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Slacker is pleading with a judge to overturn his recent ruling requiring the streamer to pony up $10 million in unpaid royalties, arguing it will cause the company economic ruin. But SoundExchange says it is merely the company’s “latest attempt to shirk their obligations.”
The two have been battling in court since June over allegations that Slacker’s parent LiveOne — formerly LiveXLive — owes millions to artists and labels. Earlier this month, SoundExchange demanded — and quickly won — a ruling from Judge André Birotte Jr. that LiveOne must pay up the full $9,765,396 in unpaid royalties.
Faced with that massive judgment, Slacker now says that SoundExchange’s demand for full payment was an unfair tactic and must be overturned — or risk permanently harming its financials: “This economic damage this will cause LiveOne will be unsustainable for this small company.”
But SoundExchange is unimpressed. In a response, the company says that LiveOne has “steadfastly” avoided paying for music for years, and that harsh measures are “necessary to protect performing artists.”
“The court should deny defendants’ latest attempt to shirk their obligations with the promise that next time will be different,” SoundExchange’s lawyers wrote.
“Refusing To Pay”
SoundExchange, which collects performance royalties for sound recording copyrights, sued LiveOne in June, claiming the company had stopped paying artists and labels way back in 2017. And it claimed that a subsequent audit revealed it had been underpaying for years before that.
Court records show the two sides entered into the repayment plan in 2020, which gave Slacker two years to pay its debts. But in the June lawsuit, the SoundExchange claimed that Slacker had quickly failed to live up to the terms of the agreement.
“By refusing to pay royalties for the use of protected sound recordings, Slacker and LiveOne have directly harmed creators over the years,” SoundExchange president and CEO Michael Huppe said at the time. “Today, SoundExchange is taking a stand through necessary legal action to protect the value of music and ensure creators are compensated fairly for their work.”
Just a few months into the litigation, SoundExchange played an unusual legal trump card. On Oct. 12, the group invoked a pre-signed judgment, which had been inked by execs at Slacker back in 2020 as part of the repayment plan. Under the terms of that earlier deal, if Slacker ever defaulted again, its executives agreed that a judge should enter a so-called judgment against the company for the full sum owed.
On Oct. 13, Judge Birotte Jr. did exactly that, ordering the Slacker to pay $9,765,396, which covered both unpaid royalties and late fees. He also permanently barred the company from using the so-called statutory license, an important federal provision that makes copyright licenses for recorded music automatically available to internet radio companies like Slacker and Pandora at a fixed price.
“Economic Damage”
Faced with that huge debt, LiveOne responded last week with a motion seeking to “set aside the judgment” and asking the judge order the two companies into settlement talks – a move they say will allow them to reach “a fair payment schedule.”
LiveOne’s lawyers said they had been engaged in “ongoing and fruitful negotiations” for a new repayment plan when SoundExchange had suddenly invoked the pre-signed consent judgment. They argued the move came only because LiveOne did not agree to “a complete acceptance” of SoundExchange’s “last and final” settlement offer.
More startlingly, LiveOne’s lawyers said SoundExchange’s big judgment had quickly caused other creditors to call in other debts owed, threatening “economic damage” to the company that would be “unsustainable.”
“Plaintiff’s surreptitious request for entry of judgment has triggered LiveOne’s default on two substantial senior secured notes which are secured by all of LiveOne’s and their subsidiaries assets,” LiveOne’s lawyers wrote. “If LiveOne does not promptly discharge SoundExchange’s default judgment, the secured creditors will accelerate the loans and call for immediate repayment of principal and unpaid interest.”
A rep for LiveOne did not immediately return a request for comment on the filing or for elaboration on its claims about the company’s finances.
“Long Enough”
In a new filing this week, SoundExchange offered no apologies for playing hardball with LiveOne. It said it had spent years “indulging” the company’s “many excuses for non-payment,” and that it had simply become time for the streamer to be legally forced to pay up.
“Five years is long enough,” the group wrote. “SoundExchange has no obligation to negotiate ad infinitum with defendants, who have demonstrated at every opportunity that they will leverage the creativity of others without compensation.”
SoundExchange’s lawyers said the group had been “initially amenable” to working out another deal, but that their patience quickly ran out: “Facing stalled settlement negotiations and an apparent unwillingness to abide by their contractual, statutory, or judicial obligations, that willingness had limits.”
As for LiveOne’s warnings that such a ruling might destroy the company, SoundExchange was skeptical. The group’s lawyers pointed out that LiveOne had missed key deadlines in the case, and had waited months to hire litigation attorneys to deal with the lawsuit.
“Defendants’ contention that the judgment poses an existential threat to their business is difficult to square with their lackadaisical approach to finding counsel and subsequent non-adherence to the court’s deadlines,” they wrote.
And if things really are as bad LiveOne’s attorneys claim, SoundExchange said it’s all the more reason for a final judgment to be entered against the company.
“Every hour defendants divert consumers who might otherwise use a different, royalty-paying digital music streaming service, thereby depriving rightsholders of royalties to which they are entitled,” the group wrote. “If Defendants’ dire financial situation is to be believed, artists may never see those royalties.”
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: Cardi B avoids millions in damages by winning her trial over a sexually-explicit album cover, Jay-Z files a lawsuit to escape his Cognac partnership with Bacardi, Miley Cyrus quickly settles a case over an Instagram photo of herself, and much more.
THE BIG STORY: Cardi B Wins Trial Over ‘Raunchy’ Album Cover
It was all over pretty quick.After nearly five years of litigation, it took just four days of trial and 90 minutes of deliberation for a jury to clear Cardi B of wrongdoing in a lawsuit filed by Kevin Brophy, a California dad whose back tattoos were unwittingly photoshopped onto a “raunchy” Cardi album cover.Brophy sued in 2017 for millions in damages, claiming he was “devastated, humiliated and embarrassed” by the cover of her 2016 mixtape Gangsta Bitch Music Vol. 1. The image featured Cardi staring directly into the camera with her legs spread wide, holding a man’s head while he appears to perform oral sex on her.Here was the problem: While the actual man in the image was a model who had consented to the shoot, a giant tattoo on his back belonged to Brophy. Unbeknownst to Cardi, a freelance graphic designer had typed “back tattoos” into Google Image, found one that fit (Brophy’s), and photoshopped it onto the model’s body. It apparently didn’t occur to him that he would need anyone’s approval to do so.When the trial kicked off last week, Brophy testified that the image had been a “complete slap in the face” and had caused him “hurt and shame.” Then on Wednesday, Cardi herself took the stand — repeatedly sparring with Brophy’s attorney (A. Barry Cappello of Cappello & Noel LLP), demanding “receipts” to support the allegations, and accusing him and his lawyers of “harassing” her in hopes of scoring a settlement.In the end, jurors were clearly swayed by the arguments from Cardi’s lawyers (Peter Anderson of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP and Lisa F. Moore of Moore Pequignot LLC). Among other defenses they raised, their primary argument was pretty simple: That nobody would have recognized a relatively unknown man based merely on his back tattoo, and that he had little proof anyone did.After the verdict, Cardi took to Twitter to celebrate her legal victory: “I just won this lawsuit …Im soo emotional right now,” the superstar wrote. “I wanna kiss Gods feet right now …..IM BEYOND GRATEFUL!!!!”
Other top stories this week…
HOV WANTS OUT OF BOOZE BIZ — Jay-Z filed a lawsuit seeking to end his involvement with D’Usse Cognac, a brand he currently co-owns with spirits giant Bacardi. The rap mogul’s lawyers claimed that Bacardi is legally required to buy out his half of the business, but that the company is “lowballing” and “stonewalling” him to get a cheaper price. The lawsuit said Jay-Z’s move to exit D’Usse came amid “growing concern” about how Bacardi was running the company, including supply chain failures and an unwillingness to change prices.HEDLEY SINGER SENTENCED FOR SEX ASSAULT — Singer Jacob Hoggard, the former frontman for multi-platinum pop-rock band Hedley, was sentenced in Canada to five years in prison for the sexual assault of an Ottawa woman. The sentence came after a June verdict that found Hoggard guilty of sexual assault causing bodily harm of a woman known only as “JB” during a 2016 incident in an Ontario hotel room. Hoggard could have received as much as 14 years, but prosecutors sought only six to seven years. His defense attorneys asked for three to four years.ONE ASTROWORLD VICTIM SETTLES CASE — Attorneys for the family of Axel Acosta, a 21-year-old man who died at the last year’s Astroworld music festival in Houston, announced they had reached an agreement to resolve their legal case against Live Nation and Travis Scott, one of the first known settlements in the sprawling litigation over the disaster. But sources close to Scott quickly said he had not been involved in settlement talks, and no formal notice was filed on the court’s docket, leading to uncertainty about what had actually happened. Even if a deal is struck by Acosta’s family, thousands of other alleged victims are still seeking billions of dollars in damages from Live Nation, Scott and others, claiming they were legally negligent in how they planned and conducted the event.CHARGES DROPPED AGAINST LIL DURK — Prosecutors in Georgia told a judge that they would no longer pursue criminal charges against the Chicago rapper (real name Durk Derrick Banks) over a 2019 shooting in downtown Atlanta, citing “prosecutorial discretion.” Along with the late rapper King Von, Durk was arrested way back in May 2019 on accusations that he was involved in gunfire near the popular Atlanta restaurant The Varsity, which left a victim with a non-fatal gunshot wound to the thigh. More than three years later, prosecutors insisted “probable cause existed for the defendant’s arrest” but that “the decision of the District Attorney at this time is not to prosecute.”MILEY CYRUS ENDS INSTAGRAM CASE — Just a month after it was filed, Miley Cyrus settled a copyright lawsuit that accused the star of violating copyright law by posting a paparazzi photo of herself to Instagram. Such allegations are a bizarrely common legal problem for celebrities, and over the past few years Dua Lipa, Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Emily Ratajkowski, LeBron James, Katy Perry and others have all faced similar cases. Like Miley’s case, most of the lawsuits quickly settle. That’s because it’s actually a pretty cut-and-dried legal issue: Photographers own the copyrights to the images that they take, and using those photos without a license constitutes infringement. Unfair as it might seem, appearing in an image does not give a celebrity co-ownership of it, nor does it give them a right to repost it for free.MUSIC HACKER GETS TWO YEARS IN PRISON — A British computer hacker who stole unreleased songs from Ed Sheeran and Lil Uzi Vert was sentenced in the UK to 18 months in prison. Prosecutors said Adrian Kwiatkowski, 23, hacked the artists’ cloud-based accounts and sold their songs on the dark web in exchange for $147,000 in cryptocurrency. The case was actually sparked by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which linked the crime to Kwiatkowski and then handed the case off to British authorities.
Rapper Lil Durk is no longer facing criminal charges in Georgia over a 2019 shooting in downtown Atlanta, after prosecutors said they were choosing not to pursue the case.
In a court filing reviewed by Billboard, the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office told a state judge that it would exercise “prosecutorial discretion” to drop the charges against the Chicago rapper, whose real name is Durk Derrick Banks.
“The facts of this case have been reviewed and, although it appears that probable cause existed for the defendant’s arrest, the decision of the District Attorney at this time is not to prosecute,” the DA’s office wrote in the filing, made Oct. 17 in Fulton County Superior Court.
The Fulton County District Attorney’s Office did not immediately return a request for comment from Billboard.
Durk, 30, surrendered to Fulton County authorities in May 2019 on charges that included attempted murder. Prosecutors said Durk and the late rapper King Von were involved in a shooting that February near the popular Atlanta restaurant The Varsity, which left a victim with a non-fatal gunshot wound to the thigh.
At the time, the Chicago rapper declared his innocence. “Once I heard, I immediately came back,” he told local outlet WSB-TV. “I have nothing to hide. I have nothing to run from.” Durk also released a track in an attempt to clear his name: “Look up at the judge, can’t look, stay makin’ up lies for sure/ I’m a innocent man for sure, it is what it is for sure/ Nobody gon’ ride, had a warrant so I can’t hide.”
Von (real name Dayvon Daquan Bennett) was later killed in a shooting at an Atlanta nightclub. He was 26 at the time.
Durk’s attorney, Manny Arora, did not return a request for comment from Billboard on Monday (Oct. 24), but in a statement told WSB-TV, “While it took three years for the State to make the right decision, in the end the right decision was made and Mr. Banks can finally put this event behind him.”
A Turkish pop singer accused of “inciting hatred and enmity” with a joke about Turkey’s religious schools rejected the charge Friday (Oct. 21) during her first court appearance.
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Singer-songwriter Gulsen was charged and briefly jailed over the joke she made during a concert in April, when she quipped that the “perversion” of one of her musicians came from attending a religious school.
The 46-year-old singer, whose full name is Gulsen Colakoglu, was taken away from her Istanbul home in August after a video from the concert began circulating on social media, with a hashtag calling for her arrest.
She was jailed for five days and later spent 15 days under house arrest despite having apologized for any offense she caused religious school graduates. She now faces up to three years in prison if found guilty of the incitement charge.
In her testimony Friday, Gulsen said she had teased a band member who was nicknamed “Imam” but had not attended a religious school.
“It was just a joke between two people. It was not a statement,” Milliyet newspaper quoted the singer as telling the court. “I did not display an attitude that would incite the people to hatred and enmity.”
“I did not target a third person, a social class or section of society,” she said, requesting an acquittal.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and many members of his Islam-based ruling party are graduates of religious schools called Imam Hatip, which were originally established to train imams.
A 48-page indictment against Gulsen had 702 complainants, including from individuals, a pro-government women’s rights organization and a religious school association. Some of them withdrew their complaints on Friday, Milliyet reported.
Turkey’s penal code criminalizes incitement of hatred and enmity against different groups in society based on class, race, religion or sect, requiring a prison sentence in cases that lead to threats against public safety.
Gulsen previously become a target in Islamic circles due to her revealing stage outfits and for unfurling an LGBTQ flag at a concert.
The court on Friday lifted an obligation for her to register at a police station every week but retained a ban on her leaving Turkey. It adjourned the proceedings until Dec. 21.
A federal jury on Friday (Oct. 21) said Cardi B was not legally liable in a lawsuit filed by a California man whose back tattoos were unwittingly photoshopped onto an album cover, making it look like — he claimed — he was the one performing oral sex on her, according to Law360. The verdict allows the superstar to avoid millions of dollars in requested damages.
Following a four-day trial, the jurors said that Cardi (real name Belcalis Almánzar) did not violate Kevin Brophy’s rights with the bawdy cover of her 2016 mixtape Gangsta Bitch Music Vol. 1, which accidentally featured a large image of Brophy’s back tattoo.
The actual man in the image was a model who had consented to the shoot, but a giant tattoo on the man’s back belonged to Brophy. Unbeknownst to Cardi, a freelance graphic designer had typed “back tattoos” into Google Image, found one that fit (Brophy’s), and Photoshopped it onto the model’s body. It apparently didn’t occur to him that he would need anyone’s approval to do so.
Brophy testified that the “raunchy” cover had been a “complete slap in the face” that had caused him “hurt and shame,” but jurors were clearly swayed by Cardi’s defenses — like the idea that nobody could even recognize him from the image of his back.
Brophy sued in 2017 for millions in damages, claiming he was “devastated, humiliated and embarrassed” by the cover. He claimed Cardi and others violated his so-called right of publicity by using his likeness without his consent, and also violated his right to privacy by casting him in a “false light” that was “highly offensive.”
Ahead of the trial, Cardi’s legal team argued those accusations were “sheer fantasy” and “vastly overblown” — and that Brophy was just suing her in an effort to “cash in the legal equivalent of a lotto ticket.” Her team says nobody would have recognized a relatively unknown man based merely on his back, and that he has little proof anyone did.
Friday’s verdict came after four heated days of trial. Cardi took the witness stand on Wednesday, repeatedly sparring with an opposing attorney, demanding “receipts” to support Brophy’s claims, and accusing him and his lawyers of “harassing” her in hopes of scoring a settlement.
Brophy has options to appeal the verdict, if he so chooses: First by asking the judge to overturn the verdict, and then by taking the case to a federal appeals court.
Jay-Z wants to sell his stake in D’Usse Cognac, and says that Bacardi – which owns the other half of the business – is legally required to buy it. But in a new lawsuit, the superstar claims the liquor giant is “lowballing” and “stonewalling” him to get a cheaper price.
In a complaint filed in Delaware court, Jay-Z’s SCLiquor LLC says that it exercised a contractual option to sell its 50 percent stake in D’Usse to Empire Investments, the Bacardi unit that owns the other half and runs the company’s day-to-day operations. Hov’s company claims the move came after years of “mismanagement and underperformance” by Bacardi.
But according to the lawsuit, which was made public on Thursday (Oct. 20), Bacardi and Empire responded to the move not by following the rules, but by refusing to hand over key information and scheming to “artificially depress” the price it would pay.
“Empire sought to stall and stonewall SC’s efforts in an attempt to wrest SC’s 50% membership interest in D’Usse at a cheaper price by, among other things, refusing to provide necessary information,” SCLiquor’s lawyers wrote.
According to the lawsuit, SCLiquor holds a so-called “put option” on D’Usse’s corporate entity, a legal mechanism that, when triggered, requires Bacardi to buy out Jay-Z’s half of the business. The two sides are supposed to negotiate in “good faith,” exchange information and agree on a fair price.
But Jay-Z’s lawyers say that when they exercised the put option last year, Empire and Bacardi did anything but operate in good faith.
“Instead, Empire has abused its day-to-day control of D’Usse to deprive SC of information necessary to … assess D’Usse’s value,” SCLiquor’s lawyers wrote. “Empire has done so by engaging in an apparent shell-game with its parent company Bacardi.”
They say the move to sell off Hov’s stake came amid “growing concern” about how Empire was running the company, including its “blatant conflict of interest” with Bacardi. Jay-Z’s lawyers say Empire has relied on Bacardi to provide key services, even though the parent company has had repeated failures that hurt D’Usse, including supply chain failures and an unwillingness to change prices.
In its current form, the lawsuit is only seeking to force Empire to turn over more information about D’Usse. But the complaint says that information will also be used to “investigate potential future actions for damages.”
A rep for Bacardi did not immediately return a request for comment on the lawsuit.
A computer hacker who stole unreleased songs from British pop star Ed Sheeran and American rap artist Lil Uzi Vert has been sentenced to 18 months in prison, U.K. prosecutors said Friday.
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Adrian Kwiatkowski, 23, of Ipswich in southern England, hacked the artists’ cloud-based accounts and sold their songs on the dark web in exchange for cryptocurrency. City of London Police, which investigated the case, said Kwiatkowski made 131,000 pounds ($147,000) on the transactions.
“Kwiatkowski had complete disregard for the musicians’ creativity and hard work producing original songs and the subsequent loss of earnings,” said Joanne Jakymec of the Crown Prosecution Service. “He selfishly stole their music to make money for himself.”
In August, Kwiatkowski pleaded guilty to a variety of charges, including 14 copyright offenses and three counts of computer misuse. He was sentenced Friday (Oct. 21) in Ipswich Crown Court.
City of London Police worked with authorities in the United States to investigate the case after the management companies of several musicians reported that an individual, known online as Spirdark, had gained access to their clients’ cloud-based accounts and was selling their content.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office launched an investigation in 2019, and linked the email address used for Spirdark’s cryptocurrency account to Kwiatkowski. It then identified the IP address of the device used to hack one of the accounts as his home address.
After further investigation, Kwiatkowski was arrested by the City of London Police’s Intellectual Property Crime Unit in September 2019.
“Cybercrime knows no borders, and this individual executed a complex scheme to steal unreleased music in order to line his own pockets,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L Bragg Jr. said.
Travis Scott, Live Nation and other organizers of last year’s deadly Astroworld music festival in Houston appear to have reached their first settlements with victims in the sprawling litigation over the disaster.
Nearly a year after a crowd-crush during Scott’s Nov. 5 performance left 10 dead and hundreds injured, attorneys for the family of Axel Acosta, a 21-year-old killed in the incident, confirmed Thursday that they had reached a settlement with the organizers. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
“Victim Axel Acosta was a beloved son, brother, and student,” said Tony Buzbee, who also represents scores of other victims. “He was kind and loving. He is greatly missed. Please keep his family in your prayers.”
Separately, Houston’s ABC affiliate reported late Wednesday that the family of Brianna Rodriguez, a 16-year-old who died at Astroworld, had also settled their claims. Neither settlement is yet posted to the court’s public docket.
Live Nation and a rep for Scott did not immediately return requests for comment on Thursday.
The agreements represent two of the first known settlements in the sprawling litigation over the Astroworld disaster, in which thousands of victims are seeking billions of dollars in damages from Live Nation, Scott and others. The lawsuits, consolidated before a single judge earlier this year, claim the organizers were legally negligent in how they planned and conducted the event, resulting in one of the deadliest concert disasters in history.
The defendants, which also include venue manager ASM Global and the municipal Harris County Sports & Convention Corporation, strongly deny the allegations and have assembled a formidable team of lawyers to fight the litigation.
According to a legal filing in May, more than 4,900 people have filed legal claims stating they were injured in some capacity at Astroworld. In addition to the 10 people who died, 732 claims have been filed by people who needed “extensive medical treatment” and 1,649 who needed less extensive care. Another 2,540 were listed as “other,” meaning the extent of their injuries was still being reviewed. It’s unclear how many people claim physical harm versus mental and emotional harm, like post-traumatic stress.
The individual settlements announced this week are likely only a precursor to a larger deal. Similar litigation over previous concert disasters, like the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas that left 60 dead or the 2003 nightclub fire in Rhode Island that killed 100, were ultimately resolved with large settlements covering hundreds of victims.
Cardi B didn’t hold back when she took the witness stand Wednesday (Oct. 19) in a lawsuit claiming her sexually-suggestive album cover left a man “humiliated,” repeatedly sparring with an opposing attorney, requesting “receipts” and claiming her accuser is “harassing” her in hopes of scoring a settlement.
The rapper’s testimony came in an unusual case filed by Kevin Brophy, a California man who claims parts of his back tattoo was unwittingly photoshopped onto the cover of Cardi’s 2016 mixtape Gangsta Bitch Music Vol. 1 to make it look like he was performing oral sex on the now-superstar.
During Wednesday’s hearing, Cardi and Brophy’s attorney, A. Barry Cappello, battled repeatedly. At two different points during their sparring, the judge dismissed the jurors from the courtroom to calm the bickering down. On the second dismissal, things got so heated that the judge told Cappello he had “totally crossed the line,” and even threatened to declare a mistrial after jurors had left the courtroom.
Earlier in the day, Brophy’s attorneys said they had sent the star a cease-and-desist seeking to have the image removed – prompting Cardi to fire back that the case was really about money, not changes to an album cover.
“This is not about taking anything down. Y’all have been harassing me for $5 million,” the star said to Cappello. Cardi later noted that the mixtape did not even earn that much, and her cut was even less.
The star also took exception to the suggestion that Brophy’s image on the cover had somehow contributed to her meteoric success over the past decade – a key part of his legal case against her. She said she had been “working my ass off [for] two kids” and that it’s “really insulting to me as a woman that a man is claiming responsibility.”
Released in 2016, the cover image of Gangsta Bitch certainly raised eyebrows. In it, the then-rising star is seen taking a swig of a large beer, staring directly into the camera with her legs spread wide and holding a man’s head while he appears to perform oral sex on her.
The actual man in the image was a model who had consented to the shoot, but a giant tattoo on the man’s back belonged to Brophy. Unbeknownst to Cardi, a freelance graphic designer had typed “back tattoos” into Google Image, found one that fit (Brophy’s), and Photoshopped it onto the model’s body. It apparently didn’t occur to him that he would need anyone’s approval to do so.
Brophy sued in 2017 for millions in damages, claiming he was “devastated, humiliated and embarrassed” by the cover. He says Cardi and others violated his so-called right of publicity by using his likeness without his consent, and also violated his right to privacy by casting him in a “false light” that was “highly offensive.”
Cardi’s legal team has argued those accusations are “sheer fantasy” and “vastly overblown” – and that Brophy is just suing her in an effort to “cash in the legal equivalent of a lotto ticket.” Her legal team says nobody would have recognized a relatively unknown man based merely on his back, and that he has little proof anyone did.
The trial kicked off on Tuesday, when Brophy testified that Cardi’s “raunchy” image had caused severe stress on his life. He called it a “complete slap in the face” that had caused him “hurt and shame.”
But at Wednesday’s hearing, Cardi pointed out from the witness stand that the model in the image was “a Black man that’s fit” who has hair. Brophy is white with a shaved head.
“It’s not Mr. Brophy’s back. It doesn’t look like Mr. Brophy at all,” she told Cappello. “There has been not one receipt he has provided in the court claiming, ‘Hey, that’s you on Cardi’s mixtape.’”
Wednesday’s proceedings also featured testimony by Brophy himself and his wife, as well as Cardi’s former manager Klenord “Shaft” Raphael. Testimony will continue on Thursday, with a verdict expected on Friday or Monday.re
Miley Cyrus has settled a copyright lawsuit a month after she was sued for posting a paparazzi photo of herself to Instagram, according to court documents filed Wednesday (Oct. 18) and obtained by Billboard.
In the original complaint, filed on Sept. 12 in Los Angeles federal court, photographer Robert Barbera claimed that Cyrus reposted his 2020 image of her without a license or permission to do so. In the snap, the “Midnight Sky” singer is seen waving to fans as she exits a building.
In his complaint, Barbera claimed Cyrus has an “immense presence” due to her millions of followers on Instagram, and that posting the image “crippled if not destroyed” his ability to make money licensing it.
According to court documents, the lawsuit was subsequently dismissed “with prejudice,” meaning Barbera cannot refile the same claim again in that court.
The lawsuit against Cyrus is not the first Barbera has filed. The New York-based photographer previously filed copyright complaints against Ariana Grande in May 2019 and January 2020, and Justin Bieber in October 2019, though both cases were later settled on confidential terms. Earlier this summer, he filed another lawsuit against Dua Lipa that at the time of publication is still pending in court.
Though these cases may seem unfair, the law is on the side of photographers like Barbera, as they own the copyrights to the images that they take — and using those photos without a license constitutes infringement. Simply appearing in an image does not give a celebrity co-ownership of it, nor does it give them a right to repost it for free.
Had the court found that Cyrus had infringed Barbera’s copyright, the singer could have faced damages totaling as much as $150,000. For that reason, most celebrities accused of infringement by photographers opt to settle out of court, likely for a smaller sum, in order to avoid the time and expense that come with continued litigation. Though the terms of these settlement deals are nearly always private, for a single photo, amounts likely range in the tens of thousands of dollars.