Legal
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Soulja Boy is suing social media personalities Tasha K and William The Baddest for defamation after they allegedly made false statements about the rapper having a sexual encounter with a man.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Los Angeles court, Soulja Boy (DeAndre Cortez Way) cited a May interview on Tasha K’s celebrity gossip podcast in which William allegedly recounted explicit details of a supposed tryst he’d had with the “Crank That” rapper.
Soulja Boy’s lawyers say these statements were false and have brought “embarrassment and disgrace that can cause fans to abandon and withdraw from supporting him.”
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“Plaintiff has suffered actual reputational and professional harm as a result of defendants maliciously targeting plaintiff and seeking to sabotage his careers, redefining his character as a man who is not straight, a fraud and dishonest person in the entertainment industry, as a public figure, which is not true,” the rapper’s lawyers write.
It’s not the first time Tasha K (Latasha Kebe) has been accused of defaming someone on “UnWine With TashaK.” Back in 2022, Cardi B won a nearly $4 million defamation verdict against her over salacious statements about drug use, STDs and prostitution. Tasha has since tried to use Chapter 11 bankruptcy to avoid paying most of that judgment, but a judge rejected that effort last year.
In the new case, Soulja Boy’s attorneys are challenging statements made during a “tell-all interview” on May 16, in which William (William Thomas) recounted an “alleged intimate moment” with the rapper.
According to quotes from the lawsuit, William said: “So I walked over there, I get on my knee, he’s sitting on the edge of his bed. I started giving him oral, it’s a big thang and it grew, you know to the left.” The video itself no longer appears to be available on Tasha’s YouTube channel and could not be reviewed by Billboard.
After the interview went public, Soulja Boy says William has been “harassing and tormenting” him on social media, including an X post featuring a “defaming and embarrassing sexual photoshopped picture” that purports to depict himself with the rapper. William’s post allegedly urged his followers to click through to a page on OnlyFans – a site frequently used to share sexually-explicit imagery.
“Although the publications may be deleted, plaintiff will forever be damaged by the publications never being removed from the web,” the rapper’s lawyers write.
Days after the interview was first published, attorneys for Soulja Boy say they sent a cease and desist letter to Tasha and William demanding that they delete the “false, malicious and are completely outrageous” statements. The letter warned that they had “already engaged in tortious acts that entitle Mr. Way to monetary damages” and that if they did not stop, “your liability for such monetary damages will increase.”
Neither William nor an attorney for Tasha K immediately returned requests for comment on Thursday.
Ye (formerly Kanye West) is facing another lawsuit accusing him of illegal sampling, this time over allegations that he incorporated an instrumental track into two songs from Donda even after he was explicitly denied permission.
The case, filed Wednesday (July 17) in Los Angeles federal court, claims that Ye borrowed elements from a song called “MSD PT2” for his own “Hurricane” and “Moon” — both of which reached the top 20 on the Hot 100 when they were released in 2021.
Filed by a company that owns the rights to the earlier song, the case claims that when Ye was refused a license to use it, he simply “decided to steal it.”
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“This lawsuit is about more than defendants’ failure to pay a fee,” writes Oren Warshavsky and other attorneys from the law firm BakerHostetler, representing the plaintiffs. “It is about the rights of artists, musicians, and songwriters to determine how their works are published and used. Intellectual property owners have a right to decide how their property is exploited and need to be able to prevent shameless infringers from simply stealing.”
In an act of particularly “blatant brazenness,” the lawsuit claims that Ye even credited the song’s four creators — Khalil Abdul-Rahman Hazzard, Sam Barsh, Dan Seeff and Josh Mease — as songwriters despite their refusal to work with him.
Wednesday’s case was filed not by the artists themselves, but by a company called Artist Revenue Advocates (ARA), which owns the copyrights to “MSD PT2.” Lawyers for the company say the four artists turned to ARA after they “unsuccessfully attempted to collect their share of the proceeds from these songs” for nearly three years.
A spokesperson for Ye could not immediately be located for comment on the new case.
The new allegations come less than a month after Ye settled a separate lawsuit filed by the estate of Donna Summer over a very similar accusation. In that earlier case, Summer’s estate claimed the rapper had used her 1977 hit “I Feel Love” in his own “Good (Don’t Die)” despite a similarly explicit refusal.
“Summer’s estate … wanted no association with West’s controversial history and specifically rejected West’s proposed use,” the estate’s attorneys wrote at the time. “In the face of this rejection, defendants arrogantly and unilaterally decided they would simply steal ‘I Feel Love’ and use it without permission.”
Even before the two recent cases, Ye has been sued repeatedly for uncleared samples and interpolations in his music.
In 2022, Ye was hit with a lawsuit claiming his song “Life of the Party” illegally sampled a song by the pioneering rap group Boogie Down Productions; accused in another case over allegations that he used an uncleared snippet of Marshall Jefferson’s 1986 house track “Move Your Body” in the song “Flowers”; and sued in a different case by a Texas pastor for allegedly sampling from his recorded sermon in “Come to Life.”
Before that, West and Pusha T were sued in 2019 for sampling George Jackson‘s “I Can’t Do Without You” on the track “Come Back Baby.” That same year, he was sued for allegedly using an audio snippet of a young girl praying in his 2016 song “Ultralight Beam.” Further back, West was hit with similar cases over allegedly unlicensed samples used in “New Slaves,” “Bound 2” and “My Joy.”
Young Thug’s sprawling Atlanta gang trial is once again in need of a new judge.
Just two days after Judge Ural Glanville was ordered removed from the Young Slime Life RICO case, his replacement on the trial bench – Judge Shakura L. Ingram – said Wednesday that she would also recuse herself.
In doing so, Ingram cited her connection with Akeiba Stanley, a Fulton County courthouse deputy who was arrested last year for allegedly attempting to smuggle in contraband to another YSL defendant with whom prosecutors claim Stanley was having an “inappropriate relationship.”
Wednesday’s recusal order said that Stanley had previously a deputy assigned to Ingram’s courtroom.
“Because this court’s former assigned deputy could be called as a witness in any future proceedings in this case, the court may be called upon to assess this deputy’s credibility, or rule on matters related to her criminal prosecution,” Ingram wrote. “This may undermine the public’s confidence in the impartiality of the proceedings.”
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The judge stressed that she was not actually biased toward Stanley, but that she must avoid any “appearance of impropriety” in the proceedings: “The clerk of this court is directed to reassign this criminal action to another judge.”
It was not immediately clear who would replace Ingram, or how her recusal would impact the YSL case, which has already been pending for more than two years. The trial, which started in January 2023 but has faced numerous delays and disruptions, was already expected to run well into 2025. All the while, Young Thug has sat in jail, repeatedly denied bond over concerns that he might intimidate witnesses.
Thug (Jeffery Williams) and dozens of others were indicted in May 2022 over allegations that his “YSL” was not really a record label called “Young Stoner Life” but rather a violent Atlanta gang called “Young Slime Life.” Citing Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law, prosecutors claim the group operated a criminal enterprise that committed murders, carjackings, armed robberies, drug dealing and other crimes over the course of a decade.
Glanville, the chief judge of Fulton County Superior Court, had been presiding over the massive case from the start. But a month ago, it was revealed that the judge had taken part in a secret “ex parte” meeting with prosecutors and a key witness. Attorneys for Thug and other defendants alleged that Glanville had aided prosecutors in coercing the witness to testify and that the meeting had violated their constitutional rights to a fair trial.
On Monday, Judge Rachel Krause ruled that Glanville should be removed from the case over those complaints. Though Krause defended her fellow jurist’s conduct and said she had “no doubt” that Glanville could still fairly handle the case, Krause ordered him to step aside for the sake of “preserving the public’s confidence in the judicial system.”
The ruling is likely to further delay the YSL trial, which already saw an unprecedented 10-month jury selection process. Prosecutors have been presenting witness testimony for months, but have listed hundreds of potential witnesses that they might call.
When a permanent new judge is put into place, he or she will likely face demands for a mistrial by defense attorneys over Glanville’s conduct, as well as renewed requests for Thug and the other defendants to be released on bond until a verdict is reached.
Snoop Dogg is facing a copyright lawsuit that claims the legendary rapper has refused to pay a veteran studio musician after using two of his backing tracks – a case that cites an earlier battle between Tracy Chapman and Nicki Minaj.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in Los Angeles federal court, was lodged by Trevor Lawrence Jr., a well-known producer and drummer who has been credited on songs by Bruno Mars, Alicia Keys, Ed Sheeran, Mariah Carey and other top artists.
Lawrence claims that he created two backing tracks “on spec” and allowed Snoop (Calvin Broadus) to “experiment with the tracks in-studio,” but made clear that he would need to be paid an upfront fee and an ongoing royalties if the final songs were released commercially.
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Snoop allegedly did just that, using Lawrence’s material on his songs “Pop Pop” and “Get This Dick” from his 2022 album BODR. But Lawrence’s attorneys say no actual licensing deal was ever struck, and no money has ever been sent to their client.
“To date, defendants have refused to properly license the Lawrence tracks or compensate Lawrence for their use in the Broadus tracks,” Lawrence’s attorneys write in the lawsuit, which also named Death Row Records as a defendant.
The lawsuit offers a glimpse at industry practices surrounding the use of backing tracks – pre-recorded instrumental elements that artists can add to a final product. Lawrence says he often creates such tracks “of his own initiative” and then shops them around to prominent artists. But he says he does so with the understanding that “a proper license will and must be negotiated” before a song is commercially released.
Notably, the new case points to a high-profile legal battle in which singer Tracy Chapman accused rapper Nicki Minaj of illegally sampling one of her songs. In that case, a federal judge ruled in 2020 that artists like Minaj are free to “experiment” with materials in the studio to help foster “innovation within the music industry,” but violate copyrights if a song is released. Minaj eventually paid $450,000 to settle the case.
In the current case, Lawrence says that in 2020 he offered Snoop access to two backing tracks for use in the studio. Two years later, when a Snoop rep said the star wanted to use the tracks, Lawrence says he made his licensing requirements clear: a $10,000 flat fee producer advance and a 50% interest in the underlying musical composition. “The [Snoop] representative confirmed that these anticipated terms were acceptable,” the lawsuit says.
But when “Pop Pop” and “Get This Dick” were released a month later, Lawrence says he had never received a formal licensing offer – and has never been paid or credited in the two years since the songs were released. He also claims the songs were not only released on the album, but as NFTs (non-fungible tokens) that generated “tens of millions of dollars.”
“At no point in time did defendants … communicate to Lawrence any intention to exploit the Lawrence tracks in connection with a bundled offering such as [the NFT sale], nor did Lawrence authorize any such exploitation of his work, which was never within his prior contemplation,” his lawyers write.
A rep for Snoop Dogg did not immediately return a request for comment.
This is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between.
This week: Young Thug’s criminal trial is in chaos after the judge is forced to recuse himself; Nirvana ends a long-running lawsuit over its famed smiley face logo; the Beastie Boys launch a copyright battle against Chili’s over “Sabotage”; and much more.
THE BIG STORY: Young Thug Trial Judge Removed From Case
The controversial, oft-delayed, never-normal criminal trial of Young Thug got another stunning twist this week, when the Atlanta judge overseeing it was ordered removed from the case. Judge Ural Glanville’s recusal came a month after revelations of a secret “ex parte” meeting between the judge, prosecutors and a key prosecution witness. Attorneys for Thug and other defendants had argued that Glanville aided prosecutors in coercing the witness to testify and that the meeting had violated their constitutional rights to a fair trial. In her decision Monday (July 15), Judge Rachel Krause ruled that the secret meeting had not been “inherently improper” and that Glanville “can and would continue presiding fairly over this matter” if left on the case. But she criticized him for his handling of the fallout from the meeting revelations, and ordered him to step aside for the sake of “preserving the public’s confidence in the judicial system.” That’s all well and good, but the public’s confidence has already repeatedly been tested by the case against Young Thug. The sprawling racketeering case, which claims the rapper and dozens of others ran a violent Atlanta street gang called YSL, has meandered through the court system for more than two years — first through an unprecedented 10-month jury selection and then repeated delays and disruptions, including the stabbing of another defendant. Prosecutors have only presented part of their vast list of potential witnesses, and nobody expects the case to conclude early next year. All the while, Young Thug has sat in jail, repeatedly denied bond by Glanville. What happens now is anybody’s guess. With a new judge already set to take over (Judge Shakura L. Ingram was listed on the court docket by late Monday) defense attorneys will likely re-file their requests that Thug and the other defendants be released on bond. They will also likely renew their demands for a mistrial over Glanville’s handling of the case — a motion that, if granted, would force prosecutors to start the entire massive case over from scratch.
THE OTHER BIG STORY: Nirvana Settles Logo Battle
An epic, three-way legal battle over Nirvana‘s iconic smiley face logo is over. For years, lawyers for the rock legends had been locked in sprawling litigation over the image, which emerged as an unofficial emblem for the band in its heyday and has only grown more valuable in recent years amid a boom in ‘90s/’00s nostalgia. First, Nirvana sued fashion designer Marc Jacobs in 2018 for using it without permission on grunge-themed apparel. Then, a designer at Geffen Records named Robert Fisher came out of the woodwork to argue that he — and not Kurt Cobain — had created the image and owned the rights to it. “For 30 years now, Nirvana has reaped enormous profits from Mr. Fisher’s works,” his lawyers wrote when he jumped into the case in 2020. “Nirvana was able to do so without any compensation to Mr. Fisher by falsely claiming authorship and ownership.” Nirvana’s attorneys staunchly maintained that Cobain designed the logo — or at the very least, that Fisher didn’t own any rights to it. But those questions are moot now: Attorneys for all three sides filed a motion last week saying they had reached a settlement to end the case. Go read our full story on the settlement, which recounts the back story of a case that probed into the creative origins of one of rock’s best-known pieces of iconography.
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Other top stories this week…
CAN’T STAND IT – The Beastie Boys sued the owner of Chili’s over allegations that the restaurant chain used the rap trio’s 1994 song “Sabotage” in a social media advertisement without permission — an especially serious allegation from a trio that famously doesn’t allow its music to appear in ads. The offending content? An apparent spoof of the iconic “Sabotage” video featuring a restaurant heist and 1970s-era disguises. LABELS SUE VERIZON – The major music companies filed a massive copyright case claiming the telecom giant effectively encouraged its internet subscribers to steal music on a “staggering” scale. Seeking billions in damages, the case is the latest in a long series of lawsuits aimed at forcing ISPs to crack down on “repeat infringers.” And it came with a zinger: “While Verizon is famous for its ‘Can you hear me now?’ advertising campaign, it has intentionally chosen not to listen to complaints from copyright owners.” AI FIRMS LAWYER UP – AI music companies Suno and Udio hired Latham & Watkins to defend them against lawsuits filed by the three major labels that accuse the companies of using vast swathes of copyright music to “train” their models. Latham is a big deal in the BigLaw world, but especially in the burgeoning sub-niche of AI-training copyright defense litigation. The firm already reps Anthropic in such a case filed by music publishers, and OpenAI in a similar suit filed by The New York Times. DEFAMATORY DENIAL? Film composer Danny Elfman was hit with a libel lawsuit over statements he made to the media last year defending himself from claims that he sexually abused Nomi Abadi, a former friend and fellow composer. In denying the allegations, Abadi says Elfman falsely tarred her as a “liar, homewrecker, and an extortionist.” EX-RHCP IN HOT WATER – Josh Klinghoffer, a former guitarist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, was sued for wrongful death over allegations that he struck and killed a pedestrian near Los Angeles earlier this year due to “distracted driving.” Lawyers for the victim’s family say they have video evidence showing Klinghoffer “using a device mere seconds before he crashed” into Israel Sanchez. CLASS ACTION IN THE REARVIEW – A group of Spotify customers dropped their class action against the streaming giant over its recent decision to kill its short-lived “Car Thing” device, resolving a case that claimed Spotify left users holding “a useless product.” Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Spotify has more clearly indicated since the case was first filed that it will provide refunds to people who purchased the Car Thing. ABUSE CLAIMS AGAINST IRV GOTTI –The co-founder of Murder Inc. Records was hit with a lawsuit accusing him of sexual assault and rape, filed by an unnamed woman who says he repeatedly “coerced” her into sex by leveraging his “power and influence in the music world.”
More than a month after Min Hee-jin, CEO of HYBE subsidiary label ADOR, successfully avoided HYBE’s attempt to dismiss her from the job, another HYBE imprint has reportedly filed a lawsuit against the embattled executive and NewJeans executive producer.
On Monday (July 15), Korea JoongAng Daily reported that Source Music, the Korean label under the HYBE Labels umbrella that’s home to K-pop girl group LE SSERAFIM, has sued Min for 500 million Korean won (about $361,000), accusing her of defamation and disruption of business stemming from comments she made during two emotional press conferences she held in April — thereby damaging the LE SSERAFIM project.
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During those press conferences, Min claimed that her girl group project under Source, where she previously worked, was pushed aside by HYBE after the company decided to focus its efforts on LE SSERAFIM, which notably included two members of the hugely popular girl group IZ*ONE. According to Min, that change in focus led her to move away from Source and establish ADOR — a label operating under the HYBE Labels umbrella that Min previously told Billboard “started with guaranteed autonomy” — to house her project, which eventually became NewJeans.
During the press conferences, the ADOR CEO also shared what some considered disparaging remarks about several HYBE artists and Source Music’s talent casting — telling reporters that future NewJeans member Minji was the only Source trainee she wanted to recruit and that she cast the rest of the group members herself.
Source Music has not shared a statement on the reported lawsuit. Billboard has reached out to HYBE to verify the lawsuit and offer further details.
While LE SSERAFIM’s Coachella debut in April turned the girl group into a hot topic in Korean media over the pressure put on K-pop artists, Min’s subsequent remarks turned up the heat even more. The backlash to her critiques was so harsh that it led NewJeans and its five members to disable comments on their Instagram pages in late June.
The new lawsuit marks the second time a HYBE subsidiary has filed suit against Min. In May, BELIFT LAB sued Min for defamation and obstruction of business over her comments that BELIFT’s breakout girl group ILLIT had plagiarized NewJeans, stating that the label “copied all the formulas that we had with” the group.
The new lawsuit reportedly filed by Source is just the latest development in a continually unfolding drama. On July 9, Min reportedly arrived at the Yongsan Police Station in Seoul for questioning after HYBE reported her to authorities for breach of trust. Continuing her proclivity to engage in direct media interactions (instead of putting out press releases and statements like HYBE), a smiling Min left the station after eight hours and, to the press gathered outside, called HYBE’s accusations “comedy.”
Amid the commotion, NewJeans has continued rolling out new music. In late June, the group released its first two singles aimed at the Japanese market: “Supernatural” (which peaked at No. 7 on the Billboard Japan Hot 100) and the B-side “Right Now” (which peaked at No. 47 on the same chart) before holding a fan meeting at the famous Tokyo Dome. Meanwhile, Source Music confirmed that LE SSERAFIM is set to drop new music at the end of August following the February release of its EP Easy, which peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard 200.
The Atlanta judge overseeing rapper Young Thug’s gang trial has been ordered removed from the case — a stunning development in sprawling proceedings that have already become the longest-running in Georgia state history.
The ruling, issued by Judge Rachel Krause, came a month after revelations of a secret “ex parte” meeting between Judge Ural Glanville, prosecutors and a key witness. Attorneys for Thug and other defendants have argued that the meeting violated their constitutional rights to a fair trial.
Glanville says the meeting was proper and has repeatedly refused requests to step down, but earlier this month referred the case to Krause to decide whether he should continue presiding over it. And in a decision on Monday (July 15), she said that he should not.
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“This court has no doubt that Judge Glanville can and would continue presiding fairly over this matter if the recusal motions were denied,” Krause wrote. “But the necessity of preserving the public’s confidence in the judicial system weighs in favor of excusing Judge Glanville from further handling of this case.”
Krause did not specify who would take over the proceedings, or how the ruling would impact the timeline of the trial, which has already been underway for more than 18 months. Neither prosecutors nor defense attorneys immediately returned requests for comment on Monday.
Thug (Jeffery Williams) and dozens of others were indicted in May 2022 over allegations that his “YSL” was not really a record label called “Young Stoner Life” but rather a violent Atlanta gang called “Young Slime Life.” Citing Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law, prosecutors claim the group operated a criminal enterprise that committed murders, carjackings, armed robberies, drug dealing and other crimes over the course of a decade.
The trial has already been beset by procedural delays. Jury selection last year took more than 10 months to complete, and prosecutors have already spent many months presenting only part of their vast list of witnesses. The case is expected to run until at least early next year.
Last month, Thug’s attorney, Brian Steel, revealed that he had learned of a secret meeting between Glanville, prosecutors and a key witness named Kenneth Copeland. Claiming that the judge had helped prosecutors coerce the uncooperative Copeland into testifying with threats of extended jail time, Steel argued that the ex parte meeting was clear grounds for a mistrial.
Rather than address Steel’s complaints, Glanville instead demanded to know how he had learned of the meeting and eventually ordered him sent to jail when he refused to share his source. Since that bizarre incident, Steel and other defense attorneys have repeatedly demanded that Glanville step down from the case.
“Glanville’s actions offend public confidence in the independence, integrity, and impartiality of the judiciary,” wrote fellow defendant Yak Gotti (Deamonte Kendrick) in a petition last month to Georgia’s Supreme Court.
In her ruling on Monday, although Krause ordered Glanville removed from the case, she made a point to say that the ex parte meeting itself appeared to have been mostly above board: “While the meeting could have — and perhaps should have — taken place in open court, nothing about the fact of the meeting or the substance discussed was inherently improper.”
Rather than the meeting with prosecutors itself, Krause said that it was Glanville’s later handling of the fallout from those revelations — namely, his choice to rule on a dispute in which he himself was involved — that now required that he step away from the case.
“In presenting his record as to the recusal issues and in ruling on Kendrick’s motion, Judge Glanville evaluated and accepted the truth of his own factual allegations, mandating his recusal,” Krause wrote.
The three major record labels are suing Verizon over allegations that the telecom giant effectively encouraged its internet subscribers to steal copyrighted music on a “staggering” scale.
In a lawsuit filed Friday in Manhattan federal court, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment claim that Verizon has “buried its head in the sand” in the face of repeated warnings about piracy on its network, fostering a “safe haven” for illegal activity.
“While Verizon is famous for its ‘Can you hear me now?’ advertising campaign, it has intentionally chosen not to listen to complaints from copyright owners,” lawyers for the labels wrote. “Rather than taking any steps to address its customers’ illegal use of its network, Verizon deliberately chose to ignore plaintiffs’ notices, willfully blinding itself to that information and prioritizing its own profits over its legal obligations.”
The financial stakes for Verizon could be very large. The labels accuse the company of infringing more than 17,000 songs; if a judge awarded the maximum penalty for each of those songs, the damages could total more than $2.5 billion. The allegedly-infringed tracks include music by The Beatles, Michael Jackson, Beyoncé, Katy Perry and hundreds of other top artists.
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The new case is the latest in a long line of major lawsuits aimed at forcing internet service providers to take more proactive steps to eliminate piracy on their networks. In one such case, the labels initially won a shocking $1 billion verdict against Cox Communications.
For years, internet service providers typically weren’t held liable for individual infringements by their millions of users, thanks to a “safe harbor” provided by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. But starting in the mid-2010s, music companies began arguing that ISPs had forfeited that immunity by ignoring the DMCA’s requirement that they terminate “repeat infringers” from their network.
Beginning with a landmark case filed by BMG against Cox, those arguments have repeatedly proved successful. Major labels have filed similar cases against Cox, Charter, RCN and other ISPs in courts around the country, often winning huge judgments against them.
In the new lawsuit filed Friday, the labels turned those same arguments against Verizon. The company has allegedly received “hundreds of thousands” of notices of illegal file-sharing by specific subscribers, the lawsuit says, but “deliberately refused to take action” so that it could “continue to collect millions of dollars from them.”
“Verizon’s motivation for refusing to terminate or suspend the accounts of blatant infringing subscribers is simple: Verizon valued corporate profits over its legal responsibilities,” attorneys for the labels wrote.
Back in 2019, a federal jury in Virginia ordered Cox to pay $1 billion in a similar case, awarding the labels more than $99,000 for each of 10,017 separate songs. Though that verdict was later vacated on appeal, Cox could still face a similarly large fine when the total is recalculated in a future trial.
In technical terms, the lawsuit accuses Verizon of contributory infringement (meaning the company induced or authorized its customers to pirate the music) and vicarious infringement (meaning the ISP profited from illegal downloading it could have stopped).
A rep for Verizon did not return a request for comment on Monday.
Wiz Khalifa took an unexpected detour to a Romanian jail over the weekend when the 36-year-old rapper (born Cameron Jibril Thomaz) ran afoul of the country’s drug laws while lighting up one of his omnipresent joints on stage. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news According to a […]
AI music companies Suno and Udio have hired elite law firm Latham & Watkins to defend them against lawsuits filed by the three major labels in late June, according to court documents.
Filed by plaintiffs Sony Music, Warner Music Group (WMG) and Universal Music Group (UMG), the lawsuits claim that Suno and Udio have unlawfully copied the labels’ sound recordings to train their AI models to generate music that could “saturate the market with machine-generated content that will directly compete with, cheapen and ultimately drown out the genuine sound recordings on which [the services were] built.”
Latham & Watkins has already played a key role in defending top companies in the field of artificial intelligence. This includes the firm’s work to defend Anthropic against allegations of infringement levied by UMG, Concord Music Group and ABKCO last October. Latham represents OpenAI in all of its lawsuits filed by authors and other rights owners, including the case filed by the New York Times and a case filed by comedian Sarah Silverman and other writers.
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The Latham team is led by Andrew Gass, Steve Feldman, Sy Damle, Britt Lovejoy and Nate Taylor. Plaintiffs UMG, WMG and Sony Music are represented by Moez Kaba, Mariah Rivera, Alexander Perry and Robert Klieger of Hueston Hennigan as well as Daniel Cloherty of Cloherty & Steinberg.
It is common for AI companies to argue that training is protected by copyright’s fair use doctrine — an important rule that allows people to reuse protected works without breaking the law — and it is likely this will become a core part of Latham’s defense of Suno and Udio’s practices. Though fair use has historically allowed for things like news reporting and parody, AI firms say it applies equally to the “intermediate” use of millions of works to build a machine that spits out entirely new creations.
So far, both Suno and Udio have declined to comment on whether or not they have used unlicensed copyrights in their datasets. However, the music industry started to question what was in those datasets after a series of articles written by Ed Newton-Rex, founder of AI music safety nonprofit Fairly Trained, were published by Music Business Worldwide. In one of them, Newton-Rex said he was able to generate music from both Suno and Udio that “bears a striking resemblance to copyrighted music.”
The lawsuit cites circumstantial evidence to support the labels’ belief that their copyrighted material has been used by Suno and Udio in AI training. This includes generated songs by Suno and Udio that sound just like the voices of Bruce Springsteen, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Michael Jackson and ABBA; outputs that parrot the producer tags of Cash Money AP and Jason Derulo; and outputs that sound nearly identical to Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” The Beach Boys’ “I Get Around,” ABBA’s “Dancing Queen,” The Temptations’ “My Girl,” Green Day’s “American Idiot” and more.