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Legal

Page: 71

Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler is facing a second lawsuit accusing him of sexually assaulting a minor decades ago, this time by a woman who says he forcibly kissed and groped her in New York City in 1975.
In a complaint filed Thursday (Nov. 2) in New York court, former teen model Jeanne Bellino says she has suffered “severe and permanent emotional distress” over the incidents, which allegedly occurred over a single day in the summer of 1975 when she was 17 and Tyler was 27.

“By 1975, Tyler had acquired wealth, stature, and power as a result of his career and status as a rock star,” Bellino’s lawyers write. “Tyler used his power, influence, and authority, as a well-known musician to sexually assault Plaintiff.”

In her lawsuit, Bellino claims that she and a friend had arranged to meet Aerosmith in Manhattan. While they were allegedly walking down Sixth Avenue with his entourage, she says Tyler pushed her into a phone booth.

“While holding her captive, Tyler stuck his tongue down her throat, and put his hands upon her body, her breasts, her buttocks, and her genitals, moving and removing clothing and pinning her against the wall of the phone booth,” her lawyers write. “As Tyler was mauling and groping Plaintiff, he was humping her pretending to have sex with Plaintiff.”

During the incident, Bellino says she could feel that “Tyler’s penis was erect and it was evident to her as he rubbed it against her that he was not wearing underwear and wearing thin pants.”

Because she was “relying upon her friend for transportation,” the woman’s lawyers say, a “dazed, confused, and shocked” Bellino continued with the group to the Warwick Hotel, where the band was allegedly staying.

“At the hotel, they entered through a bar entrance and there, Steven Tyler again pinned Plaintiff against the wall, put his tongue down her throat and started humping Plaintiff, simulating sex,” the lawsuit says.

Tyler then allegedly left and returned to his room, telling Bellino he would call her up later. Sitting in the lobby “sobbing and afraid,” she alleges that a call eventually came, but she says she instead fled the hotel with the help of a doorman and a sympathetic cab driver, who took her home to Queens. She claims she “immediately shared the horror she suffered with her sister, still crying uncontrollably.”

“As a result of the sexual assault, Plaintiff was hospitalized and medicated,” her lawyers write. “Plaintiff has continued to require medication to cope with the sexual assault and has suffered long term physical injury associated with the trauma.”

A rep for Tyler did not immediately return a request for comment on Thursday.

The new case comes just under a year after Tyler was sued by Julia Holcomb, who claims that the rocker repeatedly assaulted her for three years starting in 1973, when she was just 16 years old. Holcomb claims to be the girl Tyler referred to in his memoir, Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?, when he wrote he “almost took a teen bride” and convinced her parents to grant him guardianship over her.

“She was 16, she knew how to nasty, and there wasn’t a hair on it,” Tyler wrote in the book passage that’s quoted in the lawsuit.

Tyler has denied the accusations and moved to dismiss the case in April. However, his arguments raised eyebrows at the time, as one of his defenses was that he was immunized against the allegations because he had been granted legal custody over Holcomb.

Like Holcomb’s case, Bellino’s new lawsuit cites a so-called look-back law that allows alleged victims to bring cases that would otherwise be barred by the statute of limitations. Bellino cites the Gender Motivated Violence Act, which was amended last year to add a two-year lookback window that began on March 1.

Stories about sexual assault allegations can be traumatizing for survivors of sexual assault. If you or anyone you know needs support, you can reach out to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN). The organization provides free, confidential support to sexual assault victims. Call RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline (800.656.HOPE) or visit the anti-sexual violence organization’s website for more information.

A jury was finally seated Wednesday in the sweeping RICO case in Atlanta against Young Thug and other alleged members of a street gang called YSL, clearing the way for a trial to begin in late November after months of delays.

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At the end of a hearing in Fulton County Superior Court, Judge Ural Glanville swore in a jury to hear the case, in which prosecutors allege that Young Thug (Jeffery Williams) and his YSL were not really a record label called “Young Stoner Life” but a violent Atlanta gang called “Young Slime Life.”

The process of picking a jury began way back in January, but the effort was repeatedly delayed as the court struggled to find jurors who could commit to the massive case. With a trial expected to last many months, many prospective jurors successfully argued that they could not afford to halt their lives, citing the need to earn money, childcare commitments and health problems.

The original indictment, filed in May 2022 by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, named Thug and 27 other alleged gang members as defendants, but the upcoming trial will feature just seven. Many defendants have pleaded out of the case, including fellow star rapper Gunna (Sergio Kitchens), who accepted a plea deal last December. Others have been split from the proceedings into separate cases.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Judge Glanville said the opening statements in the trial would kick off on Nov. 27. The jury is composed of seven Black women, two white women, two Black men and one white man, according to reports by Atlanta media outlets including the local NBC affiliate.

The YSL case is built around Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a law based on the more famous federal RICO statute that’s been used to target the mafia, drug cartels and other forms of organized crime. Such laws make it easier for prosecutors to sweep up many members of an alleged criminal conspiracy based on many smaller acts that aren’t directly related. Notably, it’s the same statute that Willis is using to prosecute former President Donald Trump and several associates over allegations that tried to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Thug and the other defendants are accused of violating the Georgia RICO law through numerous individual “predicate acts,” including murders, carjackings, armed robberies, drug dealing and other crimes over the course of a decade, as well as other separate charges. Thug also faces several other charges over guns, drugs and other materials allegedly found in his home when he was arrested.

If fully convicted, he could face a life sentence. He’s already been in jail for 17 months since the indictment was handed down, after the judge repeatedly refused to grant him pre-trial release on bond.

Beyond indicting two of rap’s biggest stars, the YSL case also made waves because it cited their lyrics as supposed evidence of their crimes — a controversial practice that critics say unfairly sways juries and injects racial bias into the courtroom. California recently restricted the tactic in that state, but Willis has strongly defended using it against Young Thug.

The extent to which prosecutors can present lyrics as evidence at the upcoming trial is not yet settled. A hearing next week is scheduled to hear arguments from both sides before a ruling is issued ahead of the Nov. 27 start date.

Duane Keith “Keffe D” Davis, the former street gang leader charged with masterminding the 1996 drive-by killing of Tupac Shakur, is slated to appear in court on Thursday (Nov. 2) for his arraignment in the case. According to the Associated Press, however, it’s unclear if Davis will have a lawyer representing him during the appearance after losing his bid to be represented in court by the lawyer who spoke out in public about his defense two weeks ago.

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Attorney Ross Goodman said on Oct. 19 that he saw “obvious defenses” in the murder case, pointing out that police and prosecutors do not have a murder weapon or the car used in the shooting, as well as “no witnesses from 27 years ago.” Prosecutors have said that Davis is the last person alive who was in the car that night.

Goodman told the AP on Wednesday (Nov. 1) that Davis, 60, could not meet terms of an agreement that the judge in the case gave two weeks to hash out on Oct. 19; Goodman did not specify what was holding up such an agreement. When Davis appears in court today, Clark County District Court Judge Tierra Jones could order a financial accounting of Davis’ assets to determine if he can afford a lawyer of if she needs to declare him indigent and name a public defender to handle the case.

A deputy in the Clark County public defender’s office told the AP that they are reviewing the case to determine if they can represent Davis or if they have a conflict of interest such as representing other people involved in the case in the past. The judge may also name a private practice defense attorney to represent Davis at taxpayers’ expense, or assign a public defender from the county.

“We’re just not sure at this point how this will play out and who will end up representing him,” said Jordan Savage, assistant special public defender. Davis’ longtime Los Angeles personal lawyer, Edi Faal, said he expected a public defender would be named to defend Davis; Faal previously said he was helping Davis find a defense attorney in Nevada and confirmed Goodman’s involvement two weeks ago. Davis is expected to plead not guilty to the murder charge, which could land him in prison for the rest of his life.

Davis was arrested outside his suburban Las Vegas home on Sept. 29 on the same day an indictment was filed against him accusing the self-proclaimed street gang leader of orchestrating the shooting that killed Shakur, 25, and wounded his label boss, imprisoned music mogul Marion “Suge” Knight.

Davis’ nephew, gang member Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, 23, was involved in a brawl with Shakur in a Las Vegas casino on the night of the shooting and denied being involved in the shooting; he was killed in a May 1998 shooting in Compton and the other two men in the car with Davis and Anderson are also dead. Davis, meanwhile, has discussed his alleged role Shakur’s death in interviews as well as in a 2019 tell-all memoir describing his time as a Crips gang leader in Compton, including claiming that he provided the gun, was in the car and was the “on-ground, on-site commander of the effort” to kill Skakur and Knight that night.

A songwriter named Vince Vance is once again suing Mariah Carey over accusations that she stole her perennially-chart-topping “All I Want for Christmas is You” from his earlier song, a year after he dropped a previous lawsuit making the same allegations.
In a complaint filed Wednesday (Nov. 1) in Los Angeles federal court, Vance (real name Andy Stone) made the same basic accusations as he did in his last lawsuit: that Carey’s 1994 holiday blockbuster infringed the copyrights to his 1989 song of the exact same name. That’s no small claim: Carey’s “All I Want” has reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 during each of the past four holiday seasons.

But the new case includes far more detailed — and far more personal — allegations against Carey, including that she made up the story of how she wrote the song, and that her own co-writer, Walter Afanasieff, has disputed that story.

“Carey has without licensing, palmed off these works with her incredulous origin story, as if those works were her own,” Vance’s new lawyers wrote in the re-filed complaint. “Her hubris knowing no bounds, even her co-credited songwriter doesn’t believe the story she has spun. This is simply a case of actionable infringement.”

Notably, Vance is now represented by Gerard P. Fox, the same attorney who represented two songwriters who accused Taylor Swift of stealing the lyrics to “Shake It Off.” That case went on for more than five years of litigation before it ended in December 2022 with a confidential settlement.

Just like his first lawsuit, Vance’s new complaint claims his own “All I Want for Christmas is You” was recorded by his Vince Vance and the Valiants in 1989 and had received “extensive airplay” during the 1993 holiday season — a year before Carey released her better-known song under the same name.

But his new lawsuit includes new details about the success of his earlier song, calling it a “a country music hit” that peaked at No. 31 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart and later reached No. 23 on the Hot 100 Airplay chart (re-named the Radio Songs chart in 2014.) He’s also now joined as a plaintiff by Troy Powers, who claims to have co-written the earlier song.

The new version of the lawsuit also makes more detailed allegations about the similarities between the two songs, delving into the “unique linguistic structure” and musical elements that Carey allegedly copied in her song.

“The phrase ‘all I want for Christmas is you’ may seem like a common parlance today, in 1988 it was, in context, distinctive,” Vance’s new lawyers write. “Moreover, the combination of the specific chord progression in the melody paired with the verbatim hook was a greater than 50% clone of Vance’s original work, in both lyric choice and chord expressions.”

Notably, the new complaint lawsuit also mentions Love Actually, the 2003 Christmas movie that skyrocketed Carey’s song even further into the holiday canon. The lawsuit notes that Carey’s song appears in “a featured performance scene in the penultimate act in the mega hit film.”

A rep for Carey did not immediately return a request for comment on Wednesday evening.

A federal appeals court issued a first-of-its-kind ruling Wednesday (Nov. 1) on copyright protections for dance routines, reviving a case that accuses Fortnite creator Epic Games of stealing copyrighted moves from a celebrity choreographer who’s worked with BTS, Jennifer Lopez, Justin Bieber and Britney Spears.

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In a “novel” ruling on “one of the oldest forms of human expression,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned a decision last year that dismissed choreographer Kyle Hanagami’s lawsuit, which claimed that Epic stole his dance moves and used them as “emotes” in Fortnite.

A lower court had tossed the case by ruling that Epic had copied only several unprotected “poses” from Hanagami’s routine. But in Wednesday’s decision, the appeals court said dance copyrights should be analyzed more holistically, more similarly to how courts dissect copyrighted music.

“We see no reason to treat choreography differently,” the court wrote. “Reducing choreography to ‘poses’ would be akin to reducing music to just ‘notes.’ Choreography is, by definition, a related series of dance movements and patterns organized into a coherent whole. The relationship between those movements and patterns, and the choreographer’s creative approach of composing and arranging them together, is what defines the work. The element of ‘poses,’ on its own, is simply not dynamic enough to capture the full range of creative expression of a choreographic work.”

The ruling does not mean Hanagami has won the lawsuit; instead, the appeals court merely said that the lower court should not have automatically dismissed the case. The two sides will now return to the lower court for more proceedings, potentially including an eventual trial.

A spokeswoman for Epic Games declined to comment on the decision.

In a statement to Billboard, Hanagami’s attorney David Hecht celebrated a ruling that he said would be “extremely impactful for the rights of choreographers, and other creatives, in the age of short form digital media.”

“Our client looks forward to litigating his claims against Epic and he is happy to have opened the door for other choreographers and creatives to protect their livelihood,” Hecht said.

Hanagami sued last year, claiming that Epic had copied a dance routine he created to a Charlie Puth song and used it without permission as the basis for a Fortnite “emote” — a pre-programmed dance move that players can purchase from Epic and employ using their digital avatars. He called it “intentional misappropriation” of his “fame and hard work.”

Attorneys for Hanagami compared the two dances as part of their legal filings:

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The case was one of many filed in recent years over the use of dance moves in games. Alfonso Ribeiro, the actor who played Carlton on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, sued Epic over the use of his heavily-memed “Carlton dance” as an emote, as did the mother of the so-called Backpack Kid who popularized the viral “Floss” dance. But those cases have faced skeptical judges in court: In 2020, a federal judge sided with Epic and tossed out a case filed by two former college basketball players over their “running man” dance.

In August 2022, Hanagami’s case faced the same fate. Siding with Epic, Judge Stephen Wilson ruled that the individual steps of his dance routine were too basic for copyright protection, and that even when combined together, they were just a “short” routine that couldn’t be covered by copyright law.

But on Wednesday, the Ninth Circuit overturned that decision, ruling that the lower court had unfairly focused on those simple “poses” and had ignored other elements of the “selection and arrangement” that Hanagami claimed Epic had copied. When those elements are all considered together, the appeals court said, his case becomes “plausible” enough to proceed toward trial.

“He has plausibly alleged that the creative choices he made in selecting and arranging elements of the choreography — the movement of the limbs, movement of the hands and fingers, head and shoulder movement, and tempo — are substantially similar to the choices Epic made in creating the emote,” the court wrote.

The ruling sends the case back to Judge Wilson’s court, where the two sides will engage in more litigation. Eventually, Epic will again seek to dismiss the case; if that fails, the lawsuit will head to a jury trial.

It seems that even some members of the U.S. Supreme Court are Swifties.
Capping off a year in which Taylor Swift’s name has repeatedly been mentioned on Capitol Hill, at the Department of Justice and on NFL broadcasts, it came up Tuesday during Supreme Court arguments in a major case over social media and the First Amendment.

As part of a legal hypothetical aimed at probing the questions in the case, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked an attorney from the U.S. solicitor general’s office a question about how court should “evaluate a government employee controlling access to private property.”

“What if we have, you know, a big concert, Taylor Swift has a big concert in a private … area, a park something, and the police recognize there are going to be large crowds, et cetera, and so they come and they help with the screening of the bags and they, you know, kick out people who are rowdy,” Jackson asked. “Because it’s private, we would say that’s not state action?”

The case before the justices (Lindke v. Freed) is about whether or not public officials, including presidents, can block users on social media platforms like Facebook. Put another way: When is a government employee’s use of social media a “state action,” which is tightly governed by the First Amendment? And when is it just the action of a private citizen, which is not?

In her question, Jackson was trying to use the Taylor concert to illustrate the difficulty of pinpointing that dividing line, and testing one theory advanced by solicitor general’s office. Police are obviously agents of the government, but would their actions during such a private Swift concert not be an action by the state?

In her answer, Assistant U.S. Solicitor General Masha Hansford said the officers’ actions should still be treated as “state action” even at the Swift concert, since they would still be “carrying out their official duties.” But Justice Jackson pushed the question further.

“But Taylor Swift could have hired [a private security guard],” Jackson said. “I mean, they’re not doing anything more than a private security guard could have done, right? So what makes it that they are [engaging in] state action?”

Though Swift herself has never been directly involved in a Supreme Court case, Tuesday’s arguments were not the first time her name has come up at SCOTUS.

During arguments in a different case back in 2021, the justices repeatedly cited Swift’s lawsuit against a Denver radio DJ named David Mueller, who the superstar had claimed groped her at photoshoot. In that case, Swift sought only sought $1 in so-called “nominal damages” against Mueller – a legal tactic used in cases in which litigants want to prove a point but aren’t seeking a big payday.

The 2021 case before the justices dealt with that very same issue, and they repeatedly raised Swift’s case as a comparison.

“I’m not really interested in your money,” Justice Elena Kagan at the time, speaking from Swift’s point of view. “I just want a dollar, and that dollar is going to represent something both to me and to the world of women who have experienced what I’ve experienced.”

“What Taylor Swift wanted was, you know, vindication of the moral right, the legal right, that sexual assault is reprehensible and wrong,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett added later during the same arguments.

Maybe Swift’s case had an impact: Two months later, the Supreme Court ruled that litigants could indeed sue over the same kind of nominal damages Taylor had won against Mueller.

Nashville music publishing company Boom Music Group has severed ties with SESAC Nashville Music Awards’ 2020 songwriter of the year Matthew McGinn, after felony and misdemeanor charges were filed against him on Oct. 28 in Davidson County, Tenn. “Boom Music Group is extremely saddened about the reprehensible events that transpired this weekend with Matt McGinn,” […]

Back in April 1988, when DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince released “A Nightmare on My Street,” the song was an immediate hit. A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 was set for release a few months later, and the song – which made obvious allusions to Freddy Krueger from beginning to end – eventually climbed to No. 15 on the Hot 100.

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“Now I have a story that I’d like to tell/ About this guy you all know him, he had me scared as hell!” rapped the Fresh Prince, who later became better known by his real name, Will Smith. “He comes to me at night after I crawl into bed/ He’s burnt up like a weenie and his name is Fred!”

Just one problem: New Line Cinema, the owners of the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, had already commissioned their own officially licensed Freddy Krueger rap track (“Are You Ready for Freddy”) by the Fat Boys – and, more importantly, they had specifically rejected DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince’s version.

Like a formulaic horror movie, you know what happens next. In July 1988, New Line took Smith, Jazzy Jeff (Jeff Townes) and Jive Records to federal court, arguing that “My Street” infringed their copyrights and trademarks to the Nightmare On Elm Street franchise. New Line also demanded an immediate injunction to stop MTV from airing the song’s soon-to-be released music video, which featured a look-alike Krueger and many other references to the movies.

What’s the origin story of this legal monster? According to legal filings from the case, New Line started thinking about commissioning a licensed hip hop theme song for “Elm Street 4″ nearly a year before the movie was released. Eventually, they settled on The Fat Boys, a pioneering rap trio who had released their breakout Crushin’ earlier that year. In March 1988, the group released “Are You Ready for Freddy” on their third studio album, Coming Back Hard Again.

But behind the scenes, an executive at Jive had been doing his best to convince New Line to use a theme song by DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince instead of the Fat Boys. According to legal filings, Smith and Townes recorded “My Street” in late 1987, and then Jive sent a copy of the track to the movie studio for consideration. Negotiations dragged on for months, but never culminated in a licensing deal.

In April, Jive released the song anyway, including it on DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince’s album “He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper.” The song told the story of the duo encountering the same haunting scenario as the movies, where Krueger kills people in real life by murdering his vicitms in their dreams

“It wasn’t a dream, man, this guy was for real,” Smith rapped. “I said, ‘Freddy, uh, pal, there’s been an awful mistake here’”

According to legal filings, as the August premiere of the movie got closer, Jive continued to get New Line to try to “change its mind” about licensing the song for the movie, including suggesting that MTV was interested in doing a music video for “My Street.” But the studio ultimately reached an official agreement with the Hot Boys to make their own licensed video for their song.

In July, New Line sent a cease-and-desist to Jive and owner Zomba Music, warning that the Fresh Prince song amounted to copyright infringement and demanding that the record be pulled from store shelves. Weeks later, New Line headed to court, accusing the Jive, Zomba, and the duo of a wide range of legal wrongdoing. Then in August, they went into overdrive after learning that Zomba had produced a music video for “My Street” and were planning to release it on MTV, demanding a preliminary injunction to block the video’s premiere.

In late August, a federal judge sided decisively with New Line. He ruled that the planned music video likely infringed the studio’s copyrights, citing the overwhelming similarities between them. And he rejected their argument that the video amounted to a legal “fair use,” saying it was instead simply an unauthorized competitor that was unfairly free-riding on New Line’s “massive promotional campaign.”

“The video exists solely as an vehicle to promote Zomba’s song,” the judge wrote, issuing the injunction banning the release of the video. “Thus, Zomba stands to profit financially by using Freddy without making the usual licensing arrangements, which in fact were made by the Fat Boys before they produced their video.”

Unlike the best horror franchises, there was no sequel to this legal fight. The case could have continued on to more litigation over the ultimate merits of the case, but after New Line won the injunction, the lawsuit quickly ended on a confidential settlement. The video was never released, and albums featured a sticker disclosing that the song was not affiliated with the movie.

But don’t forget, the killer is never quite dead: A version of “A Nightmare On My Street” is currently available on YouTube, where it now has 2.8 million views.

A federal judge in San Francisco ruled Monday (Oct. 30) that artificial intelligence (AI) firm Stability AI could not dismiss a lawsuit claiming it had “trained” its platform on copyrighted images, though he also sided with AI companies on key questions.

In an early-stage order in a closely watched case, Judge William Orrick found many defects in the lawsuit’s allegations, and he dismissed some of the case’s claims. But he allowed the case to move forward on its core allegation: That Stability AI built its tools by exploiting vast numbers of copyrighted works.

“Plaintiffs have adequately alleged direct infringement based on the allegations that Stability downloaded or otherwise acquired copies of billions of copyrighted images without permission to create Stable Diffusion, and used those images to train Stable Diffusion,” the judge wrote.

The ruling came in one of many cases filed against AI companies over how they use copyrighted content to train their models. Authors, comedians and visual artists have all filed lawsuits against companies including Microsoft, Meta and OpenAI, alleging that such unauthorized use by the fast-growing industry amounts to a massive violation of copyright law.

Last week, Universal Music Group and others filed the first such case involving music, arguing that Anthropic PBC was infringing copyrights en masse by using “vast amounts” of music to teach its software how to spit out new lyrics.

Rulings in the earlier AI copyright cases could provide important guidance on how such legal questions will be handled by courts, potentially impacting how UMG’s lawsuit and others like it play out in the future.

Monday’s decision came in a class action filed by artists Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan and Karla Ortiz against Stability AI Ltd. over its Stable Diffusion — an AI-powered image generator. The lawsuit also targeted Midjourney Inc. and DeviantArt Inc., two companies that use Stable Diffusion as the basis for their own image generators.

In his ruling, Judge Orrick dismissed many of the lawsuit’s claims. He booted McKernan and Ortiz from the case entirely and ordered the plaintiffs to re-file an amended version of their case with much more detail about the specific allegations against Midjourney and DeviantArt.

The judge also cast doubt on the allegation that every “output” image produced by Stable Diffusion would itself be a copyright-infringing “derivative” of the images that were used to train the model — a ruling that could dramatically limit the scope of the lawsuit. The judge suggested that such images might only be infringing if they themselves looked “substantially similar” to a particular training image.

But Judge Orrick included no such critiques for the central accusation that Stability AI infringed Andersen’s copyrights by using them for training without permission — the basic allegation at the center of all of the AI copyright lawsuits, including the one filed by UMG. Andersen will still need to prove that such an accusation is true in future litigation, but the judge said she should be given the chance to do so.

“Even Stability recognizes that determination of the truth of these allegations — whether copying in violation of the Copyright Act occurred in the context of training Stable Diffusion or occurs when Stable Diffusion is run — cannot be resolved at this juncture,” Orrick wrote in his decision.

Attorneys for Stability AI, Midjourney and DeviantArt did not return requests for comment. Attorneys for the artists praised the judge for allowing their “core claim” to move forward and onto “a path to trial.”

“As is common in a complex case, Judge Orrick granted the plaintiffs permission to amend most of their other claims,” said plaintiffs’ attorneys Joseph Saveri and Matthew Butterick after the ruling. “We’re confident that we can address the court’s concerns.”

While Taylor Swift has been racking up billions of streams with updated “Taylor’s Version” re-recordings of her original hits over the past couple years, making cultural moments out of old material and simultaneously driving down the value of those original recordings that were sold away from her, record companies have been working to prohibit this sort of thing from happening again.

The major labels, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group, have recently overhauled contracts for new signees, according to top music attorneys, some demanding artists wait an unprecedented 10, 15 or even 30 years to re-record releases after departing their record companies. “The first time I saw it, I tried to get rid of it entirely,” says Josh Karp, a veteran attorney, who has viewed the new restrictions in UMG contracts. “I was just like, ‘What is this? This is strange. Why would we agree to further restrictions than we’ve agreed to in the past with the same label?’”

For decades, standard major-label recording contracts stated artists had to wait for the latter of two periods to expire before they could put out re-recorded versions, Swift-style: It could have been five to seven years from the release date of the original, or two years after the contract expired. Today, attorneys are receiving label contracts that expand that period to 10 or 15 years or more — and the attorneys are pushing back. “It becomes one of a multitude of items you’re fighting,” Karp says.

“I recently did a deal with a very big indie that had a 30-year re-record restriction in it. Which obviously is much longer than I’m used to seeing,” adds Gandhar Savur, attorney for Cigarettes After Sex, Built to Spill and Jeff Rosenstock. “I think the majors are also trying to expand their re-record restrictions but in a more measured way — they are generally not yet able to get away with making such extreme changes.”

Until June 2019, when Swift announced she would re-record her first six albums, the concept of drawing fans to new versions of old songs was a music-business niche. Frank Sinatra rerecorded a number of his biggest hits in the ’60s, but in recent years, new Def Leppard and Squeeze versions had minimal commercial success. But after venture capitalist and longtime Justin Bieber manager Scooter Braun purchased Swift’s original label, Big Machine Music Group, she failed to re-obtain her original master recordings. The business transaction was personal to Swift — she has accused Braun of “incessant, manipulative bullying” — and she encouraged her huge fanbase and sympathetic radio programmers to exclusively play new Taylor’s Versions of Fearless, Red and others.

Suddenly, the concept of re-recording masters has evolved from archaic fine print buried in record deals to a widely scrutinized cause celebre. “Obviously, this is a big headline topic — the Taylor Swift thing,” Savur says. “Labels, of course, are going to want to do whatever they can to address that and to prevent it. But there’s only so much they can do. Artist representatives are going to push back against that, and a certain standard is ingrained in our industry that is not easy to move away from.”

Adds Dina LaPolt, a music attorney with a long history of grappling with labels over contracts: “Now, because of all this Taylor Swift sh–, we have an even new negotiation. It’s awful. We’re seeing a lot of ‘perpetuity’ sh–. When we were negotiating deals with lawyers, before we would get the proposal,, we’d get the phone call from the head of business affairs. We literally would say, ‘If you send that to me, it will be on f—ing Twitter in 10 minutes.’ It never showed up.”

Swift has her own reasons — in addition to dominating the charts and racking up millions of dollars in streaming revenue — for emphasizing her re-recordings. Smaller artists have more modest goals. Alt-rock band Switchfoot recently put out an “Our Version” of its 2003 album The Beautiful Letdown, as frontman Jon Foreman said recently, “for everyone who’s supported us the last 23 years, for everyone who’s sung along with these songs.” After superstar pop-and-R&B trio TLC negotiated a separation agreement from its label, Sony Music, in the early 2000s, Bill Diggins, the band’s manager, negotiated a re-recording clause allowing the group to use hits such as “Waterfalls” and “No Scrubs” for TV and movie synchs. “Anytime you negotiate with a label, it’s a difficult proposition,” he said.

Reps for Universal, Warner and Sony did not respond to requests for comment, but some music attorneys are sympathetic to labels’ concerns about re-recordings. Although “the contracts have gotten reasonably artist-friendly over time,” longtime music attorney Don Passman said recently, “they don’t want you to duplicate your recordings — like ever — and then they will limit the other types of recordings you can do.”

Josh Binder, an attorney who represents SZA, Gunna, Doechii, Marshmello and others, says the Taylor Swift scenario is rare, and most artists never have to exercise their re-recording rights. “It doesn’t offend me so much. Rarely does it come into play where the re-record treatment is even used,” he says. “[The labels’] position is, ‘Hey, if we’re going to spend a bunch of money creating this brand with you, then you should not try and create records to compete with us.’ We try and fight it. We try and make it as short as possible. But I don’t find it to be the most compelling issue to fight.”

Once artists get past the weeds of re-recording restrictions, Binder says, the bigger issue is controlling their master recordings — that was Swift’s primary concern in putting out her new versions, after Braun purchased her catalog from Big Machine. Artists and their attorneys have recently moved towards licensing deals — retaining ownership of their masters and signing with labels to distribute music for a limited period — rather than traditional recording contracts where the label owns everything.

But Ben McLane, an attorney who has worked with dozens of artists, from Donovan and DMX to new label signees such as the Toxhards and We the Commas, says traditional deals remain more common than licensing deals, so battles over new re-recording restrictions still come up.

“I always ask for less. Some labels, at a negotiating point, might be fine with it. It always depends on what your leverage is,” he says. “If you’re an unknown artist, and you really need the deal, the label doesn’t have a lot of motivation to give in on things like that. They’re strict.”