Legal News
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Attorneys for Sean “Diddy” Combs are firing back at allegations that he’s obstructing his sex trafficking case from behind bars, claiming prosecutors improperly searched his cell and violated his right to attorney-client privilege.
Days after the government claimed Combs was seeking to “subvert the integrity” of the case by contacting witnesses, his lawyers said it was the prosecution that had made serious missteps – including by seizing “notes to his lawyers” about potential trial strategies.
“This search and seizure are in violation of Mr. Combs’ [constitutional] rights,” writes Diddy’s lead attorney Marc Agnifilo. “The targeted seizure of a pre-trial detainee’s work product and privileged materials – created in preparation for trial – is outrageous government conduct amounting to a substantive due process violation.”
In the filing, Diddy’s attorneys ask Judge Arun Subramanian to hold an immediate hearing to investigate the search and seizures, saying they want to ask key questions about how the process unfolded.
“Who authorized a search of Mr. Combs’ sleeping area, personal effects and paperwork?” Agnifilo writes. “Who made the decision to not tell Mr. Combs’ counsel that the U.S. Attorney was in possession of his notes, including ‘possibly privileged materials’ until after the government put them in a filing to keep him incarcerated?”
Combs, also known as Puff Daddy and P. Diddy, was once one of the most powerful men in the music industry. But in September, he was indicted by federal prosecutors on charges of racketeering and sex trafficking over what they say was a sprawling criminal operation aimed at satisfying his need for “sexual gratification.” If convicted on all the charges, he faces a potential sentence of life in prison.
On Friday, prosecutors leveled serious new allegations. Responding to Combs’ latest effort to be released on bail, they said such an action would still pose a grave risk of obstruction of justice; in the process, they accused Diddy of trying to reach out to witnesses, leak favorable materials, and orchestrate “social media campaigns” to influence public opinion and taint the jury pool.
“Defendant has continued to engage in a relentless course of obstructive conduct designed to subvert the integrity of these proceedings,” the prosecution wrote in the filing.
In the filing, prosecutors noted that some of their evidence came in the form of notes recovered from Diddy’s cell during what they called “a pre-planned nationwide sweep of BOP facilities.” The sweep turned up “possibly privileged materials,” but prosecutors said the evidence had been screened by a so-called filter team to avoid any improper material.
Attorney–client privilege exists to protect the right of an accused person to secure an effective defense from their lawyers. It’s designed to allow a defendant to be honest with their legal team, without needing to worry that such material might later be used against them.
In Monday’s response, Combs’ lawyers said some of the materials taken from his cell were “absolutely privileged” and should not have been handed over to the government lawyers who are barred from seeing them. They included “privileged notes to his lawyers concerning defense witnesses and defense strategies.”
“This is a matter of grave concern that, most respectfully, must be addressed immediately,” Agnifilo writes. “Because the U.S. Attorney, and it seems the trial prosecutors, are currently in possession of privileged materials we request a full evidentiary hearing as soon as the Court can accommodate us.”
Lil Durk has pleaded not guilty to federal charges over an alleged plot to kill rival rapper Quando Rondo in a 2022 shooting.
At a hearing Thursday in Los Angeles federal court, the Chicago rapper (Durk Banks) was arraigned on conspiracy, murder-for-hire and firearms charges. He pleaded not guilty to all three, federal prosecutors confirmed to Billboard.
The court appearance came three weeks after the Chicago rapper (Durk Banks) was arrested and charged with orchestrating the 2022 attack at a Los Angeles gas station, which left Rondo (Tyquian Bowman) unscathed but saw his friend Lul Pab (Saviay’a Robinson) killed in the crossfire.
If convicted on all three charges, Durk faces a potential sentence of life in prison. A trial is tentatively set for January, though it could be pushed back for a variety of reasons.
Documents filed Thursday also reveal that Durk has hired Drew Findling, a prominent Atlanta criminal defense attorney with an extensive history representing rappers, including Gucci Mane, the members of Migos and Cardi B. Findling did not immediately return a request for comment on Friday.
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In their case against Durk, prosecutors claim that his “Only The Family” crew was not merely a well-publicized group of Chicago rappers, but a “hybrid organization” that also functioned as a criminal gang to carry out violent acts “at the direction” of Durk. They say one of those acts was the 2022 attempted killing of Rondo, allegedly carried out in retaliation for the 2020 killing of rapper King Von (Dayvon Bennett), a close friend of Durk’s.
“Banks put a monetary bounty out for an individual with whom Banks was feuding named T.B.,” prosecutors wrote in the charges last month, referring to Rondo by his initials. “Banks ordered T.B.’s murder and the hitmen used Banks and OTF-related finances to carry out the murder.”
In addition to Durk, prosecutors have also charged those who they say actually carried out the attack, including alleged OTF members Kavon London Grant, Deandre Dontrell Wilson and Asa Houston, as well as Keith Jones and David Brian Lindsey, two other alleged Chicago gang members.
In charging documents, prosecutors allege that the assailants booked flights to Los Angeles using a credit card that was clearly connected to Durk. The government says the card was allegedly issued under a bank account that listed Durk’s one-time manager as an owner, and that another credit card was issued under the same account to Durk’s father.
Among other claims, the documents cite a text allegedly sent by Durk to another co-conspirator in the lead up to the shooting: “Don’t book no flights under no names involved wit me.”
In a superseding indictment unveiled last week, prosecutors also cited Durk’s lyrics – claiming he had directly referenced the Rondo shooting in a 2022 track called “Wonderful Wayne & Jackie Boy.” They claim the lyrics tie Durk to the killing, and that he was seeking to “commercialize” Lul Pab’s death by “rapping about his revenge.”
As he awaits trial, Durk is incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles, a federal prison frequently used to house defendants before and during trial. He will appear again before the judge next month to decide whether he will be released on bail as he prepares for trial.
This time, everything really is going to be different. Americans now live in a country where neither felony convictions nor dancing to “YMCA” onstage during a medical break in a political rally are disqualifying factors for the presidency; where a member of Congress who was investigated by the House Ethics Committee for allegations of sexual misconduct is nominated for attorney general; and where proposals for reckless tariffs and magic-bean-money marketed by grifters have made the stock market go up. Oy.
The music business has been humiliated. All those artist endorsements for Kamala Harris didn’t seem to matter, at least in part because most of them spoke to voters the way the Democrats did. (I found Bruce Springsteen’s ad for Harris moving, but I’m not sure it was all that convincing.) Taylor Swift, who endorsed Harris, is the dominant artist of this era. But Joe Rogan, who seems to be an idiot’s idea of an intellectual in the way that writer Fran Lebowitz once said that Trump is a poor person’s idea of a rich person, may have more influence. With just over 50% of the popular vote, Trump is now mainstream, at least statistically. Pop culture has changed.
What about the music business? Amid all of this winning, the industry may stay basically the same, according to a half-dozen conversations with industry policy executives and a dozen more with other music business figures. The basics of Trump’s economic agenda are tariffs, tax cuts and deregulation. Tariffs on imports will play havoc with some businesses, but they would only affect parts of the music industry; the price of merchandise, including CDs and vinyl, could go up, probably modestly. When it comes to taxes, successful artists and executives could end up paying much less, which seems inadvisable for the country but fine for business.
The industry’s biggest regulatory issue is copyright, power over which the Constitution specifically grants to Congress. (Even the U.S. Copyright Office operates as part of the Library of Congress, in the legislative branch of government.) It’s one of the few genuinely bipartisan issues that unites Democrats who champion the arts and Republicans who want to protect property rights, and the sheer complexity of the subject — as well as the fact that it’s always easier to stop legislation than it is to pass it — makes it hard to imagine significant change happening quickly.
The music business faces other issues, of course. Chief among them is the Justice Department’s antitrust case against Live Nation Entertainment, which seeks to break up the concert and ticketing giant. It’s impossible to know what’s going to happen with the case, although speculation suggests that it’s too popular a cause to simply drop. (Many concertgoers feel certain that breaking up the company will bring down ticket prices, which is hard to imagine; there are other important issues at play, but they’re more complicated.) There’s also the fate of TikTok, the Chinese-owned short-form-video platform that Trump tried to ban when he was president, then promised to “save.” (One of the hard things about figuring out what Trump will do is that he himself doesn’t seem entirely clear, either.) Right now, the issue is in the courts. And although TikTok’s Chinese parent company has said it does not intend to sell the platform, one could imagine a compromise that allows everyone to save face, probably without addressing the original problem.
These last two issues show just how much conflicts over media business regulation — and business regulation in general — now take place within parties as opposed to between them. Partly, this is because Republicans have been just as willing to regulate technology companies as President Barack Obama. When it comes to antitrust, for example, both traditional Republicans and corporate-leaning Democrats want to get rid of Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chair Lina Khan, who has taken an aggressive approach to antitrust enforcement, but JD Vance has said positive things about the job she’s doing.
Antitrust isn’t the only issue that works that way. President Biden, and most traditional Democrats, understand the need to protect small investors from cryptocurrency rip-offs. (Trump was against crypto before he was for it.) Until a decade ago, how and how much the government should regulate business was the main divide between the parties. Now a libertarian, business-friendly agenda is pushed by parts of both parties, available in Silicon Valley fleece and Wall Street cashmere.
This, more than Trump, represents the real policy risk for the music business — the libertarian side of Silicon Valley, which stands to gain from Vance’s influence over Trump. (There are other issues that are much more important, of course, including economic policy and the independence of the Federal Reserve.) Imagine that Trump and Vance want to Make Silicon Valley Great Again, which in their minds means having the U.S. take the lead in artificial intelligence. Could that mean allowing technology companies to train their software on copyrighted works without licenses? Or relaxing some of the other protections that rightsholders have? Given all the laws and treaties involved, this is actually hard to imagine. Then again, what about this situation isn’t?
Ye (formerly Kanye West) is facing a new lawsuit over Vultures 1 from a group of Memphis rappers who claim the star and Ty Dolla $ign committed “brazen” copyright infringement by sampling a song after failing to secure a license.
The case – the latest in a long list of such lawsuits against Ye – claims the track “Fuk Sumn” is “riddled” with illegal samples from a 1994 song called “Drink a Yak (Part 2)” by the artists Criminal Manne (Vanda Watkins), DJ Squeeky (Hayward Ivy) and the late Kilo G (Robert L. Johnson Jr.)
Like several other previous cases against Ye, the lawsuit claims that the star’s reps reached out to clear the samples – but that he then just continued to use it without a license when talks broke down.
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“After numerous unsuccessful attempts at resolving this matter directly with the responsible parties, plaintiffs have been left with no other method of recourse than to bring this cause of action,” attorneys for the accusers write in a complaint filed Wednesday.
The use of the earlier song in “Fuk” is so “blatant” and “brazen” that the spots where samples were used in Ye’s track are “easily discernible,” the lawsuit claims. Near the start of Ye’s song, Criminal Manne can allegedly be heard rapping a lyric from “Yak” that stars with “smokin on a junt”; seconds later, Kilo G is allegedly heard rapping another line: “Stop off at the liquor store, get your yak, then we headed for the indo.”
The new lawsuit is one of more than a dozen such cases that have been filed against Ye over claims of unlicensed sampling or interpolating during his prolific career. The controversial rapper has faced nine such infringement cases since 2019 alone, including a high-profile battle with estate of Donna Summer that settled earlier this year.
Lawyers for the three accusers say that reps for Ye reached out to clear the sample in February, after “Fuk” had already been released. Those talks allegedly went on for months, but were terminated in June when the plaintiffs say they were were notified that “YE had fired his entire legal and business team leaving him without any legal representation.”
“Despite a much anticipated resolution resulting from several months of intense negotiations, Plaintiffs were informed they would need to wait to be contacted by Defendant YE’s new legal representation,” the lawsuit says.
Another Ye attorney then reached out to re-start the sample negotiations, the lawsuit says, but then were informed that he too was no longer working with Ye. The accusers say that no deal has been reached since.
“Plaintiffs have never given permission to Defendants for such use of their music,” attorneys for the three rappers write. “Meanwhile all Defendants have continued to profit from the illegal usage of the sampled [song] with over 150,000,000 Spotify streams to date.”
Reps for Ye and Ty Dolla did not immediately return a request for comment.
Megadeth and lead singer Dave Mustaine have agreed to pay $1.4 million to resolve allegations that they still owed commissions to a long-time manager after he was “unceremoniously” fired and replaced by Mustaine’s son.
The deal will resolve claims in a lawsuit filed last year by Cory Brennan and his Five B Artist Management, which alleged that Mustaine was refusing to hand over more than $1 million in unpaid commissions after abruptly terminating Brennan in early 2023.
In a filing made public on Wednesday (Nov. 13), attorneys for Brennan alerted a Los Angeles judge that Mustaine and Megadeth had agreed to pay the manager and Five B a total of $1,400,006 to end the litigation over those accusations.
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The settlement will not end the dispute entirely. Mustaine countersued Brennan last year, claiming his tenure as manager had been “plagued with missteps” that caused serious harm, including damaging Mustaine’s hearing. Those claims were not resolved by the settlement and will continue to be litigated.
In a statement to Billboard on Wednesday, Brennan’s attorney, Howard King, said that while his client was “displeased at having to sue an artist,” he was “gratified” by the settlement payment.
“Dave Mustaine, who has a known history of firing advisors, terminated Five B Artist Management after 9 years of their having resurrected his failing career,” King said. “Ignoring the success Five B had helped Dave achieve, including a campaign to help him win his first Grammy, the release of two hit albums, and the elevation of his touring from small clubs back to arenas and amphitheaters, Dave simply refused to pay commissions owing and forced 5B to file a lawsuit.”
Mustaine’s attorney, Richard Busch, did not immediately return a request for comment on the settlement.
In a June 2023 lawsuit, Brennan alleged that Mustaine had sought him out in 2014 to “manage his career and get it back on track,” following an extended downturn in commercial and critical success in which the beloved thrash metal band “seemed to have lost their way.” Over the next nine years, Brennan said he had “worked tirelessly” for Mustaine, including “helping him with his personal struggles” and successfully re-establishing Megadeth as “one of the greatest metal bands of all time.”
But the lawsuit claimed that Mustaine abruptly fired Brennan in early 2023, leaving him owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid touring commissions and hundreds of thousands more in merchandise commissions.
“Despite this success and their long-term relationship, on April 28, 2023, Mustaine, through his lawyer, unexpectedly and unceremoniously terminated Plaintiffs, stating no reason for the termination,” the lawsuit alleged. “The decision was made to help send business to Mustaine’s son, who has been trying to build a career in artist management.”
Months later, Megadeth and Mustaine fired back with a countersuit of their own, claiming that Brennan had been fired due to “repeated management failures” that had “dealt serious blows to Megadeth’s reputation and even David Mustaine’s physical health.”
Mustaine’s lawyers claimed that both sides had always agreed that each would “go their separate ways” following any split between Brennan and the band — and the lawsuit was simply retaliation because the ex-manager was “upset” that his “mishandling” of the band’s business had finally “caught up with him.”
“The cross-defendants’ unfounded claims are nothing more than an attempt to capstone their years of mistreatment with extortionate demands for money not earned by cross-defendants nor owed by cross-plaintiffs,” Busch wrote in the complaint.
Since the initial accusations and counter-claims, the case had spent months in discovery — the process of exchanging evidence in a litigation. No rulings on the merits of the cases have yet been issued.
Following the settlement of Brennan’s claims, Mustaine’s accusations of wrongdoing against him — including breach of contract and negligence — will continue toward an eventual trial.
This story was published as part of Billboard’s music technology newsletter ‘Machine Learnings.’
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Last week, Universal Music Group filed a $500 million lawsuit against TuneCore and its parent company Believe over alleged copyright infringement of UMG’s recordings. The lawsuit presented two core issues: first, that bad actors used TuneCore to upload songs to streaming services that were simply sped up or remixed versions of UMG-copyrighted recordings, often listed under slight misspellings of the real artist, like “Kendrik Laamar” or “Arriana Gramde.” Second, it claimed that “Believe has taken advantage of the content management claiming system” on YouTube “to divert” and “delay… payment of royalties” that belong to record labels.
If you’ve been following the issues in this case over the last few years, this lawsuit feels like a long time coming, and the issues that UMG raises are certainly not just a TuneCore-specific issue — they’re an industry-wide DIY distribution issue. With the vast scale of songs being uploaded through these companies, and staffs that are too small to catch every bad actor, infringing material has, according to just about everybody, flooded onto streaming services.
The distributors know it’s a problem, too. It’s why TuneCore, DistroKid, CD Baby, Symphonic, Downtown and more formed the Music Fights Fraud coalition in 2023 and say they have increasingly invested in preventing fraud and infringement. Unfortunately, Beatdapp, the industry leader in identifying streaming fraud, believes the problem has only worsened since then. UMG is also not convinced that TuneCore is doing enough, saying that the company’s business model incentivizes them to “turn a blind eye” to this damaging activity.
Below, I’ve condensed some of the arguments I’ve heard among industry leaders both for and against DIY distribution continuing just as it is today. I’ll let you judge which outcome is better.
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Argument #1: Why its essential to protect DIY distribution as is
It’s easy to take for granted today that anyone who wants to release a song can do it themselves, but that wasn’t always the case. When physical records reigned supreme, record label contracts often favored the companies involved, and seldom went the artists’ way. At the time, artists were essentially forced to sign to a record label if they wanted a chance at shelf space in stores — especially worldwide. This left artists vulnerable to unequal label deals that locked them in for many albums while the label took the lion’s share of the royalties and the copyrights, often in perpetuity.
When Distrokid, CD Baby, TuneCore and the like emerged in the 2000s, they let anyone sign up for distribution services to digital outlets like the iTunes Store for a flat fee and forever altered the power dynamic. Today, the playing field has leveled significantly: hobbyists can get their music out to the world and artists with professional aspirations can wait as long as they want before they have to give up a single percentage point of their master recordings to a label. These companies helped shift negotiating power to the artists, and for the first time, started the process of allowing music fans to decide what songs would pop, rather than the labels that pulled favors with the gatekeepers who worked in radio, retail and the press.
The shift also presented a new, lucrative business opportunity. Music companies no longer need superstars in their catalogs to make their numbers. In fact, they don’t need catalogs at all. A company can now make money by providing services, like distribution, to the masses of previously-overlooked musical hopefuls instead, relying on volume to make up the numbers.
But that volume allowed for the proliferation of fraud, which is a problem that evolves every day, and bad people will always find loopholes. Already, most distributors have implemented common-sense regulations and checks to curb fraud and invested money into quality control teams. But for many experts, it feels impossible to totally solve the problem. As it’s commonly said, this is an endless game of “wack-a-mole.”
But if the barriers to DIY distribution are too significant — like limiting the number of releases, gating who can use it, hiking the platform fee, adding a streaming threshold, or slowing down release time — it could take power away from indie musicians that they have become accustomed to. Such a move would be a step backward for artistic freedom, and the cost of implementing these regulations could threaten to put some of the smaller distributors out of business. Less choice and competition in DIY distribution isn’t better for users.
It’s impossible to put the DIY distribution genie back in the bottle. Artists, who have become used to the current system, would still find ways to get their music out there quickly and cheaply — whether fraudulent or not. Likely, that music would go out on social media or to social-streaming hybrids like YouTube and SoundCloud, both of which pay out royalties and can still be cheated. Streaming services, like Spotify, Apple and Amazon, would risk losing listenership and music discovery to social media platforms — something they already struggle with in today’s TikTok era — and it might not even solve the problems it targeted.
Argument #2: Why the DIY distribution system is in need of serious reform
Currently, over 120,000 songs are uploaded to streaming services every day, a rate that has rapidly increased for years and will likely continue to do so. This is mostly due to DIY distributors. While it is great that aspiring artists can get their music out there cheaply and easily, this has also led to rampant fraud and copyright infringement that puts excessive burdens on rights holders to police their own catalogs online. What happens when we inevitably get to a point where 1 million songs are uploaded every day? We can’t keep going as we are now, and we are in need of serious reform.
While DIY distributors have announced initiatives like Music Fights Fraud and have hosted panels at industry conferences to explain the new methods they are using to stop bad actors, some people say these companies have an incentive for at least some of it to slip by their watch, given their business models rely on receiving fees in exchange for uploading as many songs as possible. Self-policing is not enough, considering this problem only seems to get worse.
The introduction of generative AI has made this matter even more pressing. While it’s impossible to know how much of the music being uploaded today is AI-generated, and to date the streaming services have no regulations against this, it is certainly contributing to the rising number of songs released to streaming services per day. AI songs are believed to be exploited by bad actors to commit streaming fraud, as we saw in the September lawsuit which alleged a musician named Michael “Mike” Smith stole $10 million in streaming royalties by uploading AI-generated songs using a distributor and then used bots to stream them. Bad actors upload AI songs en masse to spread out artificial streams and make their schemes tougher to detect.
It’s hard to argue that it makes a user’s streaming experience better when a platform has a vast number of AI songs and tracks that not a single person has streamed, and it’s clear that these songs, largely stemming from DIY distributors, are diluting the royalty pool at the expense of what some stakeholders have called “professional artists.” The negligibly low payments earned by hobbyists who have accrued hundreds or just a few thousand streams are sometimes lower than the fees one would incur from transferring the royalties into their bank account.
These distributors, the argument goes, should be penalized for the bad actors they let through. This has been proposed in many forms so far, including a financial penalty instituted by streaming services, requirements for significant “know your customer” checks to slow down uploads and verify users’ identities, a minimum stream count threshold before artists can be eligible for royalty collection, a limit to the number of songs a user can upload at a time, an additional fee for storing massive uploads to streaming services, and more.
It’s not a viable business if you rely on a massive scale of song uploads but can’t afford the proper staffers and tools to police them.
Universal Music Group wants a federal judge to dismiss a copyright lawsuit claiming Mary J. Blige’s 1992 hit “Real Love” used a famed 1973 funk sample without a license, arguing the accusers have popped up “out of the blue” to sue over two tracks that “sound nothing alike.”
The case, filed in earlier this year by Tuff City Records, claims Blige’s track borrowed from “Impeach the President” by the Honey Drippers — a legendary piece of hip-hop source material with a drum track that’s been sampled or interpolated by Run-DMC, Dr. Dre, Doja Cat and many others over the years.
But in a response on Tuesday, UMG argues that Tuff City’s case is deeply flawed and must be tossed out of court at the outset.
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“Now, more than 30 years after ‘Real Love’ was released, plaintiff appears out of the blue alleging that ‘Real Love’ contains an uncleared sample from ‘Impeach the President,’ with no allegations concerning the works’ substantial similarity,” the music giant wrote. “The absence of that allegation is fatal.”
One key claim in Tuff City’s lawsuit is that UMG’s recorded music unit (UMG Recordings, Inc.) has already reached a settlement regarding the use of the “Impeach” sample on the “Real Love” sound recording, but that UMG’s publishing arm is unfairly refusing to do the same for the musical composition.
In Tuesday’s response, UMG confirmed the existence of that earlier settlement over the sound recording, but said it was entirely separate and complete “irrelevant” to a dispute over the composition. UMG’s attorneys said the settlement did not admit that “Real Love” infringed “Impeach” — but that even if it had, Tuff City was “confusing” a basic distinction that lies at the heart of music copyright law.
“Plaintiff … insinuates that defendant infringes simply because non-party UMG settled plaintiff’s claim of infringement [over] the sound recording,” the company wrote. “Because there exist two separate copyrights in music … a work can readily infringe one without infringing the other.”
Blige’s “Real Love” spent 31 weeks on the Hot 100 in 1992 and reached a peak of No. 7 on the chart. It has remained one of the star’s most enduring hits, with more than 105 million spins on Spotify and a movie adaptation released by Lifetime last year.
Tuff City sued UMG over the track in April, claiming it had “advised defendant repeatedly” about the allegedly uncleared sample, but that Universal had done nothing about it: “Defendant has repeatedly refused to engage plaintiff in substantive negotiations to rectify the foregoing, let alone agreed to compensate plaintiff for the past infringement or on an ongoing basis.”
The lawsuit did not name Blige herself as a defendant nor accuse her of any wrongdoing.
Tuff City, which owns a large catalog of old songs, is no stranger to copyright litigation – filing cases over tracks by Jay-Z, Beastie Boys, Christina Aguilera, Frank Ocean with claims that they featured unlicensed samples or interpolations. The company has even already sued over “Impeach the President,” claiming in a 1991 complaint that it had been illegally sampled on the LL Cool J tracks “Around the Way Girl” and “Six Minutes of Pleasure.”
The company has won plenty of rulings and settlements, but the litigation process has not always gone smoothly. In 2014, a judge dismissed one Tuff City case over Jay-Z’s “Run This Town” on the grounds that any alleged sample was “barely perceptible” after multiple listens. In that ruling, the judge chided Tuff City over its approach to the case, saying it “incorrectly … assumes that every copying of any part of another artist’s protected work is infringement.”
In Tuesday’s motion seeking to dismiss the “Real Love” case, UMG directly cited that 2014 ruling – arguing that the two songs “sound nothing alike” and that Tuff City had failed to argue otherwise.
“Unwilling to learn from the lessons of its past, plaintiff again seeks to assert copyright liability without plausibly pleading substantial similarity with respect to the musical compositions at issue here,” the company wrote. “The copyright claim must accordingly be dismissed.”
An attorney for Tuff City did not immediately return a request for comment.
BERLIN — GEMA, the German performing rights organization (PRO), today sued OpenAI for copyright infringement in Munich regional court, alleging that the technology company used without permission lyrics from songs to which GEMA licenses rights. This makes GEMA the first PRO to file such a lawsuit, although it controls some rights that U.S. societies do not. This also seems to be the first case involving only lyrics; the case does not involve recordings. In its announcement, GEMA described the suit as a “model action,” aimed at clarifying copyright law in Germany, and potentially all of Europe.
Since OpenAI offers copyrighted song lyrics in response to prompts, GEMA is alleging that the company trained its software on song lyrics that it has the rights to license, so it is suing the company for violations of the making available and reproduction right. (Making available is a right under European law that in this case is roughly analogous to the right of public performance, or in this case public display. It’s also alleging two infringing reproductions – one to ingest the lyrics for training purposes and another when they are output.) In the U.S., PROs do not control mechanical rights, so they would not have the standing to file such a lawsuit.
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So far, most of the music business lawsuits involving AI companies have been over the ingestion of recordings, although that by definition would also involve the underlying compositions. But OpenAI is already facing a considerable amount of litigation, including a putative class action from authors, a lawsuit from The New York Times, and one each from online publishers and other newspapers. The issue in the U.S. is whether or not copying to train an AI qualifies as a “fair use” exception to copyright law. The record label cases against Suno and Udio will involve the same principle.
European copyright law provides “exceptions and limitations” to copyright, rather than fair use, and the 2019 Copyright Directive allows text and data mining unless rightsholders opt-out. In this case, however, GEMA has opted out for all of the works it licenses. (GEMA does not license the lyrics for all the songs in its repertoire, but the lawsuit involves ones for which it does.) This lawsuit aims to clarify the law, and it has the support of some big German songwriters, as well as their publishers.
“Our members’ songs are not free raw material for generative AI systems providers’ business models,” said GEMA CEO Tobias Holzmüller in a statement. “Anyone who wants to use these songs must acquire a license and remunerate the authors fairly. We have developed a license model for this. We are taking and will always take legal action against unlicensed use.”
The lawsuit comes as rightsholders around the world are becoming more concerned about how AI will affect the value of their works, as well as how they should be compensated for how it is trained. At the end of September, GEMA presented a licensing model for generative AI software that would compensate songwriters and publishers. It has also sent letters to AI companies stating they must license GEMA works in order to use them.
Since OpenAI both operates servers and makes content available in Germany, it will presumably have to operate according to German law. This seems clearer than the U.S. system, where fair use often involves considerable uncertainty. However, European countries do not offer rightsholders the opportunity to collect damages as high as they can get in the U.S.
A representative for OpenAI did not immediately return a request for comment.
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: The White Stripes end their copyright lawsuit against Donald Trump following his presidential election victory; prosecutors cite Lil Durk’s lyrics in his murder-for-hire case; the rapper Plies sues Megan Thee Stallion, GloRilla, and others over accusations of a sample-within-a-sample; and much more.
THE BIG STORY: White Stripes Drop Trump Lawsuit
Back in September, amid a wave of artists criticizing Donald Trump for using their music, the White Stripes went a step further. In a scathing copyright lawsuit, Jack White and Meg White accused Trump and his campaign of “flagrant misappropriation” of one of the “most well-known and influential musical works of all time.” In announcing it, White referred to Trump as a “fascist.”
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But it seems elections have consequences, even for music litigation.
Just days after Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris, attorneys for the White Stripes asked a federal judge to voluntarily dismiss their case. As is typical in such filings, the motion did not explain the decision to drop the case, and an attorney for the band declined to comment.
Why’d they do it? After all, Trump’s victory did not mean the lawsuit had to be dismissed. But following the end of the election, the juice may simply have not been worth the squeeze.
Other top stories this week…
RAP ON TRIAL, AGAIN – Federal prosecutors unveiled a new indictment against Lil Durk over allegations he ordered his crew to murder rival Quando Rondo. The new charges notably cited the rapper’s lyrics, claiming he had sought to “commercialize” the crime by “rapping about his revenge” in a 2022 track. The use of rap as evidence is controversial, as critics argue it threatens free speech and can sway juries by tapping into racial biases. Some states, like California, have restricted the practice, but it has continued largely unabated elsewhere, most notably in the recent criminal case against Young Thug in Atlanta.
PLIES SUES EVERYBODY – The rapper Plies filed a copyright lawsuit against Megan Thee Stallion, GloRilla, Cardi B and Souja Boy over allegations that the 2024 song “Wanna Be” features an uncleared sample from his 2008 track “Me & My Goons.” The lawsuit claims Megan and GloRilla stole Plies’ material indirectly – that they had used a legally-licensed sample of a Soulja Boy song, which itself illegally borrowed material from “Goons.”
ANOTHER TEKASHI PLEA DEAL – Tekashi 6ix9ine reached a deal with federal prosecutors to resolve his recent arrest over alleged violations of his supervised release stemming from his high-profile 2018 gang case. Under the deal, Tekashi agreed to serve one month in prison followed by several months of house arrest and other restrictions. The deal will also extend Tekashi’s supervised release, which had been set to expire in six months, to a full year following his upcoming prison term.
EDM ABUSE LAWSUIT – Electronic music producer Bassnectar asked a federal judge to dismiss a long-running lawsuit accusing him of sexually abusing three underage girls, arguing that all three alleged victims lied about their ages and had themselves instigated the relationships. The filing came more than three years after the three alleged victims filed their lawsuit, accusing the DJ of using his “power and influence to groom and ultimately sexually victimize underage girls.”
DIDDY UPDATES – The federal judge overseeing Sean “Diddy” Combs’ racketeering and sex trafficking case denied his request for a gag order against his alleged victims and their lawyers, ruling the demand “unprecedented,” “unwarranted” and a potential violation of the First Amendment. Elsewhere in the case, the embattled rapper renewed his calls for release on bail, cited the fact that former Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries — another high-profile defendant accused of sex trafficking — was immediately released on a $10 million bond after he was arrested last month.
Less than a week after Donald Trump won the presidential election, the White Stripes have dropped their copyright lawsuit accusing him of using “Seven Nation Army” in a social media post without a license.
The case, filed in the September by Jack White and Meg White, accused Trump and his campaign of “flagrant misappropriation” of one of the “most well-known and influential musical works of all time.” In announcing it, White referred to Trump as a “fascist.”
But in one-sentence motion filed Sunday, attorneys for the rockers quietly dropped the lawsuit. The motion was filed “without prejudice,” meaning the White Stripes could theoretically refile their case at some point in the future, but it still likely means that the case is over for good.
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The White Stripes were one of many acts to sharply criticize the Republican candidate for using their music during the 2024 campaign. Beyoncé, Celine Dion, the Foo Fighters, ABBA and Sinead O’Connor‘s estate have all spoken out against the former president’s use of their songs.
White first spoke out on social media — blasting the Trump campaign over a clip, posted to Instagram and X by his deputy director of communications, in which Trump ascends the stairs of a plane as the iconic bass riff of “Seven Nation Army” plays: “Don’t even think about using my music you fascists.”
Two weeks later, he made good on those threats by filing a copyright infringement lawsuit in Manhattan federal court, claiming Trump infringed the band’s rights to the song and harmed the duo by suggesting they support his bid for another presidential term.
“The new association with defendant Trump that defendants have foisted upon plaintiffs through the infringing Trump videos is even more offensive to plaintiffs because plaintiffs vehemently oppose the policies adopted and actions taken by defendant Trump when he was President and those he has proposed for the second term he seeks,” attorneys for the White Stripes wrote.
But on Sunday, following Trump’s victory over VP Kamala Harris last week, attorneys asked the judge overseeing the case to voluntarily dismiss the band’s claims. As is typical in such filings, the motion did not explain the decision to drop the case, and an attorney for the band declined to comment.
Trump’s victory did not mean the lawsuit had to be dismissed. Presidential immunity – a much discussed concept when it comes to Trump’s high-profile criminal cases – would not have barred a case over actions he took before taking office. And even if Trump’s role as president made pursuing him personally more difficult, the case could have continued against his campaign (Donald J. Trump for President 2024 Inc.) and the staffer who posted the clip (Margo McAtee Martin).
But following the end of the election, the juice may simply have not been worth the squeeze. Federal copyright litigation can take years to resolve and is incredibly expensive, particularly when handled by the kind of white shoe attorneys from an elite law firm (Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP) that the White Stripes hired.
Jack and Meg could have pursued damages over the clip, including potentially more than $100K in so-called “statutory” damages or even more in “actual” damages that might have offset those costs. But the true goals of the litigation was likely to send a message and to bar further uses of the clip, both of which carry less weight now that the election is over.
Following last week’s vote, White took to Instagram to express his disgust with the outcome: “Trump won the popular vote. End of story. Americans chose a known, obvious fascist and now America will get whatever this wannabe dictator wants to enact from here on in.”
Trump and his campaign are still facing another pending music lawsuit from the estate of Isaac Hayes, which sued over his alleged use of the late singer’s “Hold On, I’m Coming” at rallies and in videos. The case remains in the earliest stages.
The campaign is also still facing a pending copyright case lawsuit from the 2020 election filed by Eddy Grant over the unauthorized use of his iconic “Electric Avenue.” In September, a federal judge ruled that Trump infringed the song by using it; a ruling on how much he owes in damages will be resolved in future proceedings.
A spokesman for the Trump campaign did not return a request for comment on the dismissal of the case.