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A tribute band that was sued by Earth, Wind & Fire for trademark infringement is firing back with a bold counterargument: That the famed R&B act has actually abandoned any intellectual property rights to its name.
In a court filing on Wednesday (Aug. 30), the smaller band — which calls itself Earth Wind & Fire Legacy Reunion — argued that the original group had allowed so many tribute bands to use its name without repercussion that it can no longer claim exclusive rights to it.
“Due to the unchecked third-party use of the phrase, [EW&F] has abandoned ‘Earth, Wind & Fire,’ and [the name] has lost its trademark significance,” wrote attorneys for Substantial Music Group, which operates Legacy Reunion.
The new filing listed out a dozen other tribute acts that allegedly feature “Earth, Wind & Fire” as part of their name, including “September: A Tribute to Earth, Wind & Fire” and “Let’s Groove Tonight: The Ultimate Earth, Wind & Fire Tribute Band,” as well as even simpler names like simply “Earth Wind & Fire Tribute.”
“[The band] has taken no action to enforce its purported trademark rights against any of the third-party vocal and instrument groups that have been using the phrase,” Legacy Reunion wrote in Wednesday’s filing. “The present civil action represents the first occasion on which Counter-Defendant has sought to enforce its registered trademarks against another party.”
Earth, Wind & Fire has continued to tour since founder Maurice White died in 2016, led by longtime members Philip Bailey, Ralph Johnson and White’s brother, Verdine White. The band operates under a license from Earth Wind & Fire IP, a holding company owned by Maurice White’s sons that formally owns the name.
In a March lawsuit, that company accused Legacy Reunion of trying to trick consumers into thinking it was the real Earth Wind & Fire. Though it called itself a “Reunion,” the lawsuit said the tribute band contained only a few “side musicians” who briefly played with Earth, Wind & Fire many years ago.
“Defendants did this to benefit from the commercial magnetism and immense goodwill the public has for plaintiff’s ‘Earth, Wind & Fire’ marks and logos, thereby misleading consumers and selling more tickets at higher prices,” the group’s lawyers wrote.
Tribute acts — groups that exclusively cover the music of a particular band — are legally allowed to operate, and they often adopt names that allude to the original. But they must be clear that they are a tribute band, and they can get into legal hot water if they make it appear that they are affiliated with or endorsed by the original. In 2021, ABBA filed a similar trademark lawsuit against a band that had been touring under the name ABBA Mania, calling it “parasitic”; that suit was quickly settled after ABBA Mania agreed to stop using the name.
According to Earth, Wind & Fire’s lawyers, the use of “Legacy Reunion” was not a clear enough distinction. The lawsuit cited alleged examples of angry consumers who mistakenly bought tickets for the wrong band, including one that read, “This was not Earth Wind and Fire. NO Philip Bailey or Verdine White. It was just a band playing Earth Wind and Fire music. I purchased 3 tickets and I was very disappointed. It was truly false advertisement. I want my money back!!!!!”
Wednesday’s filing came as a so-called “answer and counterclaims” — a standard response to any lawsuit, in which a defendant like Legacy Reunion can formally deny the accusations and level their own at their opponent.
In its counterclaims, Legacy Reunion argued that the band’s lack of enforcement against other tribute bands means that its trademark to “Earth, Wind & Fire” should be formally “cancelled.”
Why is the music business picking on Brewster Kahle? All the technology activist wants to do with the Internet Archive, which he founded in 1996 and still chairs the board of, is create a digital library that offers “universal access to knowledge.” Isn’t that the promise of the digital age — that anyone with an internet connection can access anything ever created?
Turns out it’s more complicated than that. On Aug. 11, Universal Music, Sony Music and Concord Music filed a lawsuit, managed by the RIAA, against the Internet Archive, Kahle’s foundation, Kahle himself and an audio archivist who worked on the project, for infringing the copyrights to old recordings that the Internet Archive makes available through its “Great 78s” project to digitize old recordings originally issued as 78rpm records.
Already, in June 2020, four big book publishers had sued the Internet Archive for making available for a limited time copy-protected digital versions of books — first as many as it had in its collection or those of its partners, then during the pandemic, with its National Emergency Library, as many as users wanted. The publishers won on summary judgement, although the Internet Archive has said it will appeal.
The Internet Archive does lot of worthwhile work: its Wayback Machine tracks old web pages, offers access to considerable information in the public domain, and boasts an expansive collection of live Grateful Dead recordings. The Great 78s project makes available some old recordings that might otherwise be lost, but according to the RIAA lawsuit it also offers streaming access to plenty of recordings that are big business, including Bing Crosby’s iconic version of “White Christmas” — by some measures the most popular recordings of the 20th century — plus Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue,” Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven” and Frank Sinatra’s “I’ve Got the World on a String.” The 78, may be an obscure format, but some of the music originally released that way is still relatively popular.
The Internet Archive responded in a blog post that it’s a “lawsuit targeting obsolete media.” “When people want to listen to music they go to Spotify,” Kahle said in a statement on the blog. (The Internet Archive did not comment other than pointing to this post.) “When people want to study 78rpm sound recordings as they were originally created, they go to libraries like the Internet Archive. Both are needed. There shouldn’t be conflict here.”
Except that many of those “78rpm sound recordings” aren’t obsolete at all — they’re the exact same recordings that are on Spotify, plus Apple Music and other streaming services. The versions available on the Internet Archive sound scratchy, but the recordings themselves weren’t originally created that way, and the wear on the particular 78s that were digitized by the archive is less about the history of recorded music than about how careful a particular person was with his or her records.
Kahle presents himself as a “digital librarian” who’s making books — and music and other media — available the way libraries always have. But it’s worth remembering that the legal arguments for the Internet Archive’s book-lending program aren’t based on the provision of copyright law that provides exceptions for libraries. Instead, the archive’s legal claim is that copying and distributing books temporarily is fair use. Which means that, if the Internet Archive had won, any library — or, importantly, perhaps any nonprofit entity that defined itself that way, or maybe any entity at all — could copy books it had purchased in order to distribute them. (The archive, in turn, says that its loss is a disaster for libraries, since they have to license books from publishers; but shouldn’t libraries — an essential public good — be funded by the public in a way that’s fair to creators and rightsholders?) Kahle, who has campaigned for years against what he sees as the excesses of copyright, seems to want to change the law.
“The fact that you own a particular copy doesn’t mean that you can make and distribute copies of that copy — this is basic copyright law,” said Maria Pallante, chief executive of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), which helped to guide the publishers’ lawsuit. “They were trying to bloat fair use, while also asserting a first sale defense that applies only to tangible goods, not bootleg digital files.”
The RIAA is suing at least partly to establish case law behind the part of the 2018 Music Modernization Act, which extended federal copyright protection to recordings made before 1972, which were previously only covered under state law. The labels may also want to collect damages: Since statutory damages for willful infringement can be set by judges or juries at up to $150,000, this case could potentially cost the Internet Archive as much as $412 million. “This is the kind of egregious behavior that the Music Modernization Act was intended to address,” says RIAA CEO Mitch Glazier.
Recordings were only covered under state law until the Copyright Act of 1976, but it wasn’t retroactive. And although some opponents of copyright characterized the Music Modernization Act as a land grab by media companies, that doesn’t hold up: Some state laws made it unclear whether copyright protection ever lapsed at all. Indeed, one reason that sound recordings copyrights were federalized in the first place was to help libraries and archives take advantage of the exceptions and limitations that exist in federal copyright legislation, including fair use and specific exceptions for libraries and archives.
As it happens, the subject of federal copyright protection for pre-1972 recordings was studied in a 2011 report by the Register of Copyrights, and substantial attention was devoted to “challenges of preservation and access.” “Substantively,” the report recommended, “the use of section 108 and the fair use exception should encourage more preservation and public access because they provide time—tested rules with which libraries and archives have experience.”
The law under which the Internet Archive is being sued was actually set up partly to help it and other archives, especially in its “orphan works” provision, the result of a compromise between Music Modernization Act proponents and opponents, that allows organizations to use pre-1972 recordings for non-commercial purposes after checking to make sure they’re not in commercial use. (There’s a procedure for this.) If the Great 78s project really intends to make available music that is in danger of disappearing, the law allows for that. Why aren’t Kahle and the Archive following it? It’s hard to imagine that Kahle doesn’t understand the law.
And that’s why the music business is picking on Brewster Kahle — because it sometimes seems as though the Internet Archive is as much about pushing the boundaries of copyright law as it is about preserving creative works in the first place. Libraries play a crucial role in any democratic society, and Kahle and the archive do a lot of important work. But so do the performers and songwriters — and, yes, the labels and publishers — who made all of these recordings possible in the first place.
Backstreet Boys member Nick Carter is facing a third sexual abuse lawsuit, this time from an unnamed woman who claims he assaulted her when she was 15 years old.
In a complaint filed Monday in Las Vegas court, a Jane Doe accuser identified as “A.R.,” claims that Carter sexually assaulted her on multiple occasions in 2003, when he was in his early 20s, including several times on a yacht and once on a tour bus.
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She claims Carter “knowingly provided alcohol and drugs” and then assaulted her “despite her repeated refusals and requests for him to stop.” The incident left her with sexually-transmitted diseases and other lasting effects, she claims.
“The impacts of Carter’s sexual abuse are ceaseless, causing plaintiff severe emotional distress, physical anguish, intimacy issues, and other complex trauma,” the accuser’s lawyers write.
Carter is already facing lawsuits from Shannon “Shay” Ruth, a woman who says he raped her on a tour bus when she was 17 years old, and from Melissa Schuman, a former member of teen-pop group Dream who has long claimed that she was assaulted by the singer.
The singer strongly denies the accusations and is countersuing both women for defamation, saying he’s victim of “conspiracy” that aims to “to harass, defame and extort” him by exploiting the #MeToo movement.
In a statement responding to the latest case, Carter’s lawyers called the new accusations “ridiculous,” saying they had been thoroughly investigated and rejected as “meritless” by law enforcement at the time — and that police even concluded that A.R. “could herself have been charged with a crime” over the incident. They claimed she was also later “threatened with criminal charges for filing a false police report” over a separate matter.
“Now she’s at it yet again,” Carter’s lawyer Dale Hayes Jr. said in the statement. “But repeating the same false allegations in a new legal complaint doesn’t make them any more true. Nick is looking forward to the evidence being presented and the truth about these malicious schemes coming to light.”
Like the previous cases, the new lawsuit against Carter includes graphic details of alleged sexual assault.
The lawsuit claims the first incident occurred in August 2003 on Carter’s yacht, where he allegedly “directed” the intoxicated plaintiff to a cabin and “engaged in oral sexual intercourse with A.R. and penetrated her vagina with his genitals” without her consent.
Days later, she claims that Carter’s sister “encouraged” her to meet him on a bus, where he “coerced A.R. to orally copulate his genitals.” A month after that, another alleged assault took place on the yacht, during which Carter allegedly “enticed three other men” to watch them have sex.
“Defendant Carter instructed these same three male friends to observe his assault of A.R. through a window hatch on the boat,” her lawyers write, adding that he “attempted to perform anal sex” on her during this incident “despite her repeated refusals and requests for him to stop.”
Later that year, the accuser claims she and her mother reported the incident to police in Pennsylvania, where she lived at the time.
In their statement on Wednesday, Carter’s attorneys insisted that police had cleared him of wrongdoing after that investigation. But John Kawai, the lawyer who filed Monday’s case, said in a statement that his civil allegations were not foreclosed by the lack of criminal charges: “Abusers can take notice that just because they avoided prison doesn’t mean they don’t have to answer to a jury for their actions.”
The other lawsuits against Carter remain pending, as does his counter-suit. Lawyers for his accusers pushed to dismiss Carter’s defamation case under Nevada’s so-called anti-SLAPP law, arguing that he was using litigation to retaliate against an accuser who was speaking out. But in March, a Nevada judge rejected that request and allowed Carter’s case to move forward.
A company that owns the rights to the “Space Jam” theme is suing a minor-league baseball club for using it – the latest in an increasingly active legal campaign to demand payment for a song that has been heavily used in internet memes and mashups for the past twenty years.
Watson Music Group, which bought the rights to “Space Jam” in 2019 from its original songwriters, has filed three federal lawsuits in the last three months, accusing companies of infringing its copyrights by using the song on the internet without permission. It’s also sent legal threats to an unknown number of others, arguing that unauthorized users must pay a “retroactive license” to avoid legal liability.
The latest target? The Wisconsin Timber Rattlers – a minor league affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers that Watson sued on Monday, accusing the team of briefly using the “Space Jam” song in a 2017 Facebook video. The 35-second clip, still live as of Tuesday, features the track playing in the background as the team’s mascot dunks a basketball.
“Despite plaintiff’s efforts and willingness to address defendant’s infringing activity, defendant failed to respond and plaintiff was forced to seek judicial intervention for defendant’s infringing activity,” the lawsuit claims, before demanding as much as $150,000 in statutory copyright damages from the team.
Performed by Florida hip-hop trio Quad City DJ’s, “Space Jam” was released as a theme song for the 1996 movie of the same name – a classic live-action/animated flick featuring NBA superstar Michael Jordan and the characters from Looney Tunes squaring off in a basketball game against alien invaders. The song plays during the opening credits, blasting its mix of pumped-up raps and bass-heavy dance beats over archival footage of Jordan’s career.
The movie was a hit, but the music was a smash. A star-studded soundtrack album, also featuring R. Kelly’s chart-topping “I Believe I Can Fly,” reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200 in April 1997. And while Quad City’s theme song didn’t reach the heights the group’s earlier “C’mon N’ Ride It (The Train),” the track was also a hit in its own right, eventually hitting No. 37 on the Hot 100.
In legal filings, Watson (which also goes by Quadrasound Music) says it acquired the rights to “Space Jam” composition in 2019 from its original songwriters: Quad City’s Jay “Ski” McGown and Nathaniel “C.C. Lemonhead” Orange, as well as Van “Thrill Da Playa” Bryant of the closely-affiliated Miami hip hop group 69 Boyz.
Since then, the group has not been shy about enforcing those rights. On a website focused exclusively on Watson’s “100%” ownership of the “Space Jam” rights, a large-print banner reads: “Did you receive a notice from us?” Below that question, the site informs visitors that “U.S. copyright law provides large financial penalties for using someone’s copyrighted work without permission.”
The site then features a frequently-asked-questions section, warning readers that any use of the theme song on social media would require payment: “If your post contains any elements of the original composition ‘Space Jam’, you will need permission (a license) from Quadrasound Music.” Another question in the FAQ asks whether removing such a post, or offering credit, would suffice to avoid litigation. “None of these actions limit your liabilities as a copyright infringer,” the site answers, before explicitly stressing that copyright damages can reach $150,000 for a single infringed work.
But, the Watson website says, it doesn’t need to come to all that: “We would rather save you the expense and worry of litigation by having you work with us to resolve this matter outside of the courts by issuing you a retroactive license.”
Depending on how aggressive they want to get, Watson/Quadrasound could have plenty of targets to send those notices demanding payment.
That’s because, in the mid-2000s, Quad City’s “Space Jam” theme enjoyed a bizarre second act as a meme. Across early internet sites like Something Awful and 4chan, users published hundreds of absurdist “slam remix” videos, combining the track with other songs and video clips, often inexplicably featuring NBA star Charles Barkley.
By the early 2010s, the trend had largely faded away – most memes do. But dozens of slam remixes still exist on YouTube, and whole websites dedicated to the art of slamming are still live in 2023. During a late-night appearance in 2021, Tony-winning playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda heaped praise on Slamilton, a full-length LP splicing “Space Jam” with his musical Hamilton: “Kudos to the genius who made that. The internet remains undefeated.”
In a 2021 Billboard story recounting the long, strange history of slam remixes, Quad City member Jay Ski seemed to love the fact that his song had been meme-ized: “I feel so honored that the community embraced us and said, ‘Hey, let’s use this.’ Think about all the records they could’ve used,” he said at the time. “For ours to take on its own direction and own little world, that’s awesome.”
Do the creators of all those remixes have licenses to use “Space Jam”? Almost certainly not. So, is every one of them going to get letters from Watson, demanding they take “retroactive licenses” or risk costly litigation? Darren Heitner, a Miami lawyer who serves as the company’s outside general counsel, said he could not answer that question and that every case would be treated individually.
“I can’t speak broadly to whether our client is seeking payment from everyone who has used the content as part of a meme, given the facts vary on a case-by-case basis and there are instances where a meme may be commercialized or be used as part of a larger commercial enterprise,” Heitner told Billboard.
Heitner would not say how many legal notices Watson/Quadrasound had sent out, nor how much money the company typically demanded in licensing fees to avoid litigation.
“Our client’s policy is to send out a notice when it, with reasonable diligence, discovers the infringement,” Heitner said. “It has recently become much more active in policing such infringement with the intent to engage in thorough discourse with the infringer before escalating each matter.”
Over the past three months, the company has begun rapidly filing lawsuits against those who refuse to pay or ignore demands. In May, Watson sued SportsGrid, a New York-based sports betting media company, over allegations that it featured “Space Jam” repeatedly in videos and podcasts without licenses. Then in June, the company sued a Florida company called CPPM Leasing LLC, claiming it had used the song in a basketball-themed Facebook video in 2019. And now this week, Watson filed its suit against the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers over its slam-dunk video.
Those cases are a far cry from suing every creator of a meme, of course. They target sophisticated business entities who chose to use a copyrighted song in commercial contexts to help promote themselves, not random individuals who mashed-up two songs for fun. But if you believe Watson’s own language, the company does not make that kind of distinction between different types of alleged infringers.
“Is an unauthorized version of the composition ‘Space Jam’ considered copyright infringement?” the company asks in its FAQ. “Yes (there are a few exceptions). Without permission from Quadrasound Music, you most likely are an infringer.”
A team investigating sexual assault allegations by the late founder of a powerful talent agency for boy bands has found the charges credible, calling Tuesday (Aug. 29) for compensation for the victims and the resignation of the current chief executive.
The three-month probe, which included speaking with 23 victims, concluded that Johnny Kitagawa sexually assaulted and abused boys as far back as the 1950s and targeted at least several hundred people.
The investigative panel said Johnny & Associates must apologize, strengthen compliance measures and educate its ranks about human rights. Julie Keiko Fujishima, the chief executive, must resign for not taking action over the years, according to the special team. Kitagawa died in 2019 and was never charged.
“The company’s coverup led to the sexual abuse continuing unchecked for so long,” investigative team leader Makoto Hayashi told reporters in Tokyo. “There were many opportunities to take action.”
Critics say what happened at Johnny’s, as the Tokyo-based company is known, highlights Japan’s lagging awareness about rape, sexual harassment and human rights. Public opinion has often been unsympathetic toward people who say they were targeted by sexual predators.
In the Johnny’s case, about a dozen men have come forward in recent months to allege sexual abuse by Kitagawa, the agency’s founder, while performing as teens. More people are expected to come forward, the report said.
Fujishima has so far only apologized in a brief online video for “disappointment and worries ” over the case. It is unclear whether she will resign. The company in a statement reiterated its earlier apology and promise to hold a news conference, once it had studied the team’s report.
While rumors of abuse at Johnny’s circulated over the years and several tell-all books have been published, Japan’s mainstream media remained silent. Kitagawa began his management career with the teen boy band the Johnnys before founding Johnny & Associates in 1962, which spawned a series of “idol” groups including SMAP and Arashi.
Serious questions resurfaced this year after BBC News produced a special segment focused on several people who claimed to be Kitagawa’s victims. Another turning point came earlier this month when the U.N. Working Group on Business and Human Rights urged the Japanese government to take action. The group also accused Japan’s mainstream media of what it called “a cover-up.”
According to the allegations, Kitagawa asked fledgling singers and dancers, many of them children, to stay at his luxury home. When he told one of them to go to bed early, everyone knew it was “your turn,” those who have spoken up told the panel.
The boys were raped by Kitagawa when they were 14 or 15 and given 10,000 yen (about $100) bills afterward, the report said. It added that the victims feared they would be penalized if they refused. It recommends more people come forward, promises that their privacy will be protected and that no material evidence of a sexual attack will be required.
Those who have spoken out say they have been painfully traumatized, unable to tell anyone, even family, and still suffer flashbacks and depression, the report said.
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: Eminem invokes special political licensing rules to block a Republican presidential candidate from using his music at rallies; a federal judge cites Biggie & Wu-Tang to dismiss a copyright case; the messy Isley Brothers lawsuit has no quick end in sight; and much more.
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THE BIG STORY: Eminem Pulls Music From GOP Candidate
Eminem is demanding that a Republican presidential candidate stop using “Lose Yourself” on campaign stops — and, lucky for him, licensing groups like ASCAP and BMI have made it easy for him to do so.
In a letter obtained by Billboard, a rep for BMI formally asked Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign last week to stop using Eminem’s music, saying the star himself had requested that they do so. The move came less than two weeks after the candidate was captured in a viral video rapping the lyrics to the smash hit song at an event in Iowa.
“This letter serves as notice that the Eminem Works are excluded from the Agreement effective immediately,” the group wrote in the letter. “BMI will consider any performance of the Eminem Works by the Vivek 2024 campaign from this date forward to be a material breach of the agreement for which BMI reserves all rights and remedies.”
A spokeswoman for the campaign quickly announced that Ramaswamy would comply, saying they would “leave the rapping to the real Slim Shady.”
And that’s because they pretty much had to under the terms of BMI’s special “political entities” license – a unique legal solution crafted to address the problem of music stars who want to freely license their songs to stadiums, bars and other public spaces, but not to certain politicians.
To learn more about Eminem’s letter to Ramaswamy – and the history of top artists complaining about their music being used at political rallies – go read our full story over at Billboard.
Other top stories…
JUDGE KNOWS HER HIP HOP – It’s not every day that you see a federal judge cite Biggie, Wu-Tang, Kanye, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Neil Young in a single ruling. But that’s what Judge Martha Pacold did when she tossed out a copyright lawsuit against Future claiming he ripped off his 2018 song “When I Think About It” from an earlier track by a little-known Virginia rapper.
TRUMP HIRES GUNNA’S LAWYER – Facing a sweeping racketeering case in Atlanta, former President Donald Trump hired attorney Steven Sadow, a veteran Georgia criminal defense attorney who just represented Gunna in the high-profile criminal case against Young Thug and other rappers. Sadow, who has also represented Rick Ross, T.I. and Usher, will take over for Drew Findling, another lawyer with close ties to Atlanta’s hip hop community.
ISLEY BATTLE CONTINUES – A federal judge refused to quickly end a nasty lawsuit pitting members of the Isley Brothers against each other over the trademark rights to the band’s name. The ruling means more litigation over Rudolph Isley’s accusation that brother Ronald Isley of improperly is trying to secure sole ownership over a name that’s supposed to be jointly owned.
R. KELLY’S UMG ROYALTIES – More than $500,000 in R. Kelly’s royalties held by Universal Music Group must be handed over to Brooklyn federal prosecutors to help pay his victims, a federal judge ruled last week. The decision covers most of Kelly’s money held by Universal, but leaves unresolved questions about his funds held by Sony, Kelly’s former label, and about millions in additional money he owes to victims and debtors in other cases.
NAME CHANGE ENDS ‘FEST’ SUIT – Major League Baseball’s Minnesota Twins agreed to change the name of an upstart “TC Summer Fest” concert series in Minneapolis, a month after they were sued for trademark infringement by the organizers of Milwaukee’s decades-old Summerfest. The lawsuit accused the Twins of picking the name to “piggy-back” on the success of the existing event.
LIVE NATION SUED OVER INJURY – A stagehand hired to prepare a recent concert by The Weeknd in Texas is suing Live Nation, claiming that the company is liable for negligence after his leg was run over by a forklift while the stage was being built.
Eminem is demanding that Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy stop using “Lose Yourself” on campaign stops — and he’s invoking the unique rules of BMI’s special “political entities” license to do so.
In a letter obtained by Billboard, BMI formally asked Ramaswamy’s campaign last week to stop using Eminem’s music, less than two weeks after the candidate was captured in a viral video rapping the lyrics to the smash hit song at an event in Iowa.
The letter alerted the campaign that Eminem had invoked his rights under BMI’s Political Entities License, which allows an artist to immediately withdraw their music from the more than 20 million songs made available to political campaigns under the blanket license.
“This letter serves as notice that the Eminem Works are excluded from the Agreement effective immediately,” the group wrote in the letter. “BMI will consider any performance of the Eminem Works by the Vivek 2024 campaign from this date forward to be a material breach of the agreement for which BMI reserves all rights and remedies.”
A spokesman for the Ramaswamy campaign could not immediately be reached for comment.
Top artists have long chafed at the use of their music by politicians, particularly conservatives. Foo Fighters and John Mellencamp blasted John McCain for using their music during the 2008 presidential election, while Neil Young, Guns N’ Roses, Pharrell, Rihanna and the estate of Tom Petty have all spoken out about their music being used at campaign events for Donald Trump.
Like any other group hosting large public gatherings, political campaigns pay ASCAP and BMI for blanket licenses to publicly perform copyrighted music — meaning candidates have automatic access to songs without ever directly contacting the musicians themselves. But, owing to repeated backlash, both ASCAP and BMI now offer special licenses for political entities, which allow artists to exclude individual songs from a particular campaign’s blanket deal.
It was this provision that was invoked by Eminem, according to BMI’s letter: “BMI has received a communication from Marshall B. Mathers, III, professionally known as Eminem, objecting to the Vivek Ramaswamy campaign’s use of Eminem’s musical compositions and requesting that BMI remove all Eminem Works from the Agreement.”
In the past, there had been some confusion about whether the existing ASCAP and BMI licenses held by venues themselves — hotels, convention centers, event spaces and so on — gave campaigns some legal cover to keep using disputed songs even after they had been withdrawn. Back in 2018, Axl Rose claimed that the Trump campaign was doing exactly that when it came to Guns N’ Roses songs.
“Unfortunately, the Trump campaign is using loopholes in the various venues’ blanket performance licenses, which were not intended for such craven political purposes without the songwriters’ consent,” Rose wrote in a tweet at the time.
But BMI’s rules now expressly avoid that problem, warning licensees that “a venue license does not cover events and functions hosted by political campaigns and organizations held at venues.”
“Political campaigns must obtain a BMI Political Entities License to authorize to use of the musical works, whether at a traditional location such as a hotel or convention center, or at a nontraditional location such as airport hangars or community fields, where political events take place,” BMI states on its website.
It’s not every day that you see a federal judge cite Biggie, Wu-Tang, Kanye, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Neil Young in a single ruling.
But that’s what Judge Martha Pacold did Friday, when she tossed out a copyright lawsuit claiming Future ripped off his 2018 song “When I Think About It” from an earlier track by a little-known Virginia rapper. The judge ruled the accuser was essentially trying to sue over basic lyrics that are ubiquitous in hip hop.
“The thematic elements that [the accusers] address—guns, money, and jewelry—are frequently present in hip-hop and rap music,” the judge wrote. “The commonality of these themes in hop-hop and rap place [them] outside the protections of copyright law.”
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To prove her point on each guns, money, and jewelry, Pacold actually pointed to specific sets of lyrics for each one: First to Notorious B.I.G.’s “Machine Gun Funk,” then to Wu-Tang Clan’s C.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Me), and finally to Kanye West’s “Diamonds From Sierra Leone.”
“Where elements of a work are indispensable, or at least standard, in the treatment of a given topic, they receive no protection,” the judge wrote.
Lawyers for DaQuan Robinson sued Future (real name Nayvadius Wilburn) in 2021, claiming “When I Think About It” infringed Robinson’s earlier song “When U Think About It.” They claimed he had emailed a draft of his song to Future’s producer a year before the infringing song was released.
But in Friday’s decision, Pacold ruled that it did not matter whether Future had copied Robinson’s song, because the material he allegedly borrowed – even if he did so — was not covered by copyrights in the first place: “None of the elements Robinson has identified in ‘When U Think About It’ is protectable.”
Future’s song features the lyric “when I think about it,” which the lawsuit claimed infringed Robinson’s use of the lyric “when you think about it.” But the judge ruled that such a short, simple phrase could not be monopolized by any one lyricist.
“It is a fragmentary expression that is commonplace in everyday speech and ubiquitous in popular music,” Pacold wrote. She cited an earlier decision by another court that dismissed a similar lawsuit against Kanye West over his allusion the “Nietzschean aphorism” about “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” in his 2007 hit “Stronger.”
Future’s song and Robinson’s song tell similar stories about overcoming adversity, the judge said, but this basic idea is “too common a narrative to be protectable.” Adding to her earlier musical references, she cited the plot F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby to prove the point.
“A story about a person proving to those around him that he is better, despite a past full of hardships is general enough that it could also describe the plot of famous works of American literature,” Pacold wrote.
Even then, the judge wasn’t quite done making artistic references. To reject another one of Robinson’s claims — that Future had copied his use of a “core lyric” to help convey his song’s overall message — she cited Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and their seminal 1970 song “Our House.”
“The core lyric, ‘our house is a very, very, very fine house,’ is used to support the entire rest of the song, which uses the house and its constituent elements as the setting for the narrator’s relationship,” Pacold wrote. “This songwriting technique is not unique to Robinson, nor mid-century Canadian-American bands that feature intricate vocal harmonies. The mere use of a ‘core lyric’ to support a song’s storyline is not a protectable element because it is a frequently utilized technique in popular songwriting.”
The ruling can be appealed to a federal appeals court. Often, judges will allow accusers like Robinson to file an updated version of their case, but Pacold refused to do so: “Amendment would be futile because the relevant songs and their lyrics cannot change.”
Neither side immediately returned requests for comment on the ruling.
A stagehand hired to prepare The Weeknd‘s After Hours Til Dawn Tour stopover at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas on August 14, 2022, has filed suit against Live Nation Entertainment, alleging his leg was run over by a forklift while the stage was being built.
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Stagehand Steve Genovese was reportedly working for a company hired by Live Nation to construct the stage for the concert when the accident occurred. The complaint alleges five counts of civil liability including negligence, negligent hiring and gross negligence.
“Genovese was reported ‘run over by a forklift which was being operated by another worker on site,’” the complaint reads. “As a result, plaintiff suffered severe, excruciatingly painful and permanently disabling injuries to his leg. The flesh and muscle were torn away from his leg and were detached from the bones.”
The lawsuit also names concert promoter C3 Presents, business management firm David Weise & Associates and Cowboys Stadium, LP (which owns AT&T Stadium) as defendants. The Weeknd is not listed as a defendant.
“Defendants had the knowledge, ability, and duty to prevent the severe and life-altering injuries,”the complaint reads, but allegedly “placed more value on their own financial gain than on the safety of the workers who helped put on The Weeknd concert.”
According to the suit, there was no ambulance or EMS personnel on site when the accident occurred, which “significantly delayed” medical care. The complaint continues: “[Genovese] spent more than a month in the hospital where he underwent numerous surgeries to save his leg, which is now horrifically and permanently disfigured and impaired.”
Genovese is seeking damages for medical expenses, physical pain and suffering, mental anguish and emotional distress, loss of earning and earning capacity, physical impairment, disfigurement, “loss of society and enjoyment of life,” out of pocket expenses and more.
Facing a sweeping racketeering case in Atlanta, former President Donald Trump has hired attorney Steven Sadow, a veteran Georgia criminal defense attorney who just represented Gunna in the high-profile criminal case against Young Thug and other rappers.
Sadow, who has also represented Rick Ross, T.I. and Usher in the past, filed legal papers Thursday morning (Aug. 24) in Fulton County Court stating that he was “lead counsel of record for Donald John Trump.” When reached by Billboard, Sadow confirmed that had been hired to represent the former president.
“The President should never have been indicted,” says Sadow. “He is innocent of all the charges brought against him. We look forward to the case being dismissed or, if necessary, an unbiased, open-minded jury finding the President not guilty. Prosecutions intended to advance or serve the ambitions and careers of political opponents of the President have no place in our justice system.”
Trump, who is expected to surrender to prosecutors on Thursday, is facing 13 felony counts as part of a massive racketeering case against 19 defendants accused of trying to illegally overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia. Fulton County DA Fani Willis filed the charges under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a state-level version of the federal RICO law used to prosecute drug cartels and Mafia families.
That’s the same RICO statute that the same Fulton County prosecutor used in May 2022 to indict Young Thug, Gunna and dozens of others over their alleged involvement in a violent Atlanta street gang. The case claims that their “YSL” is not really a record label called “Young Stoner Life,” but a criminal enterprise called “Young Slime Life” that committed murders, carjackings, armed robberies, drug dealing and other crimes.
Represented by Sadow, Gunna pleaded guilty in December to exit that case by taking a so-called Alford plea — a maneuver that allows a defendant to enter a formal admission of guilt while still maintaining their innocence.
At the time, Gunna insisted that the deal did not involve cooperation with prosecutors. But when he entered his plea, Gunna admitted in court that YSL was both “a music label and a gang,” and that he had “personal knowledge that members or associates of YSL have committed crimes in furtherance of the gang.”
Young Thug and many others are still facing those charges. A trial technically kicked off earlier this year but has faced long delays in selecting a jury to hear the case and has not substantively begun yet. Young Thug has repeatedly been denied pre-trial release on bond.
Sadow will take over representing Trump from Drew Findling, another Atlanta lawyer with an extensive history representing rappers in criminal matters, including Gucci Mane, the members of Migos and Cardi B in her recent microphone-throwing incident in Las Vegas.
Though Findling has not formally departed the case yet, a person with knowledge of the situation confirmed to Billboard that he will no longer be retained by the former president. Findling himself did not return a request for comment on Thursday.
Trump is expected to surrender Thursday evening at Fulton County Jail in Atlanta, though he’ll only be there briefly before he is released on a negotiated bond. While some of the defendants in the YSL case are being held in the same building, Young Thug is detained in neighboring Cobb County Jail.
