Legal News
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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: A fake Drake song featuring AI-generated vocals highlights legal uncertainty over artificial intelligence; the rapper Cam’ron becomes the latest music star to face a copyright lawsuit over using a photo of himself; Megan Thee Stallion makes bold new accusations in her long legal battle against her record label; and much more.
THE BIG STORY: Fake Drake Debacle & The AI Fight Ahead
A new song featuring AI-generated fake vocals from Drake and The Weeknd went sensationally viral over the weekend, underscoring growing concerns over the impact of artificial intelligence on the music industry and highlighting the legal uncertainties that surround the new technology.
The track, “Heart On My Sleeve,” featured voices that were uncannily similar to those of the two superstars — a trick the anonymous creator says was accomplished by using artificial intelligence. By Monday evening, the track had been mostly pulled from the internet, but not before racking up hundreds of thousands of spins on streaming platforms and millions of views on social media.
As evidenced by the speedy removal, artists and labels already have pretty good legal tools to police something as blatant as “Heart On My Sleeve.” Experts say the song potentially violates the rights of publicity of the two stars by mimicking their voices, and that it also possibly used an unauthorized sample of Metro Boomin’s producer tag.
But the incident came just days after news broke that Universal Music Group had asked streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music to stop AI companies from accessing the label’s copyrighted songs to “train” their machines, and that issue poses far bigger questions — about the extent that AI can be legally used to create new music that isn’t a clear copycat of specific superstars — with fewer clear answers.
For a full breakdown of all this week’s developments, including expert commentary on the issue, go read our entire story here.
THE OTHER BIG STORY: Cam’ron Copyright Conundrum
Back in 2003, a photographer snapped a shot of the rapper Cam’ron at the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Show in New York, where he wore a pink fur coat and hat while holding a matching flip phone. Pink would go on to become a signature color for the rapper, who released a bright pink collab sneaker with Reebok in 2016; GQ later ran an entire article called “Cam’ron Is Very Particular When It Comes to the Color Pink,” underneath the same 2003 image of his “iconic pink mink coat.”
Now, twenty years later, that image has become something of a problem for Cam.
In a lawsuit filed last week, the photographer who snapped it claimed that the rapper had slapped the image on a huge range of commercial products sold by his Dipset Couture brand, ranging from t-shirts to shower curtains to decorative pillows to socks — all without getting any kind of license from her.
These kinds of cases happen a surprising amount. Miley Cyrus, Dua Lipa, Justin Bieber and a slew of other stars have also been sued in recent years after they re-used photos of themselves snapped by someone else. That’s because the copyright to such a photo is owned by the photographer, not the person featured in it.
But the lawsuit against Cam’ron is potentially more serious than those earlier cases. To understand why, go read our full story, complete with all the legal documents filed in the case.
Other top stories this week…
LIVE NATION WINS FESTIVAL CASE – A federal appeals court rejected a lawsuit claiming Live Nation was “stringing along” a country singer when the company considered — but ultimately passed on — her proposal for an all-female country music festival in Chicago. “An expression of interest in participating in a project is not a promise to do so,” the court said.
NICK CARTER FACING NEW ABUSE LAWSUIT – Backstreet Boys member Nick Carter was hit with another sexual abuse lawsuit, this time from Melissa Schuman — a former member of teen-pop group Dream who has long claimed the singer assaulted her.
MEGAN’S NEW ATTACK – Megan Thee Stallion hurled bold new accusations at her record label 1501 Certified Entertainment, claiming the company’s leaders are trying to make themselves “judgment-proof” by draining 1501’s bank accounts.
REMEMBER NFTS? – Lil Yachty reached a settlement with a non-fungible token (NFT) seller called Opulous over allegations that the company used his name and likeness without permission to raise over $6.5 million in venture capital funds.
ORCHESTRA SHOWDOWN IN PHILLY – Citing “unlawful, anticompetitive and predatory conduct,” the Philly Pops accused the Philadelphia Orchestra of violating federal antitrust laws by abusing its control over local concert venues and ticketing services to try to crush its smaller rival.
A song featuring AI-generated fake vocals from Drake and The Weeknd might be a scary moment for artists and labels whose livelihoods feel threatened, but does it violate the law? It’s a complicated question.
The song “Heart on My Sleeve,” which also featured Metro Boomin’s distinctive producer tag, racked up hundreds of thousands of spins on streaming services before it was pulled down on Monday evening, powered to viral status by uncannily similar vocals over a catchy instrumental track. Millions more have viewed shorter snippets of the song that the anonymous creator posted to TikTok.
It’s unclear whether only the soundalike vocals were created with AI tools – a common trick used for years in internet parody videos and deepfakes – or if the entire song was created solely by a machine based purely on a prompt to create a Drake track, a more novel and potentially disruptive development.
For an industry already on edge about the sudden growth of artificial intelligence, the appearance of a song that convincingly replicated the work product of two of music’s biggest stars and one of its top producers and won over likely millions of listeners has set off serious alarm bells.
“The ability to create a new work this realistic and specific is disconcerting, and could pose a range of threats and challenges to rightsowners, musicians, and the businesses that invest in them,” says Jonathan Faber, the founder of Luminary Group and an attorney who specializes in protecting the likeness rights of famous individuals. “I say that without attempting to get into even thornier problems, which likely also exist as this technology demonstrates what it may be capable of.”
“Heart On My Sleeve” was quickly pulled down, disappearing from most streaming services by Monday evening. Representatives for Drake, The Weeknd and Spotify all declined to comment when asked about the song on Monday. And while the artists’ label, Universal Music Group, issued a strongly worded statement condemning “infringing content created with generative AI,” a spokesperson would not say whether the company had sent formal takedown requests over the song.
A rep for YouTube said on Tuesday that the platform “removed the video in question after receiving a valid takedown notice,” noting that the track was removed because it used a copyrighted music sample.
Highlighted by the debacle is a monumental legal question for the music industry that will likely be at the center of legal battles for years to come: To what extent do AI-generated songs violate the law? Though “Heart on My Sleeve” was removed relatively quickly, it’s a more complicated question than it might seem.
For starters, the song appears to be an original composition that doesn’t directly copy any of Drake or the Weeknd’s songs, meaning that it could be hard to make a claim that it infringes their copyrights, like when an artist uses elements of someone else’s song without permission. While Metro Boomin’s tag may have been illegally sampled, that element likely won’t exist in future fake songs.
By mimicking their voices, however, the track represents a clearer potential violation of Drake and Weeknd’s so-called right of publicity – the legal right to control how your individual identity is commercially exploited by others. Such rights are more typically invoked when someone’s name or visual likeness is stolen, but they can extend to someone’s voice if it’s particularly well-known – think Morgan Freeman or James Earl Jones.
“The right of publicity provides recourse for rights owners who would otherwise be very vulnerable to technology like this,” Faber said. “It fits here because a song is convincingly identifiable as Drake and the Weeknd.”
Whether a right of publicity lawsuit is legally viable against this kind of voice mimicry might be tested in court soon, albeit in a case dealing with decidedly more old school tech.
Back in January, Rick Astley sued Yung Gravy over the rapper’s breakout 2022 hit that heavily borrowed from the singer’s iconic “Never Gonna Give You Up.” While Yung Gravy had licensed the underlying composition, Astley claimed Yung Gravy violated his right of publicity when he hired a singer who mimicked his distinctive voice.
That case has key differences from the situation with “Heart on My Sleeve,” like the allegation that Gravy falsely suggested to his listeners that Astley had actually endorsed his song. In the case of “Heart on My Sleeve,” the anonymous creator Ghostwriter omitted any reference to Drake and The Weeknd on streaming platforms; on TikTok, he directly stated that he, and not the two superstars, had created his song using AI.
But for Richard Busch of the law firm King & Ballow, a veteran music industry litigator who brought the lawsuit on behalf of Astley, the right of publicity and its protections for likeness still provides the most useful tool for artists and labels confronted with such a scenario in the future.
“If you are creating a song that sounds identical to, let’s say, Rihanna, regardless of what you say people are going to believe that it was Rihanna. I think there’s no way to get around that,” Busch said. “The strongest claim here would be the use of likeness.”
But do AI companies themselves break the law when they create programs that can so effectively mimic Drake and The Weeknd’s voices? That would seem to be the far larger looming crisis, and one without the same kind of relatively clear legal answers.
The fight ahead will likely be over how AI platforms are “trained” – the process whereby machines “learn” to spit out new creations by ingesting millions of existing works. From the point of view of many in the music industry, if that process is accomplished by feeding a platform copyrighted songs — in this case, presumably, recordings by Drake and The Weeknd — then those platforms and their owners are infringing copyrights on a mass scale.
In UMG’s statement Monday, the label said clearly that it believes such training to be a “violation of copyright law,” and the company previously warned that it “will not hesitate to take steps to protect our rights and those of our artists.” The RIAA has said the same, blasting AI companies for making “unauthorized copies of our members works” to train their machines.
While the training issue is legally novel and unresolved, it could be answered in court soon. A group of visual artists has filed a class action over the use of their copyrighted images to train AI platforms, and Getty Images has filed a similar case against AI companies that allegedly “scraped” its database for training materials.
And after this week’s incident over “Heart on My Sleeve,” a similar lawsuit against AI platforms filed by artists or music companies gets more likely by the day.
A Fugees rapper on trial in a multimillion-dollar campaign finance and foreign influence case was trying to reinvent himself as he entered the political arena, not break any laws, defense attorneys said Monday (April 17).
Prakazrel “Pras” Michel became a best-selling, Grammy-winning artist with the 1990s hip-hop group the Fugees, but in the years after its breakup was looking for his next chapter, attorney David Kenner said as he began making the defense case.
Michel surrounded himself with people to help with his transition to politics and eventually entered the orbit of a wealthy Malaysian “playboy” but didn’t engage in “James Bond … cloak and dagger stuff,” he said.
“There was no agreement to do anything in an unlawful way,” Kenner said.
Michel is charged in political conspiracies under two different U.S. presidents. Federal prosecutors say he funneled money from the fugitive Malaysian financer through straw donors to Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign. He’s also accused of trying to squelch an investigation into the businessman and persuade then-President Donald Trump’s administration to return to China a “vocal critic of the government.”
The Justice Department says Michel conspired with Low Taek Jho, usually known as Jho Low. The fugitive financier is accused of masterminding a money laundering and bribery scheme that pilfered billions from the Malaysian state investment fund known as 1MDB. Low has maintained his innocence.
Looted money paid for jewelry and luxury art and helped finance Hollywood films like The Wolf of Wall Street. Actor Leonardo DiCaprio testified that Low had appeared to him to be a legitimate businessman and had mentioned wanting to donate to Obama’s campaign.
When Michel first met Low at a nightclub in 2006, the businessman “appeared and acted as though he had unlimited amounts of money,” Kenner said. Michel would later make money himself through his association with Low, but “making money, even if you consider it greedy, is not a crime.”
Prosecutors, on the other hand, say Low directed millions to Michel, who funneled the money to straw donors to give to the Obama reelection campaign in 2012. He later tried to lean on the donors to keep them from talking to investigators, prosecutors said.
In 2017, prosecutors say, the Grammy-winning rapper worked with a Republican “fixer” to try and shut down a U.S. investigation into Low and embezzlement from the Malaysian fund. He’s also accused of pushing the Trump administration to send a Chinese person who had fled to the U.S. back to China.
The defense says he tried to set up a meeting on that issue, but no one ever told him he should have registered as a foreign agent before doing so, Kenner said.
“What he was trying to do was go through the proper channels,” he said.
The long-running legal dispute between grunge icons Soundgarden and Vicky Cornell, the widow of late lead singer Chris Cornell, has been resolved. According to a statement posted on the social media account of the band and Cornell on Monday morning (April 17) the agreement will pave the way for the eventual release of Cornell’s final recorded vocals with the group.
“Soundgarden and Vicky Cornell, on behalf of the Estate of Chris Cornell, are happy to announce they have reached an amicable out of court resolution,” read the statement. “The reconciliation marks a new partnership between the two parties, which will allow Soundgarden fans around the world to hear the final songs that the band and Chris were working on. The two parties are united and coming together to propel, honor and build upon Soundgarden’s incredible legacy as well as Chris’s indelible mark on music history – as one of the greatest songwriters and vocalists of all time.
Two years after Cornell was found dead by suicide at age 52 in a Detroit hotel room on May 17, 2017, Vicky Cornell sued surviving band members guitarist Kim Thayil, drummer Matt Cameron and bassist Ben Shepherd and the band’s longtime business manager. The suit claimed what she described as attempts to “strong-arm” her into turning over seven unreleased audio recordings made by the singer before his death by allegedly withholding royalties owed to the estate.
Two months later, the band sued Vicky Cornell claiming she had no right to withhold the tracks from what was expected to be the group’s final album. In March 2020 Soundgarden asked a judge to dismiss Cornell’s lawsuit on procedural grounds and then they countersued her in May of that year over the proceeds of a Jan. 2019 tribute concert; those claims were dropped in July 2020.
Cornell filed a second lawsuit in Feb. 2021 in which she claimed the living members undervalued her share of the group, which was filed by more back-and-forth over the band’s March 2021 demands that Vicky Cornell turn over the keys to the group’s social media accounts.
At press time no additional information was available on when the unheard music will be released.
See the joint statement below.
A federal appeals has rejected a lawsuit claiming Live Nation was “stringing along” a country singer when the company considered – but ultimately passed on – her proposal for an all-female country music festival in Chicago.
Rae Solomon claimed the concert giant led her to believe it would invest in her idea – a “modern” riff on the famed Lilith Fair with a “predominantly country spin” – only to unfairly back out later. She says Live Nation then stole the concept when it organized an all-women day at 2019’s Lake Shake Festival.
But in a ruling Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that Live Nation had not made “any misrepresentations in its dealings with Solomon.” The court said Live Nation had offered only “sales talk, future intention, and opinion,” not concrete plans to work with her.
“An expression of interest in participating in a project is not a promise to do so,” the court wrote. “The statement represents nothing more than Live Nation’s interest in the project.”
All of Live Nation’s interactions with Solomon were “non-specific and noncommittal nature,” the court wrote, and the company “did not conceal its questions, doubts, or lack of commitment” to her project.
Solomon pitched the idea of her “Zenitheve” festival to Live Nation’s Women Nation Fund, a program that aims to help “underrepresented female entrepreneur” in the live music industry. And Live Nation’s interest was initially piqued; in early meetings in 2018, company reps told her that Zenitheve was “right down the fairway for the kind of stuff we’re interested in” and “exactly what the fund is set up for.”
But according to court documents, Solomon soon ran into hurdles. She envisioned a lineup including Kacey Musgraves, Maren Morris and other female country stars, but she had not actually booked artists to perform. And after meetings in which Live Nation suggested “keep[ing] the conversation going,” the company soon expressed serious doubts.
Michael Wichser, Live Nation’s senior vice president for mergers and acquisitions, said Solomon’s business plan was “lackluster” and “worried about Solomon’s abilities to obtain artists or get a team in place.” Live Nation’s chief communications officer Carrie Davis, meanwhile, thought her idea was not “compelling or unique” and noted that Solomon had not “confirmed any sponsorships or artists.”
A month after Live Nation formally passed on the idea, the company announced the plan for the all-women day at Lake Shake, a yearly country festival in Chicago. Solomon claims the move led her investors to pull out of Zenitheve, forcing her to halt the project.
She quickly sued, claiming Live Nation had made intentional and negligent misrepresentations to her and demanding more than $25 million in damages. Among other things, she claimed that Live Nation had acted the way that it did so that it could copy her plan.
But in Thursday’s decision, the Sixth Circuit said that motive was directly contradicted by the facts of the case.
“[Solomon] claims that Live Nation misrepresented any intention of working with [her] because it had only one motivation from the start: stringing Solomon along and stealing her idea,” the appeals court wrote. “That speculation, however, crumbles against Live Nation’s uncontradicted evidence that the organizer of the Lake Shake Festival, Brian O’Connell, had no knowledge of the Zenitheve proposal.”
A legal cacophony is brewing in the City of Brotherly Love.
In a lawsuit filed Thursday, the Philly Pops accused the Philadelphia Orchestra of violating federal antitrust laws by abusing its control over local concert venues and ticketing services to try to crush its smaller rival.
“Defendants have engaged … in unlawful, anticompetitive and predatory conduct with respect to the Philly POPS for the purpose and with the intent to force the Philly POPS out of business so that Philadelphia Orchestra could eliminate the Philly Pops as a competitor in and monopolize the market for live symphonic popular concert music concerts in the Greater Philadelphia Metropolitan Area,” lawyers for the Pops wrote.
Philly Pops claims that it has long peacefully co-existed with the Orchestra, one of America’s so-called Big Five symphony orchestras. The Pops has played symphonic versions of Broadway show tunes, movie scores and popular music, while the Orchestra has stuck to classical symphonic – and the two have been “marketed to different potential patrons” and “attended by audiences with little duplication.”
But starting last year, Philly Pops says the Orchestra has been jumping into the pops space and trying to put its smaller rival out of business. The lawsuit claims that the Orchestra has done so mostly by abusing its merger with the Kimmel Center, the primary orchestra venue in the city and the ticketing service Ticket Philadelphia.
According to the lawsuit, the Orchestra “substantially and unreasonably” increased fees for the Pops to perform at the Kimmel Center and slowed down the sale of tickets to previously scheduled shows. It then hired a PR firm to “create media messaging” that the Pops would be absorbed by the Orchestra after the 2023 season.
When the Pops said it would not go along with such a plan, the Orchestra “summarily evicted the POPS from the Kimmel Center forcing the POPS to cancel and postpone its concerts [there] and scramble for different but substantially less viable indoor venues.”
In addition to naming the Philadelphia Orchestra-Kimmel Center, Inc. as a defendant, the lawsuit also named Matias Tarnopolsky, the company’s president and CEO.
In a statement to Billboard, a spokesperson for the Orchestra said: “We have just received the lawsuit, which was brought to our attention by the media. As the complaint has yet to be formally served, we will reserve comment until then and once it has been reviewed with counsel.”
Read the entire lawsuit against the Philadelphia Orchestra here:
Megan Thee Stallion is hurling new accusations at her record label 1501 Certified Entertainment, including that the company is trying to make itself “judgment-proof” by draining its bank accounts.
In an updated version of her long-running lawsuit, the “Savage” rapper’s lawyers claimed Wednesday that they had unearthed evidence that 1501 founder Carl Crawford had “dissipated millions of dollars held in 1501’s primary bank account,” including funds that will potentially be owed to Stallion.
“Instead of following its financial manager’s advice and holding the contested funds in reserve, 1501 has chosen to enrich itself and its consultants, leaving less than ten thousand dollars in the account,” Megan Thee Stallion’s lawyers wrote. “Based on 1501’s undercapitalization, it is highly probable that 1501 will be judgment-proof by the time Pete is able to obtain a final judgment on the merits of her claims.”
As a result of this “fraudulent transfer of assets,” Megan Thee Stallion’s lawyers demanded that the judge overseeing the case impose extraordinary restrictions while the case continues to play out.
“Pete seeks the appointment of a receiver to take possession of 1501 until this dispute is resolved, or in the alternative, the appointment of a receiver to take possession of all of 1501’s bank accounts and any other bank accounts controlled or owned by Carl Crawford, including the bank accounts to which the money siphoned out of the bank account was transferred into.”
In a statement to Billboard, 1501’s attorneys sharply disputed the new claims from Megan Thee Stallion (real name Megan Pete).
“1501 strongly disagrees with the substance of Ms. Pete’s recent filings,” said Kenneth D. Freundlich of Freundlich Law and LeElle B. Slifer of Winston & Strawn LLP. “The allegations are without merit and we are confident that 1501 will prevail on these motions and ultimately recover the substantial money that Ms. Pete owes 1501.”
A rep for Megan Thee Stallion did not return a request for comment on the new filing.
The star rapper has been fighting with 1501 for more than two years, claiming the company duped a young artist into signing an “unconscionable” record deal in 2018 that was well-below industry standards. Megan Thee Stallion says that when she signed a new management deal with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation in 2019, she got “real lawyers” who helped her see that the deal was “crazy.”
She filed the current case in February 2022, claiming 1501 had wrongly classified her Something For Thee Hotties as something less than an “album” — a key distinction, since she owes a set number of albums under her record deal. 1501 then quickly countersued, arguing that Thee Hotties contained just 29 minutes of original material and obviously did not meet the definition of an “album.”
The two sides then escalated the case last summer. Megan Thee Stallion filed a new complaint seeking more than $1 million in damages over claims that 1501 had “systematically failed” to pay enough royalties. 1501 then fired back with new accusations of its own, claiming it’s actually Megan Thee Stallion who owes “millions of dollars.”
Until Wednesday’s bold new accusations, it had appeared that tempers might actually be cooling. In an interview with TMZ in February, Crawford expressed some regret over his public feuding with Megan Thee Stallion and said he would be “taking a different approach” in the future: “I never had problems with Megan Thee Stallion, but this social media stuff turned it really sour.”
But in addition to Wednesday’s new allegations about 1501’s bank accounts, Megan Thee Stallion’s lawyers also filed a separate motion asking the judge to summarily rule that 1501 had breached its contracts with Megan Thee Stallion. The reason? They say 1501 has chosen to categorically deny all requests to license Megan’s music until the case is resolved — representing a “flagrant breach” of the deal.
“In furtherance of its relentless efforts to sabotage Pete and her career, 1501 has taken the unlawful and unjustifiable position that it will continue to deny every single licensing request until its publishing claim in this litigation is resolved,” Megan Thee Stallion’s lawyers wrote. “1501 has taken this draconian position out of spite, a fact that 1501’s representatives have admitted under oath.”
The judge overseeing the case ruled in December that the battle will ultimately need to be decided by a jury. A trial is currently set for August, but after Wednesday’s new filings it’s unclear if the case will be able to stick to that schedule.
The rapper Cam’ron is facing a copyright lawsuit over allegations that he used a 2003 image of himself on t-shirts, jewelry and a slew of other merchandise sold by his Dipset Couture – all without any kind of license from the original photographer.
In a complaint filed Tuesday (April 11) in New Jersey federal court, photographer Djamilla Cochran claimed the “Hey Ma” rapper (real name Cameron Giles) splashed her image — a shot of Cam wearing a fuzzy pink coat and hat while holding a matching flip phone — across a wide range of Dipset products.
She says he also repeatedly posted the image to Instagram to promote those products, which also included shower curtains, pillows, swimsuits, socks and even a birthday cake. The complaint came with numerous screenshots of Dipset Couture’s product listings and Cam’ron’s posts promoting them.
And, according to the lawsuit, Cam’ron was alerted numerous times that he was using the image without a license.
“Getty Images notified defendants of their infringing activities by mail and email on multiple occasions,” Cochran’s lawyers wrote. “Despite those notifications, defendants continued to sell merchandise and continued to display the photograph on website and accounts.”
Reps for Cam’ron did not immediately return a request for comment.
Cochran’s image (featured above) captured Cam’ron at the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Show in New York in 2003, wearing a flashy color that would become a key part of his brand identity. In 2016, GQ magazine used the photo atop an article titled “Cam’ron Is Very Particular When It Comes to the Color Pink,” saying that the rapper had “defined himself with an iconic pink mink coat” at that fashion show.
While it might sound unfair to a celebrity, the copyrights to a photo are almost always retained by the person who snapped it. Being featured in an image doesn’t grant someone a right to use it for free, and certainly not on commercial merchandise.
That’s not a new dilemma for stars. Over the last few years, Miley Cyrus, Dua Lipa, Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Emily Ratajkowski, LeBron James, Katy Perry and others have all faced copyright cases after they re-used photos of themselves snapped by someone else.
But the lawsuit against Cam’ron is potentially more serious than those earlier cases, which mostly dealt with stars just reposting an image on social media. His alleged unauthorized use of Cochran’s image on numerous commercial products, even after he was allegedly warned to stop, could leave him facing more substantial damages.
According to screenshots included in the lawsuit, Cam’ron had been doing so for years. Instagram posts from his mr_camron handle dating back as far as 2014 show Cochran’s image, including on skateboards, facemasks and reposted in full.
Lil Yachty has reached a settlement with a non-fungible token (NFT) seller called Opulous over allegations that the company used his name and likeness without permission to raise over $6.5 million in venture capital funds.
Yachty (real name Miles Parks McCollum) sued the company last year, claiming that Opulous launched an advertising blitz for a “Lil Yachty NFT Collection” that would give buyers access to new music from the rapper — without ever securing his approval.
But in a filing on Tuesday (April 11), attorneys for the company notified a federal judge that it had reached a settlement with Yachty to resolve the case. They said the case would be dismissed within 45 days, after the deal is finalized. Neither side offered additional details on the terms of the deal.
Yachty’s case against Opulous was one of several lawsuits filed last year over NFTs, a buzzy form of digital collectible that skyrocketed in popularity in 2021. But the market for NFTs largely collapsed last year, and the lawsuits filed over them are also beginning to drop off.
In his January 2022 complaint, Yachty called the Opulous project, which also included images of him, a “blatant and conscious disregard for plaintiff’s exclusive legal rights.” It additionally claimed that the company did press interviews about his alleged involvement in the project.
His lawyers said that Opulous had pitched his management team about a potential partnership, and that he joined a second call for a “a general introductory meeting,” but that the two sides never came close to signing a deal.
“There were no further communications between the parties, and accordingly no agreement or deal terms for plaintiff’s involvement in the defendants’ launch of the Opulous platform was ever reached,” the lawsuit read.
But even without his approval, Opulous then allegedly announced it would be launching a line of music NFTs and be “kicking things off with a series of unmissable NFT drops led by world-famous artists including Lil Yachty.” That was allegedly followed by numerous social media posts featuring similar claims, as well as images of the rapper, the suit said.
The suit, which also named Opulous founder Lee James Parson and his Ditto Music as defendants, claimed a slew of specific violations, including trademark infringement, unfair competition and a violation of Lil Yachty’s so-called right of publicity — the right to control how your name and likeness are commercially exploited.
Backstreet Boys member Nick Carter is facing another sexual abuse lawsuit, this time from Melissa Schuman – a former member of teen-pop group Dream who has long claimed that she was assaulted by the singer.
In a complaint filed Tuesday in Los Angeles court, Schuman formalized her longstanding accusation that Carter sexually assaulted her in 2003 when she was 18 years old, while the two were starring in the teen horror movie The Hollow.
Schuman says that during a party, Carter fed her drug-laced alcohol, led her away from the group, and then repeatedly assaulted her despite clear statements that she did not consent.
“Plaintiff was too terrified to say anything,” Schuman’s lawyers wrote. “Defendant Carter exerted his control over plaintiff, despite knowing she did not consent, for his own sexual gratification.”
The lawsuit claims that the assault left Schuman infected with HPV, and that he had continued to “harass and manipulate” her after the alleged attack.
The new case came months after Carter was hit with a similar lawsuit from Shannon “Shay” Ruth, a woman who says he raped her on a tour bus when she was 17 years old following a 2001 concert in Washington state.
But it also came two weeks after a Nevada judge ruled that Carter could continue to sue both Ruth and Schuman for defamation over their accusations. Carter’s lawsuit claims the accusations from the two women are a “conspiracy” that aims to “to harass, defame and extort” him by exploiting the #MeToo movement.
In a statement to Billboard, Carter’s attorney Liane K. Wakayama called Schuman’s allegations “false” and noted the recent ruling in Nevada, saying it proved there were “strong grounds” for Carter to “proceed with his lawsuit against Ms. Schuman for plotting to damage, defame and extort Nick.”
“In light of our progress in Nevada, this kind of response is at once both predictable and pathetic,” Wakayama wrote. “But this PR stunt won’t shake Nick from his determination to hold Ms. Schuman and her co-conspirators to account for the immeasurable pain and suffering their extortionate conduct has caused.”
Like the case filed by Ruth, the new lawsuit against Carter contains explicit and disturbing details of the alleged sexual assault.
After giving her a drink that contained “some form of flunitrazepam or a similar drug,” Schuman’s attorneys say, he led her to a bathroom, where he began to perform non-consensual oral sex on her. The lawsuit says he then demanded that she perform oral sex on him, before he took her to a bedroom and “climbed on top of her.”
“Again and again, plaintiff said NO!” her lawyers wrote in the complaint. “She told him over and over that she was a virgin, that she was saving herself for her future husband, and that she did not want to have sex. Defendant Carter continued to force himself on her, whispering in her ear that he could be her husband. Plaintiff could not get away from him, he was too heavy.”
Following the alleged assault, Schuman says she quickly told her parents, her manager, a therapist and others about the incident, but did not formally report the incident because her manager warned her that doing so could “ruin her career.”
Schuman first publicly accused Carter in 2017, saying that the music industry had “enabled abusers forever” and detailing why she had failed to come forward earlier.
“I didn’t have the money, the clout or access to an attorney who was powerful enough to stand up against my abuser’s legal counsel,” she wrote on her blog at the time. “I was told I would likely be buried in humiliation, accused of being fame hungry, and it would ultimately hurt me professionally as well as publicly.”
Carter denied the allegations at the time, saying Schuman had “never expressed” to him that “anything we did was not consensual.”