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Tennessee governor Bill Lee signed the ELVIS Act into law Thursday (Mar. 21), legislation designed to further protect the state’s artists from artificial intelligence deep fakes. The bill, more formally named the Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security Act of 2024, replaces the state’s old right of publicity law, which only included explicit protections for one’s “name, photograph, or likeness,” expanding protections to include voice- and AI-specific concerns for the first time.
Gov. Lee signed the bill into law from a local honky tonk, surrounded by superstar supporters like Luke Bryan and Chris Janson. Lee joked that it was “the coolest bill signing ever.”
The ELVIS Act was introduced by Gov. Lee in January along with State Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson (R-27) and House Majority Leader William Lambert (R-44), and it has since garnered strong support from the state’s artistic class. Talents like Lindsay Ell, Michael W. Smith, Natalie Grant, Matt Maher and Evanescence‘s David Hodges have been vocal in their support for the bill.
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It also gained support from the recorded music industry and the Human Artistry Campaign, a global initiative of entertainment organizations that pushes for a responsible approach to AI. The initiative has buy-in from more than 180 organizations worldwide, including the RIAA, NMPA, BMI, ASCAP, Recording Academy and American Association of Independent Music (A2IM).
Right of publicity protections vary state-to-state in the United States, leading to a patchwork of laws that make enforcing one’s ownership over one’s name, likeness and voice more complicated. There is an even greater variation among right of publicity laws postmortem. As AI impersonation concerns have grown more prevalent over the last year, there has been a greater push by the music business to gain a federal right of publicity.
The ELVIS Act replaces the Personal Rights Protection Act of 1984, which was passed, in part, to extend Elvis Presley‘s publicity rights after he passed away. (At the time, Tennessee did not recognize a postmortem right of publicity). Along with explicitly including a person’s voice as a protected right for the first time, the ELVIS Act also broadens which uses of one’s name, image, photograph and voice are barred.
Previously, the Personal Rights Protection Act only banned uses of a person’s name, photograph and likeness “for purpose of advertising,” which would not include the unauthorized use of AI voices for performance purposes. The ELVIS Act does not limit liability based on context, so it would likely bar any unauthorized use, including in a documentary, song or book, among other mediums.
The federal government is also working on solutions to address publicity rights concerns. Within hours of Gov. Lee’s introduction of the ELVIS Act in Tennessee back in January, a bipartisan group of U.S. House lawmakers revealed the No Artificial Intelligence Fake Replicas And Unauthorized Duplications Act (No AI FRAUD Act), which aims to establish a framework for protecting one’s voice and likeness on a federal level and lays out First Amendment protections. It is said to complement the Senate’s Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe Act (NO FAKES Act), a draft bill that was introduced last October.
While most of the music business is aligned on creating a federal right of publicity, David Israelite, president/CEO of the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA), warned in a speech delivered at an Association of Independent Music Publishers (AIMP) meeting in February that “while we are 100% supportive of the record labels’ priority to get a federal right of publicity…it does not have a good chance. Within the copyright community, we don’t even agree on [it]. Guess who doesn’t want a federal right of publicity? Film and TV. Guess who’s bigger than the music industry? Film and TV.”
The subject of AI voice cloning has been a controversial topic in the music business since Ghostwriter released the so-called “Fake-Drake” song “Heart On My Sleeve,” which used the AI technology without permission. In some cases, this form of AI can present novel creative opportunities — including its use for pitch records, lyric translations, estate marketing and fan engagement — but it also poses serious threats. If an artist’s voice is cloned by AI without their permission or knowledge, it can confuse, offend, mislead or even scam fans.
Michael Jackson’s son Blanket is asking a Los Angeles judge to stop his grandmother from using money from the iconic singer’s estate to fund her ongoing legal battles against the estate’s executors over their recent $600 million deal with Sony.
In court filings obtained by Billboard, Blanket argued Monday that the estate shouldn’t foot the bill for Katherine Jackson’s pending appeal, in which she’s challenging a ruling last year that gave co-executors John Branca and John McClain approval to proceed with an unnamed transaction.
While the disputed deal itself is not explicitly named in legal documents, it appears to be the Jackson estate’s estimated $600 million deal to sell part of the singer’s catalog to Sony, the terms of which were first reported by Billboard last month.
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Monday’s objections highlight a recent rift between Katherine and Blanket. Both of them initially opposed the estate’s proposed transaction, but after the judge ruled last year that the deal could move forward, Blanket and Jackson’s other children accepted the decision. Katherine opted instead to keep fighting, filing an appeal that remains pending.
In December, Katherine filed motions asking that the estate pay for her legal bills stemming from her objections, including the ongoing appellate case. But in his filing on Monday, Blanket said it would be “unfair” to force him and his siblings to pay for that case, since his grandmother’s efforts face “long odds.”
“It is readily apparent that a reversal on appeal would be an extreme longshot,” wrote lawyers for Blanket, who now uses the name Bigi. “Given those odds, Bigi decided not to waste his resources to participate in an appeal. Nonetheless, Katherine has decided to appeal this court’s ruling. That decision is not for the benefit of the heirs.”
It’s unclear exactly how much Katherine is seeking. In a court filing earlier this month, Branca and McClain said she had asked for more than $561,548 to cover her legal fees for both her initial objections and the current appeal. In that filing, the executors said they strongly opposed any estate payments for her “failed objection” and “meritless appeal.”
In his filing Monday, Blanket didn’t entirely oppose his grandmother’s request. He argued that the estate should, in fact, pay her legal bills for her initial opposition to the deal — arguing that she had presented “essential evidence” about the proposed transaction and that “all heirs and beneficiaries benefited from this court’s scrutiny.”
But he also argued the actual dollar total she had requested “might be high,” and questioned whether she had really needed to hire “four lawyers charging fees of $840 to $1,400 per hour.” And he argued any legal fees for the ongoing appeal should be entirely denied, since the ruling allowing the deal to proceed had been “reasoned and detailed.”
“Katherine’s petition has the practical effect of requiring Bigi and his siblings pay for her appeal,” Blanket wrote. “It would be unfair to make those beneficiaries shoulder this burden when they expressly decided an appeal would not be in their best interests.”
An attorney for Katherine Jackson did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday. Reps for the Jackson estate declined to comment.
In an unusual ruling that quoted from Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well,” a California appeals court has rejected Metallica’s lawsuit demanding that its insurance company pay for more than $3 million in losses stemming from concerts that were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The decision, issued Monday (March 18) by California’s Court of Appeal, said that six COVID-cancelled 2020 shows in South America were not covered by Metallica’s insurance policy with Lloyd’s of London, thanks to a clear exclusion in the contract for any losses stemming from “communicable diseases.”
The legendary rock band had argued the case should have gone to trial, since a jury could have decided that non-COVID reasons led to the cancellations. But Justice Maria Stratton, improbably citing Swift, said it was “absurd to think that government closures were not the result of Covid-19.”
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“To paraphrase Taylor Swift: ‘We were there. We remember it all too well,’” the justice wrote. “There was no vaccine against Covid-19 in March 2020 and no drugs to treat it. Ventilators were in short supply. N-95 masks were all but non-existent. Patients were being treated in tents in hospital parking lots. The mortality rate of Covid-19 was unknown, but to give just one example of the potential fatality rate, by late March, 2020, New York City was using refrigerated trucks as temporary morgues. People were terrified.”
Metallica’s case is one of many that have been filed by musicians, venues, bars and other businesses seeking insurance coverage for harm caused by the outbreak of COVID-19, which led to months of severe travel restrictions, forced closures and bans on large gatherings.
But like Metallica’s case, the majority of those lawsuits have thus far been won by insurers. Many policies included express carveouts for problems caused by diseases, like the one in the band’s contract; other policies, like many for brick-and-mortar businesses, often required “physical damage” that’s tricky to show with a pandemic shutdown.
The biggest such case in the music industry is a sweeping lawsuit filed by Live Nation, seeking coverage from Factory Mutual Insurance Co. for more than 10,000 shows (encompassing a whopping 15 million tickets) that were canceled or postponed during the pandemic. After a judge refused to dismiss Live Nation’s allegations in 2022, the case remains pending.
Metallica sued Lloyd’s of London in June 2021 after the insurer refused to cover their losses stemming from the South American tour, which had been set to kick off on April 15, 2020, but was postponed when the governments of Argentina, Chile and Brazil imposed strict restrictions amid the worsening pandemic.
Court documents show that in May 2020, the band submitted a loss of $3,234,569 stemming from the cancelled shows, covering things like $184,996 in payroll for retained crew members. But citing the disease exclusion, the insurer quickly denied the claim: “Unfortunately we have to advise that no coverage is afforded for this matter under this Policy,” the company wrote in a June 2020 response letter.
In December 2022, a Los Angeles judge rejected Metallica’s case and the various arguments for why Lloyds should have paid for the concerts — including ruling that the cancellations were caused by travel restrictions that were “a direct response to the burgeoning COVID-19 pandemic.”
Appealing that decision, Metallica argued that a jury might have found a different cause for the concert cancellations. The band’s attorneys pointed to the fact that venues later reopened and the shows were performed in 2022, “despite the ongoing presence of COVID.”
But in her ruling Monday, Justice Stratton said that argument missed the mark. With the advent of vaccines and more information, “much had changed” by the spring of 2022.
“People were in a position to make a more accurate cost-benefit analysis of restrictions versus potential illness,” the justice wrote. “The fact that governments chose to lift restrictions at that point, two years after COVID-19 was first discovered, does not in any way call into question their reasons for imposing travel restrictions early in the pandemic.”
The judge also rejected various other arguments from Metallica, like the claim that the policy did not cover COVID cancellations because it did not specifically use the term “virus”: “The insurance policy definition of communicable disease does not refer to any pathogens nor does it limit the exclusion to only those communicable diseases caused by specific pathogens.”
Attorneys for both sides did not immediately return requests for comment.
Six months after Sam Smith and Normani beat a copyright lawsuit over their 2019 hit “Dancing With a Stranger,” a federal judge is refusing to force their accuser to reimburse their legal fees — a bill the stars say exceeded $700,000.
Smith and Normani have argued that they shouldn’t be forced to foot the huge bill they incurred fending off the “frivolous and unreasonable” lawsuit, which claimed the duo had copied a little-known 2015 song of the same name when they created “Dancing.”
While U.S. District Judge Wesley L. Hsu dismissed the lawsuit last year, he ruled Monday (Mar. 18) that the case was not so completely baseless as to warrant punishing the accuser with paying the stars’ massive legal bill.
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“Plaintiff’s claims were neither frivolous nor objectively unreasonable,” the judge wrote, calling the lawsuit a “close and difficult case” on a “contentious area of copyright law.”
Attorneys for Smith and Normani had argued that the lawsuit was merely a “gamble,” filed against the stars with “hopes for a massive payout.” But Judge Hsu said Monday there was “no evidence” of such ill intent by the accusers.
The case was filed in 2022 by songwriters Jordan Vincent, Christopher Miranda and Rosco Banlaoi, who claimed that “Dancing” was “strikingly similar” to their 2015 same-named track. In their complaint, they said it was “beyond any real doubt” that the song had been copied.
But in September, Judge Hsu said it was, in fact, very much in doubt. Granting Smith and Normani’s motion for an immediate ruling ending the lawsuit, the judge said the songs simply were not similar — and he criticized the plaintiffs for manipulating them to make them appear more alike.
“Permitting copyright plaintiffs to prevail … by rotating chords, recalibrating the tempo, and altering the pitch of a defendant’s song so that it sounds more similar to the plaintiffs’ would lead courts to deem substantially similar two vastly dissimilar musical compositions,” the judge wrote at the time.
Unlike most forms of American litigation, winners in copyright lawsuits are often able to legally recover the money they spent on lawyers fighting the case. Judges grant such requests in cases where a lawsuit shouldn’t have been filed or was litigated too aggressively, and fee awards can serve as a powerful deterrent against future questionable lawsuits.
In an October motion seeking $732,202 in fees, attorneys for Smith and Normani argued that Vincent, Miranda and Banlaoi’s case had been exactly the kind of pointless lawsuit that needs to be deterred. They argued that the songwriters and their lawyers had used aggressive tactics to advance faulty copyright claims that would be bad for all musicians.
“Plaintiff sought to monopolize unprotectable elements that are common property to all,” Smith and Normani’s lawyers wrote at the time. “Claims like Plaintiff’s here threaten to cheat the public domain and curtail the creation of new works.”
But in Monday’s ruling, Judge Hsu was not persuaded. He called Smith and Normani’s arguments “generic reasoning” that would lead to many such awards in future copyright lawsuits.
“Yes, Plaintiff’s counsel aggressively litigated the case,” the judge wrote. “Plaintiff’s conduct in this litigation does not rise to the level that calls for deterrence.”
Judge Hsu did rule that Smith and Normani could recover their legal “costs” from the plaintiffs, but such awards are typically far smaller than awards of attorney’s fees. In earlier court filings, attorneys for Smith and Normani calculated such costs at $10,173.
Neither side’s attorneys immediately returned requests for comment on Tuesday (Mar. 19).
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: Kelly Clarkson launches a new front in a legal war with her ex-husband; R. Kelly pushes to overturn his sexual abuse convictions; Ariana Grande finalizes her divorce from Dalton Gomez; and much more.
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THE BIG STORY: Kelly Clarkson Sues Her Ex-Husband
Kelly Clarkson’s ongoing legal battle with ex-husband Brandon Blackstock just got more complicated.
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Didn’t they finalize their divorce back in 2022? Sure, but that personal settlement didn’t resolve trickier business entanglements — namely, Clarkson’s relationship with Starstruck Entertainment, a management firm owned by Blackstock’s father that oversaw her career for years.
Shortly after Clarkson filed for divorce, Starstruck sued her for millions in allegedly unpaid fees, claiming it had “invested a great deal of time, money, energy and dedication” into her and had “developed Clarkson into a mega superstar.”
Clarkson responded by filing a complaint with California’s Labor Commissioner, resulting in a $2.6 million ruling last year that her ex-husband and Starstruck had violated California’s Talent Agencies Act (TAA) by serving not just as her personal managers, but as unlicensed talent agents who procured business deals.
With Blackstock currently appealing that November decision, Clarkson filed a new case in Los Angeles court this week — echoing her labor law complaint, but aiming to potentially go even further. To learn more, go read out entire story, which features the actual lawsuit Clarkson filed against Blackstock.
Other top stories this week…
R. KELLY ABUSE CONVICTION APPEAL — An attorney for the disgraced singer urged a federal appeals court to overturn his sexual abuse convictions and 30-year prison sentence, warning that the case against Kelly had stretched federal racketeering laws “to the point of absurdity” and could potentially turn college fraternities into illegal conspiracies.
MURDER CONVICTION OVERTURNED — A London appeals court overturned the murder conviction of Vybz Kartel, the Jamaican dancehall star who has worked with Rihanna, Jay-Z and others. The appellate court ruled that the guilty verdict had been tainted by a “fatal” error by the trial judge: allowing the jury to proceed as normal despite news that one of the jurors had attempted to bribe others.
THE SCATMAN COMETH — The Black Eyed Peas and Daddy Yankee were hit with a copyright lawsuit over allegations that they illegally sampled from classic ’90s song “Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)” in their own 2022 song “Bailar Contigo.” The case claims the artists promised only to interpolate the song and not to outright sample it, but “simply lied” in order to “avoid paying a larger licensing fee.”
JIMMIE ALLEN ASSAULT CASE DROPPED — The country star’s former manager agreed to dismiss her lawsuit claiming he sexually assaulted her, ending the case less than a year after it was filed. In the same filing, Allen also agreed to drop his countersuit accusing the woman of defamation. The lawsuit will continue against Wide Open Music, where the Jane Doe plaintiff was employed, and its founder, Ash Bowers. Allen will also continue to face a second lawsuit that claims that the singer assaulted a woman in a Las Vegas hotel room and secretly recorded it.
NBA YOUNGBOY CASE PAUSED — A federal judge ruled that the criminal case against YoungBoy Never Broke Again over gun charges must be put on hold until the U.S. Supreme Court decides a closely-watched Second Amendment battle this spring, likely delaying a trial that had been scheduled to start in July. The looming SCOTUS ruling will address a federal ban on gun ownership for domestic abusers; YoungBoy is accused of violating a similar gun ban for previously convicted felons.
DRAKE WANTS OUT OF ASTROWORLD CASE — Attorneys for the rapper asked a Texas judge to dismiss him from the sprawling litigation over the 2021 disaster at Travis Scott‘s Astroworld festival, which left 10 dead and hundreds injured. Drake was named in the cases because he performed on stage with Scott during the show, but his lawyers say he had nothing to do with planning the event and can’t be sued for simply showing up for a brief guest appearance.
THANK U, NEXT — Ariana Grande and Dalton Gomez finalized their divorce in Los Angeles family court, with the singer agreeing to pay her ex-husband $1.25 million, plus half the proceeds from the sale of their joint home and $25,000 of his attorneys’ fees; she will not pay him any ongoing alimony. The legal split was relatively easy, as the couple had signed a pre-nuptial agreement and had no children or other significant legal issues.
R. Kelly’s attorney on Monday (Mar. 18) urged a federal appeals court to overturn the singer’s sexual abuse convictions, warning that the case against Kelly stretched federal racketeering laws “to the point of absurdity” and could potentially turn college fraternities into illegal conspiracies.
At a hearing before the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, lawyer Jennifer Bonjean told a panel of judges that Kelly’s employees had just been “unwitting” staffers performing “anodyne” tasks for a famous person, not a group with a criminal “purpose” like the Mafia or a drug cartel.
Seeking to reverse Kelly’s conviction under the federal RICO law (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act), Bonjean accused prosecutors of using that law in a “preposterous” new way.
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“The government has extended the RICO statute to a set of circumstances that is so beyond what the framers intended, which was to get at organized crime,” Bonjean said. “Now, we’re talking about an organization with an alleged criminal, but not organized crime.”
After decades of accusations of sexual misconduct, Kelly was convicted in September 2021 on nine RICO counts related to accusations that the singer had orchestrated a long-running scheme to recruit and abuse women and underage girls. In 2022, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
At Monday’s hearing, Bonjean repeatedly told the judges that the government had failed to prove that members of Kelly’s organization knew crimes were being committed, meaning the RICO law didn’t apply. She said, for instance, that staffers didn’t know any of the women were underage.
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Kayla Crews Bensing, arguing back for the government, sharply rejected that claim: “The defendant had a system in place that lured young people into his orbit and then took over their lives,” she told the judges.
Bensing pointed to specific evidence that members of Kelly’s organization had been aware of the organization’s ill intent. She cited testimony that one victim had been approached by a member of Kelly’s entourage at a McDonalds, that she told him that she was only 16 years old and that he had then given her Kelly’s number and told her to call him. Another Kelly employee testified that he had answered phones for “Kelly’s girlfriends,” Bensing said, some of whom he identified as “mid-aged teenagers.”
“This is all evidence that the jury was entitled to infer that Kelly’s inner circle knew what was going on: that he was recruiting and maintaining underage women for sexual activity,” Bensing said.
Kelly faces long odds in his battle to topple his conviction, as federal appeals courts only overturn a small percentage of the convictions that are appealed each year. But Bonjean has had success in such cases in the past, most notably winning a 2021 ruling that overturned Bill Cosby’s 2018 sex assault conviction.
Following Monday’s arguments, the court will issue a ruling in the coming months.
Like in many appeals, large parts of Monday’s hearing were spent wrangling over in-the-weeds legal issues, like whether a single sexual act could fit the definition of “forced labor” under federal law, or whether Bonjean even had a procedurally proper way to fight her appeal since Kelly’s previous attorneys had failed to challenge the instructions given to the jury at trial.
On her main point about whether RICO requires an illicit “purpose,” Bonjean repeatedly faced pushback from the judges. The judges pointed out on multiple occasions that there is no written requirement that the law only be used against outright criminal organizations, and one judge specifically noted that labor unions had been repeatedly charged with violating RICO.
“RICO is looking at organizations, that are then used to commit criminal acts,” Judge Denny Chin said. “It doesn’t have to be a criminal organization. It could be a completely legitimate organization. But if it engages in racketeering activity, it violates RICO.”
But Bonjean remained adamant, arguing that the statute could not be brought to bear against an organization like Kelly’s, which she said merely had the purpose of promoting his musical career and personal brand.
“This was not a collection of people who had a purpose to recruit girls for sexual abuse,” Bonjean said. “Whether they turned a blind eye, whether some of them suspected that some of these girls were underage, that’s a whole different matter.”
“Once we get into that sort of territory, where we’re going say that that constitutes a RICO enterprise, we have a lot of organizations, we have a lot of frat houses, we have all types of organizations that are now going to become RICO enterprises,” Bonjean added.
Pushing the point further, Bonjean said that such an approach would have allowed federal prosecutors to charge infamous Ponzi scheme perpetraor Bernie Madoff with RICO violations rather than the slew of fraud charges he actually faced. At that point, Judge Richard J. Sullivan cut in.
“Well, he got 150 years,” Sullivan said. “I don’t think that it mattered.”
Jimmie Allen‘s former manager has agreed to dismiss her lawsuit claiming the country singer sexually assaulted her, ending the case less than a year after it was filed.
In court papers filed Thursday (Mar. 14), attorneys for Allen and his unnamed Jane Doe accuser — his former day-to-day manager — jointly asked a federal judge to dismiss her claims against the country singer. In the same filing, Allen also agreed to drop his counter-suit accusing the woman of defamation.
Jane Doe’s attorney, Beth Fegan at the law firm FeganScott, confirmed the agreement to Billboard: “FeganScott can confirm that Jane Doe and Jimmie Allen have reached a mutual accord as to Plaintiff’s claims and Mr. Allen’s counterclaims and have agreed to dismiss them The decision reflects only that both parties desire to move past litigation.”
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A rep for Allen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Though the claims against Allen will be dropped, the case will continue against management firm Wide Open Music, where the Jane Doe plaintiff was employed, and its founder, Ash Bowers. In her lawsuit, the accuser says Wide Open and Bowers didn’t do enough to protect their employee from Allen’s abusive behavior and fired her when she complained about it.
The agreement also won’t fully end Allen’s legal woes. The country star will continue to face a second lawsuit, filed by another Jane Doe, who claims that the singer assaulted her in a Las Vegas hotel room and secretly recorded it. That case remains pending.
Allen was a rising star in the country music world at the start of last year, but in May and June he was hit with the pair of sexual abuse lawsuits in quick succession. Following the accusations, his label, booking agency, former publicist and management company all suspended or dropped him.
The first case, filed on May 11, alleged that Allen had “manipulated and used his power” over the woman on his management team to “sexually harass and abuse her” over a period of 18 months that elapsed from 2020 to 2022.
“Plaintiff expressed in words and actions that Jimmie Allen’s conduct was unwelcome, including pushing him away, sitting where he could not reach her, telling him she was uncomfortable and no, and crying uncontrollably,” the woman’s lawyers wrote in the complaint. “However, Allen made clear that plaintiff’s job was dependent on her staying silent about his conduct.”
The second lawsuit, filed on June 9, accused Allen of battery, assault and other wrongdoing over an alleged July 2022 incident at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas. Though the Jane Doe in that case says she had “willingly joined Allen in the bedroom,” she claimed she had “repeatedly told him she did not want him to ejaculate inside her” because she was not on birth control, but that Allen had done so anyway. She also claimed that he had secretly filmed the encounter on his phone despite the fact that she had “not consented to being recorded”
Allen strongly denied all the accusations, saying he would “mount a vigorous defense.” He later counter-sued both women — accusing the management employee of defaming him and claiming that the other woman had stolen the phone he allegedly used to record her.
The Black Eyed Peas and Daddy Yankee are facing a lawsuit over allegations that they illegally sampled from classic 90s song “Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)” — a case that claims the artists “simply lied” in order to “avoid paying a larger licensing fee.”
In a lawsuit filed March 8, the company that owns the rights to “Scatman” accuse will.i.am (William Adams), Daddy Yankee (Luis Ayala Rodríguez) and others of “clear-cut copyright infringement” over their use of Scatman John’s ear-catching 1995 track in their own 2022 song “Bailar Contigo.”
The current owners of “Scatman” (Iceberg Records AS) claim that they granted a “limited license” allowing the superstars to use the underlying written music, but explicitly warned that a license to actually sample from the sound recording would cost more. The case claims the artists agreed to those terms, but that their “assurances turned out to be pretense.”
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“After comparing the tracks, it is apparent that the derivative work and the song are so strikingly similar that defendants have used the sound recording of the song, rather than just the composition, as agreed,” attorneys for Iceberg write in their lawsuit. “Defendants simply lied to plaintiff about not using the sound recording in order to avoid paying a larger licensing fee.”
The new case highlights the distinction between sampling (the use of an actual recording of an artist’s performance) and interpolation (the use of the same music but re-performed by the new artists). Sampling licenses require paying the owners of both the master and publishing copyrights to a given song, and thus typically cost more than interpolation licenses.
In the case of “Scatman” and “Bailar Contigo,” Iceberg claims it inked an interpolation deal with the Black Eyed Peas and Daddy Yankee in October 2022 in return for 75 percent stake in the publishing rights to the new song and a 5 percent income stream from the new recording. But Iceberg, which also owns the master to the song, says the contract “made clear” that the agreement was not a sampling deal.
“Rights to the recording of the original work (so called master rights) are not subject of this approval and require separate licensing,” the 2022 agreement purportedly read.
But when the song was released in November 2022, Iceberg’s lawyers say it obviously included a sample, not just an interpolation: “Although it appears that defendants attempted to manipulate the sound recording slightly to hide their infringement, the work remains so strikingly similar to the song that it could not have been created without using the song’s sound recording.”
Reps for both the Black Eyed Peas and Daddy Yankee did not immediately return requests for comment on the allegations. In addition to naming will.i.am as a defendant, the lawsuit also named Black Eyed Peas members apl.de.ap (Allen Pineda Lindo) and Taboo (Jaime Luis Gomez); it did not name not Fergie, who left the group in 2018.
Faced with only being able to secure an interpolation deal and not an outright sample clearance, artists will sometimes re-record a song in ways that sound very similar to the original recording. But that practice can ruffle feathers with the owners of masters, and has led to disputes in the past.
Last year, Rick Astley filed a high-profilelawsuit against Yung Gravy over the rapper’s breakout 2022 hit that heavily borrowed from the singer’s iconic “Never Gonna Give You Up,” alleging that the new track — an interpolation that sounded a whole lot like an outright sample — broke the law by impersonating Astley’s voice. In that case, Gravy cleared the underlying music (which Astley does not own) but failed to secure a license to sample the master.
The lawsuit, premised on Astley’s likeness rights, raised big questions about sound-alike songs and sampling, but the dispute was settled on confidential terms in September.
A London appeals court on Thursday (Mar. 14) overturned the murder conviction of Jamaican dancehall star Vybz Kartel, ruling that the 2014 guilty verdict was tainted by allegations that one juror attempted to bribe others.
The ruling came more than a decade after Kartel — a popular Jamaican artist who has worked with Rihanna, Jay-Z and others — and three others were convicted in Kingston, Jamaica of the 2011 killing of an associate named Clive “Lizard” Williams, whose body was never found.
In the decision, the appeals court ruled that the judge overseeing the 2014 trial had made a “fatal” error: allowing the jury to proceed to a verdict despite news that one of the jurors had attempted to bribe others. That juror was not removed, and soon after the jury returned a guilty verdict.
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“There should have been no question of allowing Juror X to continue to serve on the jury,” the appeals court wrote Thursday. “Allowing Juror X to continue to serve on the jury is fatal to the safety of the convictions which followed. This was an infringement of the defendants’ fundamental right to a fair hearing by an independent and impartial court.”
The decision came from the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, a London court that decides last-resort appeals from certain countries belonging to the Commonwealth of Nations, including Jamaica.
The ruling overturned Kartel’s conviction and his 32-year prison sentence, but he could still face a retrial on the same accusations. The appeals court said that Jamaican courts would decide whether such a trial will take place.
Kartel — along with co-defendants Shawn Campbell, Kahira Jones and Andre St John — faced a 64-day jury trial in early 2014 over accusations that they had killed Williams after he failed to return two unlicensed firearms they had lent him.
But on the final day of the trial, the judge was told that Juror X had attempted to “persuade another member of the jury” to acquit the defendants by offering bribes of 500,000 Jamaican dollars (roughly $3,200 US).
After receiving that information, the judge was faced with an unusually difficult choice. Because another juror had already been discharged over a separate issue, the only choice was to end the trial entirely after weeks of testimony or allow the case to continue to a verdict.
“It might have been possible simply to discharge a miscreant juror and to allow the remaining members of the jury to return verdicts [but] that was not possible here,” the appeals court wrote Thursday.
Though the appeals court said it had “considerable sympathy with the judge’s dilemma,” it said the decision to proceed with the problematic juror had been a “serious irregularity” that would result in a “miscarriage of justice” if allowed to stand.
“In coming to this conclusion, the Board is mindful of the very serious consequences which may flow from having to discharge a jury shortly before the end of a long and complex criminal trial,” the appeals court wrote, noting that England has statutes aimed at dealing with such situations.
“However, in the absence of such a provision — and there is no such provision in Jamaica — there will be occasions on which, as in the present case, a court will have no alternative but to discharge a jury and end the trial in order to protect the integrity of the system of trial by jury,” the court wrote.
Kelly Clarkson’s ongoing legal battle with ex-husband Brandon Blackstock is expanding with a new lawsuit aimed at potentially going much further than the $2.6 million ruling she won against him last fall.
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With Blackstock currently appealing that November decision, Clarkson filed a new case Monday in Los Angeles court, seeking a ruling that he and his father’s management firm had been violating state labor rules all the way back to back to the very start of their relationship.
Clarkson’s new lawsuit is seeking an order that would require the return of “any and all commissions, fees, profits, advances, producing fees or other monies” she paid to Blackstock’s father’s company, Starstruck Entertainment, dating back to 2007 – much further back than the earlier judgment, which only reached back to 2017.
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The new case is the latest development in a sprawling legal battle between the two ex-spouses, who split in 2020 after seven years of marriage. The divorce itself was finalized in 2022, but that personal settlement didn’t resolve tricky business entanglements with Blackstock’s father’s firm, which managed her for years.
Shortly after Clarkson filed for divorce, Starstruck sued her for millions in allegedly unpaid fees, claiming it had “invested a great deal of time, money, energy, and dedication” into her and had “developed Clarkson into a mega superstar.”
Clarkson responded by filing a complaint with California’s Labor Commissioner, arguing that Blackstock and Starstruck had violated California’s Talent Agencies Act (TAA) by serving not just as her personal managers, but as unlicensed talent agents who booked business deals.
In November, Commissioner Lilia Garcia-Brower ruled that Blackstock had indeed procured a number of deals for Clarkson, including her lucrative role as a judge on The Voice, that should have been handled by her talent agents at Creative Artists Agency (CAA). The decision ordered Blackstock to repay Clarkson more than $2.6 million in commissions she paid to him for handling those deals.
In December, Blackstock and Starstruck challenged that ruling in court, demanding that same questions be re-decided by a Los Angeles judge rather than by the Labor Commissioner. That case remains pending and is set for a hearing in August.
With her new lawsuit, Clarkson could win a ruling that would effectively confirm the findings of the Labor Commissioner. But the case could also give her a vehicle to expand the Commissioner’s decision – a ruling that went her way, but also rejected some of her core claims against Blackstock and Starstruck.
For instance, the commissioner rejected Clarkson’s claim that Blackstock was also required to pay back commissions he earned from helping to secure The Kelly Clarkson Show — which could have seen him owe much more. His involvement in that deal, including “strategizing” with her agents, was clearly “at the request of CAA” and thus not a violation of the law, the commissioner ruled.
An attorney for Blackstock did not immediately return a request for comment.
After a marriage of seven years, Clarkson filed for divorce from Blackstock in June 2020. The case was finalized two years later, with the singer agreeing to pay her ex-husband monthly child support of $45,601 for their two children, plus a one-time payment of just over $1.3 million.