropped from the case entirely. Others said their clients had “experienced serious trauma” and that lawyers were “working diligently with them to complete their discovery response.”
The dueling filings came in sprawling litigation over Astroworld, in which a crowd crush during Scott’s Nov. 5, 2021 performance left 10 dead and hundreds physically injured. Thousands of alleged victims are seeking billions in total damages, claiming the organizers were legally negligent in how they planned and conducted the event.
As of May, court filings said that more than 4,900 alleged victims had filed claims in the case. But the latest filings this week suggest that number has now been winnowed down to around 2,500.
The two sides are currently in the midst of what is known as discovery, the legal process in which each side hands over evidence to their opponents. Earlier this year, Live Nation, Scott and other defendants had sought a variety of information about each plaintiff, including details about their particular injury, documentary evidence that they attended the festival and any messages or other digital records related to the festival.
In the filing last week, attorneys for the Astroworld organizers said a huge number of alleged victims had “wholly failed to respond,” despite the fact that the questions had been heavily negotiated with the legal team for the concertgoers.
“It has now been more than six months since defendants served their original discovery requests and more than a month since all extensions have expired,” the Astroworld lawyers wrote. “Yet approximately 38% of the Plaintiffs … have provided absolutely zero response.”
Failing to hand over this “critical evidence” soon could hamper the litigation in ways that cannot be undone, the organizers warned.
“The longer the non-responsive plaintiffs delay, the higher the risk that critical evidence or information in their possession will be lost, destroyed, or forgotten,” they wrote. “Cell phones get lost or destroyed, and the photographs and videos on them get deleted.”
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek on Wednesday (Nov. 30) blasted Apple for “stifling innovation and hurting consumers,” publicly renewing his company’s longstanding grievance that the tech giant abuses its dominant position over the market for smartphone apps.
In a series of tweets, the Spotify founder said Apple was “shameless in their bullying” of app developers and called on lawmakers in both the U.S. and the European Union to take “action” against a company that he said “doesn’t seem to care about the law or courts.”
“Over and over again @Apple gives itself every advantage while at the same time stifling innovation and hurting consumers,” Ek wrote. “Apple offers consumers the illusion of choice and give[s] developers the illusion of control.”
A spokeswoman for Apple did not immediately return a request for comment on Ek’s tweets.
Spotify has long been an outspoken critic of the rules Apple imposes on its app store — namely a 30% surcharge on most transactions made within the platform, and provisions that restrict how apps steer customers toward outside payment systems.
Apple says tight rules for app developers are needed to protect users from payment fraud and privacy violations. But critics say the company — which currently controls more than half the U.S. smartphone market with the iPhone and iOS operating system — is merely exploiting its dominant position to extract more money. Those complaints are even stronger from Spotify, since it also directly competes with Apple Music for subscribers.
Google, which accounts for the vast majority of the rest of the market for smartphone apps, is facing similar criticism and litigation.
The arguments against Apple’s app policies won a powerful ally last week when new Twitter owner Elon Musk raised the issue amid his own messy dispute with the tech giant. After claiming Apple had pulled its advertising and had threatened to pull Twitter from its app store, the polarizing billionaire asked his 120 million followers if they were aware that Apple “puts a secret 30% tax on everything you buy.”
In Wednesday’s thread, Ek directly quoted Musk’s tweet, as well as others who have voiced similar criticism. Citing “bipartisan support and global interest,” he said that “momentum” was building for some kind of action against Apple.
“So how much longer will we look away from this threat to the future of the internet?” Ek wrote. “How many more consumers will be denied choice? There’s been a lot of talk. Talk is helpful but we need action.”
Apple is already facing a high-profile lawsuit, filed by Fortnite creator Epic Games, that claims the app store policies violate federal antitrust laws. A trial court issued a split ruling on the case last year, and the battle is currently pending before a federal appeals court.
Though not directly involved in the Epic case, Spotify filed its own complaint against Apple in 2019 with the European Commission, the EU’s regulatory enforcement watchdog. Last year, EU regulators released preliminary findings that Apple had likely broken the law, saying the company “deprives users of cheaper music streaming choices and distorts competition.”
Even bigger changes could be coming via new legislation. In Washington, D.C., a bipartisan trio of senators are pushing a bill called the Open App Markets Act, which would impose strict new rules on both Apple and Google’s app stores. And lawmakers in the EU have already passed a new statute called the Digital Markets Act, which will place a raft of new restrictions on how app stores are run.
Though it will take time for the new EU law to fully go into effect, it was aimed directly at complaints like the one Ek voiced Wednesday against Apple. In an interview with Wired last month, one of the law’s architects said he expected “significant” consequences: “If you have an iPhone, you should be able to download apps not just from the App Store but from other app stores or from the internet.”
A former Atlantic Records talent scout is suing over allegations that label co-founder Ahmet Ertegun sexually assaulted her repeatedly from the 1980s to the 2000s – and that his conduct was enabled by a “boys will be boys” culture at the company.
In a lawsuit filed Monday in Manhattan court, Jan Roeg said Ertegun (who died in 2006) assaulted her on their first meeting in 1983 and that his abuse then continued for “decades” after that. She says Atlantic had “ample opportunities” to observe his behavior, but “did not act” to protect its female employees.
“The permissive ‘boys will be boys’ attitude that prevailed at companies such as Atlantic Records was not just about having harmless fun,” her lawyers wrote. “Instead, it gave license to powerful figures like [Ertegun] to physically and sexually abuse women with impunity, with no fear of repercussions or opposition from the people who depended on his company for their livelihood and lifestyle.”
Roeg’s lawsuit was filed under the New York’s Adult Survivors Act, a new law that created a one-year window for alleged abuse victims to file long-delayed lawsuits that would normally be barred by the statute of limitations. The statute just went into effect last week, and more high-profile cases in the music industry are expected over the next year.
The complaint contained extensive details of alleged misconduct by Ertegun, who co-founded Atlantic in 1947 and went on to become one of the industry’s most powerful executives. After the first incident, the complaint says he “violently sexually assaulted Ms. Roeg at his Upper East Side home.” On at least two occasions, she says she found him “openly masturbating in his office.”
But she says he made very clear that she could not push back: “Women who wanted to do business with Atlantic had to play along with Mr. Ertegun’s sexual desires, and could not rock the boat with a complaint or lawsuit.”
In addition to naming Ertegun’s estate as a defendant, the case also directly names Atlantic Records, which is a unit Warner Music Group. Her lawyers say the company failed to take action to rein him in – and that the company even took actions to cover up his misconduct.
“Atlantic’s top executives and other management had ample opportunities to observe Mr. Ertegun’s drunken, abusive conduct and hateful attitude towards women, including in Company meetings in which he would openly brag about and recount in detail sexually exploitative escapades he engaged in backstage at concerts and the like,” her lawyers wrote. “Atlantic also is known to have regularly paid money to women accusing Mr. Ertegun of sexual misconduct, both before and after his abuse of Ms. Roeg had begun.”
In a statement to Billboard, a representative for Warner Music Group said the company takes such allegations “very seriously” and stressed that the allegations dated years into the past. As is often the case in such long-delayed lawsuits, Atlantic’s corporate structure, polices and executives have changed dramatically in the years since the alleged misconduct took place.
“These allegations date back nearly 40 years, to before WMG was a standalone company. We are speaking with people who were there at the time, taking into consideration that many key individuals are deceased or into their 80s and 90s,” WMG wrote in the statement. “To ensure a safe, equitable, and inclusive working environment, we have a comprehensive Code of Conduct, and mandatory workplace training, to which all of our employees must adhere. We regularly evaluate how we can evolve our policies to ensure our work environment is free from discrimination and harassment.”
A representative for Ertegun’s estate could not be located for comment. But in a statement released to Rolling Stone, an attorney for the late executive’s widow said the case was “meritless and will be be vigorously defended on her behalf.”
Just a week after Ticketmaster’s disastrous presale for Taylor Swift‘s The Eras Tour, Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) are asking the chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) how the agency plans to combat bots in the online ticketing marketplace.
In a letter sent Monday (Nov. 28), Sens. Blumenthal and Blackburn — chair and ranking member of the Senate’s Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Data Security, respectively — are requesting information from FTC chair Lina Khan about what steps the FTC is taking to enforce the 2016 law known as the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, which was designed to crack down on the kind of illegal bots that have plagued online ticket sales for recent tours by Swift and other major stars.
That law, which “prohibits the circumvention of a security measure, access control system, or other technological control measure used online by a ticket issuer” and the sale of tickets knowingly obtained through those means, grants the FTC and state attorneys general the authority to enforce violations, according to the letter. But since the BOTS Act became law, Blumenthal and Blackburn claim the FTC has taken only a single enforcement action despite numerous incidents involving the use of bots in online ticket sales.
“Given the numerous high-profile incidents in the online ticket marketplace, it would be helpful to understand how the FTC intends to act to address such conduct going forward,” the letter reads.
Monday’s letter follows Ticketmaster’s earlier claim that the Swift debacle was caused in part by tens of millions of uninvited users and billions of bots crashing the Eras presale, forcing the company to shut down the tour’s final onsale after more than 90% of ticketing inventory was snapped up.
In the wake of the fiasco, politicians including Sen. Amy Klobuchar — chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights — and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez suggested Ticketmaster and its owner Live Nation represent a monopoly and cried out for accountability, with the latter directly calling for the companies, which merged in 2010, to be broken up. Last week, Klobuchar and her counterpart on the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), jointly announced they would be holding a hearing to examine the effects of consolidation on the ticketing industry. Live Nation and Ticketmaster are also reportedly under investigation by the Justice Department over whether the companies represent an illegal monopoly, though that probe is said to have predated the Swift incident.
In addition to the Swift debacle, in the letter Blumenthal and Blackburn point to various other recent online ticketing mishaps involving bots, including tours for Bob Dylan, Blake Shelton, Bruce Springsteen and Adele.
“While bots may not be the only reason for these problems, which Congress is evaluating, fighting bots is an important step in reducing consumer costs in the online ticketing industry,” the senators continued. They point out that the infiltration of bots, among other factors, creates an unfair environment that prevents regular fans from purchasing tickets, forcing them to resort to secondary sites where tickets are often marked up dramatically. “Some reports have found secondary ticket sales ranging from $1,000 (Bruce Springsteen) to $40,000 (Adele),” the lawmakers added.
Though Swift may benefit from Blackburn’s interest in addressing the ticketing bots issue, the two have not exactly gotten along in the past. The pop star made a rare-at-the-time political statement in 2018, denouncing Blackburn for her conservative voting record and urging voters to choose her opponent in the Senate race that year. She later called the lawmaker “Trump in a wig.” Last year, Blackburn addressed the tiff in an interview, arguing Swift would the “first victim” in a “socialistic government.”
In addition to asking whether the FTC has any “pending enforcement matters before it” with respect to the BOTS Act, Blumenthal and Blackburn are asking why only a single enforcement action has been taken to date; whether there are “obstacles preventing” the FTC from enforcing the law; and whether there are “other solutions that Congress needs to consider” to prevent bots from operating in the future.
You can read the full letter below.
Dear Chair Khan:
We write to ask for information about the steps the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is taking to combat the use and operation of bots in the online ticket marketplace. As you know, the Better Online Ticket Sales, or BOTS Act, became law in 2016. This law prohibits the circumvention of a security measure, access control system, or other technological control measure used online by a ticket issuer. It also prohibits the selling or offering of an event ticket obtained through a circumvention violation if the seller participated in, had the ability to control, or should have known about the violation. The BOTS Act gives the FTC and state attorneys general the authority to enforce violations as unfair and deceptive practices.
Recently, several high profile incidents arose where consumers encountered serious difficulties purchasing tickets through online ticket vendors, including Ticketmaster and AXS. While bots may not be the only reason for these problems, which Congress is evaluating, fighting bots is an important step in reducing consumer costs in the online ticketing industry. For example, consumers reported trying to purchase tickets to see Bob Dylan at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, only to be told the tickets in their shopping cart no longer existed. Similarly, 22,000 fans preregistered to buy tickets for Blake Shelton, but only a few hundred actually got tickets. Finally, Ticketmaster/LiveNation pointed to online bots as a reason why fans could not get Taylor Swift concert tickets, leading the ticket seller to shut down sales to the general public.
While some consumers opt to purchase tickets on the secondary market, most fans cannot afford to pay thousands of dollars for a single concert ticket. Some reports have found secondary ticket sales ranging from $1,000 (Bruce Springsteen) to $40,000 (Adele).3 Preventing this type of consumer harm is exactly why Congress chose to enact the BOTS Act six years ago and why we both chose to sponsor that bill.
We understand that, in January 2021, the FTC took its first enforcement actions under the BOTS Act. However, given the numerous high-profile incidents in the online ticket marketplace, it would be helpful to understand how the FTC intends to act to address such conduct going forward. We request answers to the following, which may be provided in a confidential briefing if needed:
Does the FTC have any pending enforcement matters before it with respect to the BOTS Act?
Why has the FTC only undertaken a single enforcement action to date using its BOTS Act authority?
Are there obstacles preventing the FTC from exercising its authority under the BOTS Act that Congress should be aware of?
Are there other solutions that Congress needs to consider in conjunction with the BOTS Act?
We appreciate your timely attention to this issue.
Sincerely,
Marsha BlackburnRanking MemberSubcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security
Richard BlumenthalChairSubcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security
HONG KONG — Chinese-Canadian pop star Kris Wu was sentenced to 13 years in prison for rape and other sexual offenses, a Chinese court said on its official Weibo account on Friday (Nov. 25).
The Chaoyang District People’s Court in Beijing said that from November to December 2020, Wu, also known as Wu Yifan, raped three women at his home when they were under the effect of alcohol.
Wu was sentenced to 11.5 years for rape and 22 months for “assembling a crowd to engage in promiscuous activities” in July 2018, according to the Weibo post. Wu, who is a Canadian citizen, will serve a 13-year term in China before being deported.
“Justice was delayed, but now it’s here,” Du Meizhu, the Chinese influencer who blew the whistle on Wu, wrote on Weibo after the announcement.
Born in China and raised in Canada, Wu was a former member of the popular K-pop group EXO before returning to China to pursue his solo career in 2014.
Wu was detained in Beijing in July last year and was formally arrested on suspicion of rape in August, after the then-18-year-old Du accused him of luring her and other underaged girls into having sex under the pretense that they would be promised an acting career. The closed-door trial began in Beijing in June.
The sexual assault allegations against Wu prompted widespread criticism and became one of the most high-profile #MeToo cases in China.
Wu was also ordered to pay a 600 million yuan ($83.5 million) fine for hiding personal income through domestic and foreign affiliated enterprises, local taxation authorities said on their website.
Wu’s scandal came at a time when Chinese internet and media regulators have pledged to silence “unhealthy” online fan groups and crack down on “tainted artists” who have used drugs, visited prostitutes or broken the law, from all forms of broadcast.
Artists in China have been under great pressure to refrain from “immoral conduct,” which includes acts as minor as smoking or having tattoos.
Under public pressure from the sex-crimes allegations, some 20 brands — including Lancôme, Louis Vuitton, Bulgari and Porsche — cut ties with Wu last year. Chinese music streaming platforms, including Tencent’s QQ Music and NetEase Cloud Music, pulled his songs, and his Weibo social media account, where he had over 51 million followers, was taken down shortly after his detention.
Wu’s former group, EXO, became one of the most successful boy bands of South Korea, selling over 1.4 million albums in their first year, according to its label, SM Entertainment, and performed sold-out gigs around the world.
He has also starred in films and appeared as a judge on The Rap of China, a popular reality television program. By 2017, Wu was named Forbes’ 10th most influential Chinese celebrity of the year, with an annual income of 150 million yuan ($23 million).
In 2018, Wu signed with Universal Music to distribute his music in global territories besides Japan and South Korea. His debut studio album, Antares (2018), knocked Ariana Grande off the U.S. iTunes music charts and was platinum-certified in China. It peaked at No. 100 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, while the single “Like That” rose to No. 73 on the Billboard Hot 100. (Each lasted one week on the charts.)
Wu’s contract with Universal expired in March 2021 and the label has not renewed it.
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: Live Nation faces potential legal fallout from Ticketmaster’s Taylor Swift fiasco, Journey bandmates sue each other over an American Express account, Mariah Carey loses a bid for ‘Queen of Christmas’ trademarks, and much more.
THE BIG STORY: Taylor Swift … Trust Buster?
A week removed from Ticketmaster’s disastrous presale for Taylor Swift’s upcoming Eras Tour, criticism of parent company Live Nation isn’t getting any quieter – and the threat of legal repercussions is growing.Live Nation has apologized to fans and pinned the blame on a “staggering number of bot attacks” and “unprecedented traffic.” And whether or not the star really was forced to use Ticketmaster is a complicated question, as Billboard’s Dave Brooks writes.But the debacle, which saw widespread service delays and website crashes as millions of fans tried (and many failed) to buy tickets for Swift’s 2023 Eras Tour, has nonetheless resurfaced some uncomfortable legal questions for the all-powerful concert giant.Since they merged in 2010, Ticketmaster and Live Nation have been dogged by accusations that they form a near-monopoly in the market for live concerts, potentially violating federal antitrust laws. Federal regulators at the U.S. Department of Justice approved that deal, but only after Live Nation signed a so-called consent decree that aimed to allay fears that they might abuse their dominant position. Among other things, the agreement prohibits the company from retaliating against venues or acts that refuse to use Ticketmaster. Those rules were set to expire in 2020, but were extended by five years in 2019 after the DOJ accused Live Nation of repeatedly violating the decree.In the wake of the Swift fiasco, those same monopoly questions are back in the spotlight – and some lawmakers want more than just another extension of the consent decree.On Tuesday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) blasted Live Nation as a “monopoly” and called for regulators to “break them up.” Two days later, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), the chair of the Senate subcommittee for antitrust issues, warned that the company’s market share “insulates it from the competitive pressures that typically push companies to innovate and improve their services.”Then on Friday, the New York Times reported that DOJ had already been investigating Live Nation for months over potential antitrust violations, reaching out to venues across the country to ask about the company’s conduct. Reacting to that news, Klobuchar and two other Democratic senators on Monday urged the Justice Department to take hard action if they discover more violations, including “unwinding the Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger and breaking up the company.”“This may be the only way to truly protect consumers, artists, and venue operators and to restore competition in the ticketing market,” the senators wrote.Such action might have been unthinkable just a few years ago, amid a decades-long period of relatively lax antitrust enforcement that saw airlines and mobile providers (and yes, music companies) merging into ever-larger conglomerations. But the Biden-era Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission have embarked on an aggressive new effort to crack down on such mega-mergers, including successfully blocking book publisher Penguin Random House from buying up rival Simon & Schuster.Beyond the Justice Department probe, other legal threats also potentially loom for Live Nation. The attorneys general of Tennessee, North Carolina, Nevada and Pennsylvania have all launched investigations into whether state consumer protection and antitrust laws were violated, including a Tennessee state law that aims to fight the use of automated “bots” on ticketing websites.And don’t forget about class actions. Live Nation is already facing an existing case that accuses the company of “blatant, anti-consumer behavior,” and the rest of the plaintiffs bar could be eager to try similar cases in the wake of such a high-profile snafu. At least one group of Swift-loving lawyers is already brainstorming how to bring cases.Faced with all that, can Live Nation shake it off? Stay tuned…
Other top stories this week…
JOURNEY’S CREDIT CARD CLASH – Journey guitarist Neal Schon filed a lawsuit against bandmate Jonathan Cain over allegations that he’s blocking access to “critical” financial records for the band’s American Express account, through which “millions” in Journey money has allegedly flowed: “This action is brought to turn the lights on, so to speak, and obtain critical financial information Schon has been trying to obtain but has been denied.” The case is the third legal battle among Journey members in the past two years, but the first to divide Schon and Cain — the only core members remaining in the band from Journey’s heyday.I FEEL SUED – Primary Wave and the estate of James Brown were hit with a lawsuit claiming their $90 million catalog sale last year violated an agreement that the iconic singer had struck decades earlier with another company. The case was filed by David Pullman’s Pullman Group (best known for creating so-called Bowie Bonds in the 1990s) over allegations that the blockbuster sale breached a contract that Pullman company struck with Brown way back in 1999, which allegedly guaranteed the company the right to broker any such deal in the future.YOUNG THUG GANG TRIAL SET FOR JANUARY – A Georgia judge refused to delay the closely-watched criminal case against Young Thug, Gunna and others accused of participating in an Atlanta gang, meaning their trial is now locked in to start on January 9. Prosecutors wanted to move the trial back by nearly three months because a few defendants had not yet been appointed a lawyer. But with Young Thug, Gunna and many others stuck in jail until trial, defense lawyers strongly opposed the delay: “It is unjust that [Young Thug] rots in the county jail and … is being required to wait on the appointment of counsel for co-indictees.”DUA LIPA RIPS COPYRIGHT SUIT – Attorneys for Dua Lipa asked a federal judge to quickly toss out a lawsuit claiming she stole her smash hit song “Levitating” from a little-known reggae track called “Live Your Life.” Florida band Artikal Sound System sued the star for copyright infringement last year, arguing the songs were so similar it was “highly unlikely that ‘Levitating’ was created independently.” But in their response last week, Lipa’s attorneys said those allegations were full of “vague, boilerplate labels and conclusions” and “devoid of a shred of factual detail.”MARIAH CANT GET ‘CHRISTMAS’ TRADEMARKS – The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejected Mariah Carey’s application to register “Queen of Christmas” as a federal trademark, siding instead with Elizabeth Chan, another singer who says she’s used the same name for years. Repped pro bono by BigLaw attorneys, Chan had argued that no single singer or company should be able to lock up the title. “It is wrong for an individual to attempt to own and monopolize a nickname like ‘Queen of Christmas’ for the purposes of abject materialism,” Chan said in a statement after the ruling.R. KELLY MANAGER SENTENCED – Donnell Russell, R. Kelly’s friend and former manager, was sentenced to 20 months in prison after pleading guilty to charges that he stalked one of Kelly’s sexual abuse victims in an effort to keep her silent. Prosecutors said Russell used “reprehensible” tactics against the unnamed victim after she filed a civil lawsuit against the disgraced singer in 2018, including threatening messages to her mother and leaking explicit photos online.SLACKER ON HOOK FOR HUGE ROYALTY JUDGMENT – A federal judge refused to undo his own earlier ruling that Slacker owes nearly $10 million in unpaid music royalties to SoundExchange, despite the steamer’s warnings that the huge judgment could trigger financial ruin for the company. SoundExchange urged the judge to ignore those pleas and last week he obliged – ruling that the seven-figure judgment was simply the result of an agreement that Slacker itself had signed.