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Defense attorneys for one of the four men charged with the 2018 murder and robbery of XXXtentacion have listed a handful of notable rappers and celebrities — including Drake, Quavo, Offset, late Migos rapper Takeoff, Tekashi 6ix9ine and Joe Budden — as witnesses, according to court documents.
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The move stems from unsubstantiated Internet rumors that swirled following XXXtentacion’s death, in connection with Drake’s 2017 beef over what the late artist believed to be a rip-off of his flows from breakout track “Look at Me!” on the OVO rapper’s “KMT.” A year after the drama, a story was posted to XXX’s Instagram page that read, “If anyone tries to kill me it was @champagnepapi,” tagging Drake’s Instagram handle. XXXtentacion claimed his account was hacked and four months later, he was killed in Deerfield Beach, Fla.
At a Thursday (Dec. 15) hearingreported on by the Miami Herald, prosecutors called the move a stunt and Broward Circuit Judge Michael Usan demanded answers in writing as to why the superstars were relevant. Prosecutors also noted that the defense did not provide addresses where the notable celebs could be served subpeonas, or any contact information. “It is apparent from the deliberate, late disclosure of the defendant’s witnesses and comments made between the parties that [the] defendant intended to ‘surprise’ the state and create a trial by ambush,” wrote prosecutor Pascale Achille, as reported by the Herald.
The amended witness list was submitted by Miami defense attorney Mauricio Padilla, who is representing 27-year-old Dedrick Williams, the alleged getaway driver. Padilla denied Achille’s claims, blaming delayed depositions.
“They are high-profile people. And it’s not easy for me to subpoena. I don’t have numbers, but it doesn’t mean I won’t be able to,” Padilla told the judge. “Trying to subpoena Drake is not easy — you need a drone.”
The all-star rappers being listed as potential witnesses does not mean they will be obligated to show up to court. Their appearance would be contingent upon Padilla proving relevance, which remains to be seen.
XXXtentacion was shot to death on June 18, 2018, at age 20. Leaving Riva Motorsports Motorcycle & Marine Superstore, the late rapper was attacked by two armed men. After a brief struggle, XXXtentacion was robbed and shot multiple times and later pronounced dead at the Broward Health North Hospital.
A California judge says Metallica’s insurance company doesn’t need to pay for six South American concerts that were canceled when COVID-19 struck, thanks to an exclusion in the policy for “communicable diseases.”
The band earlier sued a unit of Lloyd’s of London after it refused to cover their losses stemming from a 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.
Though Metallica’s insurance policy expressly excluded any coverage for events canceled by “communicable diseases,” Metallica’s lawyers argued that COVID-19 itself wasn’t clearly the most direct cause of the tour cancellation.
But in a decision on Nov. 30 obtained by Billboard, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Holly J. Fujie said she didn’t buy it.
“The travel restrictions which caused the concert cancellations were a direct response to the burgeoning COVID-19 pandemic,” the judge wrote. “The evidence … demonstrates that the COVID-19 pandemic spurred the travel restrictions to South America and restrictions on public gatherings. The COVID-19 pandemic was therefore the efficient proximate cause of the concerts’ cancellations.”
Metallica’s lawyers had also argued that the “diseases” exclusion didn’t apply at all, since the exact wording of the policy said Lloyd’s wouldn’t pay coverage stemming from a disease “or fear or threat thereof.” Citing that language, the band said “none of its bandmembers felt threatened or fearful.”
But Judge Fujie was similarly unswayed, ruling that the Metallica policy’s language “does not require that the policyholders [themselves] feel fearful or threatened.”
The ruling granted Lloyd’s so-called summary judgment, meaning the case is dismissed. Metallica’s attorney did not immediately return a request for comment on the decision. The ruling was first reported by Law360.
Metallica’s case is one of many that have been filed by music venues, bars and other businesses seeking insurance coverage for harm caused by COVID-19. Like Metallica’s case, the majority of those lawsuits have thus far been won by insurers. Many policies include express carveouts for problems caused by diseases, like the one in the band’s contract; other policies for brick-and-mortar businesses often require “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.
Factory Mutual tried to end the case by arguing that virus shutdowns are not the kind of “physical loss or damage” that would be covered under the wording of Live Nation’s policy, but a federal judge ruled in February that Live Nation might have a valid case: “The complaint sufficiently alleges that infectious respiratory droplets, which transmit COVID-19, are physical objects that may alter the property on which they land and remain.”
The lawsuit remains pending.
The city of Virginia Beach will pay $3 million to settle a lawsuit from the family of a Black man who was shot by police during a chaotic night of violence on the city’s oceanfront last year. The city and the family of Donovon Lynch — a cousin of musician and Virginia Beach native Pharrell Williams — announced the agreement late Tuesday (Dec. 13).
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Wayne Lynch, Dononvon’s father, filed a $50 million wrongful death lawsuit in June 2021 against the city and police officer Solomon D. Simmons, who is also Black.
Lynch’s shooting occurred on a warm March night near the city’s crowded boardwalk, which is lined with restaurants and hotels. The evening dissolved into chaos after separate outbreaks of gunfire. At least eight people were wounded and one woman, who was believed to be a bystander, was killed.
Lynch, 25, a former college football player, was at a nightclub with his friend when a shooting occurred outside, the lawsuit stated. The men left and walked toward their cars when they encountered Simmons. “Immediately, unlawfully and without warning, officer Simmons fired his police-issued firearm at Mr. Lynch, shooting him twice and killing him,” the lawsuit states.
In November 2021, a special grand jury found that Simmons was justified. Authorities said Lynch had a gun and racked a round into the chamber before pointing his weapon toward a parking lot filled with people and police. Tuesday’s joint statement said more has been learned “about the facts of that fateful night and encounter.”
“(W)e have come to understand that a series of unfortunate occurrences led to Donovon’s death that night — which in hindsight should never have occurred as it was later determined that neither Donovon nor the officer set in motion the events that transpired,” the statement said.
The statement didn’t elaborate.
The settlement comes more than a month after Williams announced that his music festival, Something in the Water, would return to Virginia Beach. When the festival pulled out of Virginia Beach in 2021, the Grammy-winning musician had said “toxic energy” had run the city for too long and that he wished it had taken a more proactive stance after police shot Lynch. Last month, Williams said demand for the festival in Virginia Beach has “never wavered. If anything it has only intensified.”
Megan Thee Stallion‘s former friend and assistant Kelsey Harris took the stand Wednesday (Dec. 14) on the third day of the highly publicized trial over whether Tory Lanez shot Megan in the foot on July 12, 2020.
During Harris’ testimony — which saw her become increasingly hesitant about answering Deputy District Attorney Kathy Ta‘s questions about what happened on the night in question — a recording from an interview she gave to Ta, Deputy District Attorney Alexander Bott and an investigator in September 2022 was played in court to try to jog her memory. During a portion of that earlier interview, Harris could be heard claiming that Lanez had also threatened to shoot her on the car ride back from Kylie Jenner‘s house prior to the shooting. But in a surprising turn, Harris recanted that earlier testimony from the stand.
Earlier in the day, Harris arrived in court with her attorney Daniel A. Nardoni wearing a black blouse and slacks and carrying a black bejeweled Christian Louboutin bag. Before the jury arrived, Nardoni said his client planned to assert her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, leading Judge David Herriford to address her concern as “legitimate.” Prosecutors then offered her “use immunity” — meaning nothing derived from her testimony may be used against her in a criminal proceeding — before she was sworn in and took the stand.
Harris is a key witness because she was one of only two people present with Megan and the defendant at the time of the alleged shooting, aside from Lanez’s security guard Jauquan Smith. During opening statements earlier this week, Lanez’s lead attorney George Mgdesyan pushed the theory that Harris may have been the one who pulled the trigger instead of his client. The defense’s argument heavily relied on an account from another witness, Sean Kelly, whom the police interviewed shortly after the shooting because the SUV carrying Megan, Lanez, Harris and Smith had stopped near his house. Mgdesyan said Kelly saw Harris exit from the back seat of the car and open Megan’s front passenger door before witnessing “a fist fight between the girls” and seeing one of the women point a gun at the other.
During her time on the stand Tuesday, Megan explained to prosecutors that Harris was her “best friend since freshman year of college” who later became her assistant at the end of 2019. During cross-examination, the Grammy-winning rapper (real name Megan Pete) denied Harris was the shooter and told the defense it was their client Lanez (real name Daystar Peterson) who yelled, “Dance, bi—!” before allegedly pointing the gun and shooting her. Megan, 27, also revealed that she and Harris have not seen each other since the incident.
On Wednesday, Harris was initially composed but became increasingly reticent after Ta began interrogating her about her side of the story.
“I don’t want to be here today. It’s a triggering situation. I just don’t want to be here,” Harris told Ta at one point, echoing Megan’s own statements during her testimony the day prior. She also denounced the defense’s argument that she shot Megan, calling the accusation “ridiculous.”
For the duration of the hearing, Harris appeared distracted, consistently asking Ta to repeat her questions and “refresh [her] memory” by playing specific audio clips taken from the September 2022 interview. When asked again how she felt about being in court, Harris blamed “anxiety, post-partum, a death in the family…[and a] sick baby” as reasons why she was not mentally present in the courtroom. However, she told Ta that being in the same room as Lanez, who was wearing a light brown suit and black turtleneck with black velvet loafers, did not affect her ability to testify.
While describing the relationship between herself, Megan and Lanez — which she said started after the two women met Lanez at a Roc Nation brunch in 2020 — Harris claimed the “Luv” singer “was someone that Megan wanted me to pursue beyond a friendship” and that “there were a few nights we had been engaged,” confirming she had an intimate relationship with the singer. After returning from a trip to her hometown of Houston for a few months that year due to COVID, she said she realized that Megan and Lanez had grown closer during her time away.
Harris then began recounting what happened at Jenner’s house, insisting that it wasn’t a “party” but rather a small “gathering” with about six people. “A lot of alcohol had been involved,” said Harris, who said she had drunkenly passed out at Jenner’s home for a few hours before returning to the gathering, at which point only herself, Megan, Lanez, Jenner and Megan’s stylist EJ King — who had driven Megan and Harris to the party that night — remained. Harris described Megan as “drunk” and that “her behavior was a little off” and later said that Lanez was “just being Tory” and “flirting with Kylie” — an admission that caused the defendant to smirk from his seat.
According to Harris, after King convinced Megan to leave the house because her wig was falling off, the rapper argued that she wanted to leave with Lanez and had King move her and Harris’ bags from his car to Lanez’s car. She claimed that Lanez then told Smith to “just take them home” in an “adamant way” because he didn’t want to leave. Shortly after Smith, Lanez’s security guard, began driving the two women home, Megan insisted they all return to the house because she “had left a slipper.” Harris then recalled seeing Megan rush out the house with Lanez, saying, “Bi—, Kylie said we gotta get the f— out!” before the two hopped in the car with Harris and Smith.
Once Ta began interrogating Harris about what happened in the car, the witness became noticeably flustered. “Do I have to answer that?” she asked Judge Herriford, who nodded his head, prompting her to describe the arguments that ensued. “There was a lot of back and forth in the car,” she testified, later explaining how “upset” and “confused” she had felt when Lanez eventually told Harris that he and Megan were “having a relationship.” When prosecutors questioned whether Lanez called the two women “bi—es and h–s” — which the “Savage” MC claimed in court the day before — Harris couldn’t provide a direct response. It was then that Bott started playing bits of the September 2022 recording, which Judge Herriford informed the jury could not be considered as evidence.
After the portion of the recording was played where Harris claimed Lanez had threatened to shoot her, Ta pressed Harris about the validity of her claim. Harris then attempted to assert her Fifth Amendment right, only for Judge Herriford to tell her she first needed to discuss that with her attorney. After returning from an hour-and-a-half lunch recess, Harris went on to recant her prior statement that Lanez had threatened to shoot her, admitting parts of her September 2022 interview “weren’t accurate. There were some things I wasn’t truthful about to protect myself,” she testified. Over the course of her testimony, Harris never explained what she was protecting herself from, nor which parts of the interview were less than “100% truthful.”
Prosecutors went on to play more of the recorded interview, which revealed Harris stating that Lanez verbally threatened her by saying, “My n—a, I’ll shoot you” and then “reached” for something in the “center console” of the vehicle but “never opened it.”
In the midst of Harris’ testimony, Ta grew noticeably irritated with the witness, raising her voice as she questioned why she’d admitted to sending Justin Edison, Megan’s security guard, three texts that read “Help. Tory shot meg. 911” if she didn’t — as Harris testified — see Lanez shoot the rapper. “I was in a panic,” Harris responded. Ta then showed Harris a photo of herself, taken at the police station on the night of the shooting, that showed her with blood on her leg. Harris replied, “I don’t know whose blood that was.” She then testified that Megan had been bleeding — and had put her leg on Harris’ in the car following the shooting — but that she hadn’t known where the blood was coming from and remained uncertain of Megan’s injuries up to the point when she arrived at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where Megan was being treated. Ta then asked incredulously, “This is your best friend, right?”
Lanez, 30, currently faces three felony charges: assault with a semiautomatic firearm; carrying a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle; and discharging a firearm with gross negligence, the latter of which was added to the list of charges ahead of the trial last week. If convicted on all three counts, he faces 22 years in prison.
Harris is due back in court Thursday (Dec. 15) to complete her testimony.
Nearly two years after Marc Anthony was forced to cancel his highly-anticipated “Una Noche” livestream concert at the last minute, the event’s promoter is now suing the streaming platform for causing the “complete and total failure.”
In a lawsuit filed Friday in Los Angeles court, attorneys for Loud and Live Entertainment claimed that Maestro had assured the promoter that the platform’s technology could “automatically scale to accommodate the number of ticketholders” – more than 100,000 people worldwide.
But when the night of the April 17, 2021, concert came, Loud and Live says those same fans “stared at blank or frozen computer screens” as Maestro experienced what it later described as a “complete collapse of the streaming platform.”
“As a result of Maestro’s complete and total failure, Loud And Live — which paid Anthony a substantial guaranteed artist fee, promoted and backed the concert financially, and contracted with sponsors and vendors around the world — suffered significant economic losses, all of which were foreseeable to Maestro.”
“Una Noche” was supposed to be one of the biggest livestreamed shows of the pandemic era, headlined by Anthony — who fills soccer stadiums in Latin America — and joined by superstar Daddy Yankee as a guest performer. By showtime, more than 100,000 tickets had been sold.
As a streaming partner, Maestro was no novice. Prior to the Anthony concert, the platform had handled major shows like Billie Eilish’s October 2020 livestream and Melissa Etheridge’s successful EtheridgeTV series. But at 8 p.m. EST on April 17, as global fans logged on to watch Anthony perform, Maestro’s system failed. Despite frantic attempts to revive the stream, the concert never happened, and fans were left waiting for hours until learning the show was officially canceled.
“Una Noche” may have been the most high-profile concert livestream to fail, but it’s hardly the only one to experience problems. For instance, Justin Bieber’s 2021 New Year’s Eve livestream with T-Mobile was seriously delayed — almost missing East Coast celebrations — due to unexpected demand from more than 1.2 million T-Mobile customers.
Avoiding such debacles is more complicated than it looks. Unlike physical shows, which have seat selection and could sell out, livestreams offer little incentive to buy a ticket early or arrive ahead of time. This can lead to a surge in activity at the start of the event — the size of which is difficult, if not impossible, to predict and prepare for.
But in its new lawsuit, Loud and Live says those were concerns were well-known to Maestro — and that the company had promised to have the technology and the experience to deal with them.
“Although Maestro had represented to Plaintiff … that it had handled events much larger than Anthony’s, and expressly warrantied that its platform would ‘automatically scale’ to meet Loud And Live’s needs (whether it had 500 viewers or millions), Maestro failed to stream even one minute of the show,” the company’s lawyers wrote. “Maestro’s misrepresentations regarding its technological capabilities induced Loud and Live to engage and rely on Maestro.”
In legal terms, Loud and Live says that Maestro’s failures breached the contract the two companies signed. It also says the streamer violated the promises that the streaming platform had made about the capabilities of its technology — meaning it breached its “express warranty” and made a “negligent misrepresentation” to Loud and Live.
Read the entire complaint here:
Gunna pleaded guilty Wednesday (Dec. 14) in the closely-watched criminal case against Young Thug and other alleged members of an Atlanta gang, ending his involvement in the sprawling case and securing his release from jail — though the rapper stressed that he was not cooperating with prosecutors.
In a statement released by his lawyers, Gunna (real name Sergio Kitchens) said he had taken a so-called Alford plea — a maneuver that allows a defendant to enter a formal admission of guilt while still maintaining their innocence — “to end my personal ordeal.”
In technical terms, the rapper pleaded guilty to a single charge against him and was sentenced Wednesday to a time-served, suspended sentence. His lawyers confirmed that he would be “released from jail in the next few hours.”
Despite the plea deal, Gunna stressed that he had not agreed to work with prosecutors in any way to convict Young Thug or any of the other defendants.
“While I have agreed to always be truthful, I want to make it perfectly clear that I have NOT made any statements, have NOT been interviewed, have NOT cooperated, have NOT agreed to testify or be a witness for or against any party in the case and have absolutely NO intention of being involved in the trial process in any way,” the rapper wrote.
A spokesman for the Fulton County District Attorney’s office, which is prosecuting the case, did not immediately return a request for comment.
Both Young Thug (Jeffery Williams) and Gunna were indicted in May, along with dozens of others, on accusations that their group YSL was not really a record label called “Young Stoner Life,” but a violent Atlanta street gang called “Young Slime Life.” The charges include allegations of murder, carjacking, armed robbery, drug dealing and illegal firearm possession over the past decade.
Young Thug and many others are set to stand trial on those charges in January.
In Wednesday’s statement, Gunna said he was “acknowledging my association with YSL,” but that he had not seen the group as a criminal enterprise.
“When I became affiliated with YSL in 2016, I did not consider it a “gang”; more like a group of people from metro Atlanta who had common interests and artistic aspirations,” Gunna wrote. My focus of YSL was entertainment – rap artists who wrote and performed music that exaggerated and ‘glorified’ urban life in the Black community.”
“I love and cherish my association with YSL music, and always will,” he wrote. “I look at this as an opportunity to give back to my community and educate young men and women that ‘gangs’ and violence only lead to destruction.”
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: Taylor Swift ends a long-running copyright case over the lyrics to “Shake It Off,” Tory Lanez heads to trial over accusations that he shot Megan Thee Stallion, Backstreet Boys member Nick Carter is accused of sexually assault, and much more.
THE BIG STORY: Taylor Swift’s Accusers Drop “Shake It Off” Case
It was the next big music copyright case – until it wasn’t.After five long years of litigation, and with just a month to go until a scheduled trial, attorneys for Taylor Swift reached an agreement Monday with songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler to end their copyright infringement lawsuit claiming the superstar stole some of the core lyrics to “Shake It Off” from an earlier song.The terms of the agreement were not publicly released. Billboard was first to report the settlement.Hall and Butler sued Swift way back in 2017, claiming she’d lifted the lyrics from “Playas Gon’ Play,” a 2001 song they wrote for the R&B group 3LW. In that song, the line was “playas, they gonna play, and haters, they gonna hate”; in Swift’s track, she sings, “‘Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play and the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.” (The music itself was not in play.)The case was a big deal, if for no other reason than that “Shake It Off” was a big deal. Released in September 2014 off of Swift’s 1989, the song debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and ultimately spent 50 weeks on the chart, making it a uniquely major hit even for one of music’s top stars.But it was also a big deal because of the legal issues at play. Like the earlier battles over Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines,” Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” and Katy Perry’s “Dark Horse,” the case posed fundamental questions about the limits of copyright law — about where protection ends and the public domain begins. That question was explored in regard to various musical elements in those earlier cases; the “Shake It Off” case might have offered answers in relation to lyrics.Put simply: The words in both songs were clearly similar — everyone can see that. But were they creative or unique enough in the first place to merit giving particular songwriters a decades-long legal monopoly over them? Experts who chatted with Billboard thought the answer was no.But we’ll never know for sure. Swift’s lawyers spent years trying to make that case, arguing that many earlier songs (1997’s “Playa Hater” by Notorious B.I.G. and 1999’s “Don’t Hate the Player” by Ice-T, among others) had used the same words. A judge initially agreed, ruling that the lyrics were not novel enough for copyright protection. But a federal appeals court later overturned that ruling, and the last substantive decision in the case was a ruling last year that the question was simply too close to call and would need to be decided by a jury.With the “Shake It Off” case now officially in the rearview, what’s the next big music copyright case? Maybe it’s the lawsuits against Ed Sheeran over allegations that his “Thinking Out Loud” infringed Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On.” Or the dueling cases against Dua Lipa over her own mega-smash “Levitating.” Or maybe it’s something that hasn’t even been filed yet…
THE OTHER BIG STORY: Megan Thee Stallion Shooting Trial Begins
Tory Lanez and Los Angeles prosecutors headed to court this week to kick off a closely-watched jury trial over whether he shot Megan Thee Stallion in the foot, with a potential 22-year prison sentence looming for Lanez if convicted.The trial, set to last for at least a week, will center on the early morning of July 12, 2020, when Stallion, Lanez and Stallion’s friend Kelsey Harris were driving in an SUV following a party at Kylie Jenner’s house. According to prosecutors, after an argument broke out, Megan got out of the vehicle and began walking away, when Lanez shouted, “Dance, bitch!” and began shooting at her feet.Lanez (real name Daystar Peterson) has pleaded not guilty to all three charges (assault with a firearm, gun possession and discharging a firearm with gross negligence) and has steadfastly maintained his innocence.The upcoming trial will feature testimony from a number of high-profile witnesses, including Stallion herself and Harris. Also potentially taking the stand are Jenner and Corey Gamble, Kris Jenner’s boyfriend who was allegedly at the party. Lanez might also testify, but putting a defendant on the stand is always a gamble for defense attorneys.Billboard’s Heran Mamo will be in the building covering the trial all week, and she was there Monday (Dec. 13) when the case kicked off with opening statements. Some highlights from Day One:-Prosecutors have assembled a formidable case. They told jurors that Harris plans to testify that “her close friend was shot by the defendant,” and that they have texts from Harris just minutes after the shooting: “Help. Tory shot meg. 911.”-Lanez’s attorneys will present the theory that Harris may have actually been the one who discharged the gun. Lead attorney George Mgdesyan told jurors that “this case is about jealousy,” involving a love triangle between the three celebrities, and that there would be witness testimony about “a fist fight between the girls” leading up to the shooting.Stallion herself is set to testify on Tuesday, so check back in with Billboard for Heran’s dispatch…
Other top stories this week…
NICK CARTER SUED FOR RAPE – Backstreet Boys member Nick Carter was hit with a lawsuit alleging that he raped a 17-year-old fan on his tour bus following a 2001 concert in Washington. Shannon “Shay” Ruth claims that Carter invited her onboard as she sought an autograph, gave her alcohol, and then repeatedly assaulted her — but that she didn’t report it because he told her she would “go to jail if she told anyone what happened between them.” In response to the lawsuit, Carter’s attorney called the allegations “legally meritless” and “entirely untrue,” filed by someone “manipulated into making false allegations about Nick.”50 CENT ‘INSINUATION’ SUIT MOVES AHEAD – A federal judge refused to dismiss a lawsuit filed by 50 Cent that accuses a Miami medical spa of using an innocent photo he snapped to falsely suggest that he’d had penis enhancement surgery. In seeking to boot the case, Angela Kogan and her Perfection Plastic Surgery & MedSpa argued that 50 actually was a client and had consented to the use of the image as payment for the work he received. But the judge said such arguments were premature — and that some of the company’s other defenses were “simply wrong.”OFT-SAMPLED, NOW INFRINGED? Roddy Ricch was sued for copyright infringement by songwriter Greg Perry, who says elements of Ricch’s chart-topping 2019 song “The Box” were lifted from a 1975 soul song called “Come On Down.” Perry says his track has become something of a mainstay sample in the world of hip-hop, featured in both Young Jeezy’s 2008 song “Wordplay” and in Yo Gotti’s 2016 song “I Remember.” But he says those earlier songs were fully licensed, unlike Ricch’s: “Other [artists] in the rap world that have chosen to copy elements of ‘Come On Down’ have done so legally and correctly,” Perry’s lawyers wrote. “Defendants chose not to.”BORED APE LAWSUIT CLUB – Justin Bieber, Snoop Dogg, The Weeknd and dozens of other celebrities were hit with a class action alleging they were secretly paid to “misleadingly” promote NFTs like the Bored Ape Yacht Club, leaving investors with “staggering losses.” The case claims that Bored Ape parent company Yuga Labs Inc. perpetrated a “vast scheme” in which they “discreetly” paid “highly influential celebrities” to pump up the value of the NFTs (non-fungible tokens). In response to the lawsuit, Yuga called the allegations “opportunistic and parasitic” and “without merit.”GENIUS V. GOOGLE AT SCOTUS – The Supreme Court suggested this week that it might be interested in tackling a lawsuit filed by the music database Genius against Google. The case, which claims Google illegally copied the site’s lyrics and posted them in search results, was dismissed in March. But with Genius currently asking the high court to hear the case, the justices asked the U.S. Solicitor General to file briefs “expressing the views of the United States” on whether it should do so. Genius has warned that the ruling in favor of Google threatens “a vast swath of internet businesses”; Google says that’s just “alarmist hyperbole” and the case does not deserve the high court’s time.
The U.S. Supreme Court looks like it might be about to jump into a lawsuit filed by the music database Genius that accuses Google of illegally copying the site’s lyrics and posting them in search results.
After a lower court dismissed the case in March, Genius – a platform that lets users add and annotate lyrics – asked the high court to hear the case and overturn the ruling. Though it called the ruling “unjust” and “absurd,” such petitions are always a long shot; the Supreme Court takes less than 2% of the 7000 cases it receives each year.
But the odds for Genius just got better. In an order Monday, the justices asked the U.S. Solicitor General to file briefs in the case “expressing the views of the United States” on whether or not the court should hear the case against Google.
That kind of request (a “call for the view of the Solicitor General,” or CVSG, in SCOTUS parlance) indicates that the justices think the issues in the case might be significant enough for the court to tackle. Genius has warned that the ruling for Google threatens “a vast swath of internet businesses”; Google says that’s “alarmist hyperbole” and the case does not deserve the high court’s time.
Neither Genius nor Google immediately returned requests for comment on Tuesday.
Genius sued the tech giant in 2019, claiming Google had stolen the site’s carefully-transcribed content for its own “information boxes” in search results, essentially free-riding on the “time, labor, systems and resources” that goes into creating such a service. In a splashy twist, Genius said it had used a secret code buried within lyrics that spelled out REDHANDED to prove Google’s wrongdoing.
Though it sounds like a copyright case, Genius didn’t actually accuse Google of stealing any intellectual property. That’s because it doesn’t own any; songwriters and publishers own the rights to lyrics, and both Google and Genius pay for the same licenses to display them. Instead, Genius argued it had spent time and money transcribing and compiling “authoritative” versions of lyrics, and that Google had breached the site’s terms of service by “exploiting” them without permission.
But in March, that distinction proved fatal for Genius. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit dismissed the case, ruling that only the actual copyright owners – songwriters or publishers – could have filed such a case, not a site that merely transcribed the lyrics. In technical terms, the court said the case was “preempted” by federal copyright law, meaning that the accusations from Genius were so similar to a copyright claim that they could only have been filed that way.
In taking the case to the Supreme Court in August, Genius argued the ruling would be a disaster for websites that spend time and money to aggregate user-generated content online. Such companies should be allowed to protect that effort against clear copycats, the company said, even if they don’t hold copyrights.
“It serves no public purpose … to bar these companies from enforcing their contracts so that behemoths like Google can vacuum up content and increase their internet dominance,” Genius wrote. “Big-tech companies like Google don’t need any assists from an overly broad view of copyright preemption; they already control vast swaths of the internet, to the public’s detriment.”
Google obviously disagrees. In a response to the Supreme Court, the company urged the justices to avoid the case and reject Genius’s “alarmist hyperbole,” arguing that the lower ruling was “plainly correct.” Google said Genius was trying to use an agreement “inconspicuously tucked behind a tiny link” to create “pseudo-copyright” control over songs written by other people.
“Genius does not own the copyrights to any of the lyrics. Genius nevertheless wants to prevent any website visitor from reproducing or publicly displaying the lyrics,” Google’s lawyers wrote. “Its solution? Ignore the true copyright owners and invent new rights through a purported contract.”
A federal judge is refusing to dismiss a lawsuit filed by 50 Cent that accused a Miami medical spa of falsely suggesting that he’d had penis surgery, ruling the rapper might have a valid case.
The rapper’s lawsuit claims that Angela Kogan and her Perfection Plastic Surgery & MedSpa exploited an innocent photo he’d “graciously agreed” to take with her to imply that he was a client — and, more startlingly, that he had received penile enhancement surgery as part of his work.
Kogan strongly denies the allegations and immediately moved to dismiss the case, saying 50 actually was a client and had consented to the use of the image as payment for the work he received. But in a decision Monday, Judge Robert N. Scola, Jr. denied that motion, saying the lawsuit’s allegations were strong enough to survive the earliest stages of the case.
Among other things, Kogan defended herself by arguing that her Instagram post featuring the image merely thanked 50 for visiting her medical office and didn’t directly suggest that he’d endorsed the practice. But in his ruling on Monday, Judge Scola said that argument was “simply wrong.”
“As the proverbial saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words,” Scola wrote. “This one in particular depicts a worldwide celebrity next to Kogan with MedSpa’s name repeated all throughout the background. The promotional value is evident.”
Based on the claims in the lawsuit, the judge said the photo did more than just “thank” the rapper, whose birth name is Curtis James Jackson III: “Read in the light most favorable to Jackson, the defendants’ ‘thanks’ serves as a humblebrag. It is self-promotion.” The judge then offered up the dictionary definition of a “humblebrag” in a footnote.
Such a ruling does not mean 50 Cent has won the lawsuit. It merely means the case will head into discovery — the process during which both sides exchange key evidence — and toward an eventual trial where 50 will try to prove such allegations. But it bodes well for any litigant for a judge to rule that, if proven true, your allegations are valid.
An attorney for Kogan declined to comment on the decision.
50 Cent sued Kogan in September, arguing that he took a photo with “someone he thought was a fan” and had “never consented” to the use of the image for commercial purposes in any form. He says Kogan not only posted the image to Instagram herself but also engineered an article on the website The Shade Room that used the post to make the “false insinuation” that she’d provided him with penile enhancement.
The article in question (“Penis Enhancements Are More Popular Than Ever & BBLs Are Dying Out: Cosmetic Surgery CEO Angela Kogan Speaks On It”) did not directly claim that Jackson had the surgery. But it allegedly said he was a “client” of the practice while repeatedly using the image of him with Kogan — and Jackson’s lawyers say the “implication was clear.”
“Defendants’ actions have exposed Jackson to ridicule, caused substantial damage to his professional and personal reputation, and violated his right to control his name and image,” the star’s lawyers wrote at the time. They included social media comments in which users mocked the rapper, including one that “crudely” said the rapper should be called “50 inch.”
Firing back with her motion to dismiss the case in October, Kogan’s attorneys argued the image was “an innocuous capture of plaintiff and defendant in defendants’ office,” not the kind of direct endorsement that would give rise to a lawsuit. And her lawyers argued that she had no direct role in the Shade Room using the Instagram post alongside the article about penile enhancements.
But in his ruling on Monday, Judge Scola said Kogan’s lawyers had glossed over the fact that she had not merely posted the image to Instagram, but also posted a screen-captured video of her scrolling through the Shade Room’s article.
“They weakly argue that Jackson consented to the photo’s being uploaded on to Instagram while making no mention of Jackson’s consent/non-consent as to the screen capture video and the promotional value it doubtlessly served,” the judge wrote.
“That omission is fatal,” Scola continued. “Because the defendants took it upon themselves to post the video onto their Instagram accounts, Jackson can plausibly argue that the defendants unauthorizedly used his likeness to promote their business regardless of whether the defendants had any role in TSR’s publication of either the Tweet or the article.”
Even if 50 Cent had traded his photo consent for free medical care, the judge also questioned whether such treatment could possibly be fair payment for the commercial scale at which Kogan allegedly used the image.
“The promotional value that the defendants have received from repeatedly sharing Kogan’s photo with Jackson is surely great,” Scola wrote. “Although the court has no reason to doubt the quality of the ‘free medspa services’ that the defendants provided Jackson, the record is not sufficiently established to substantiate the defendants’ suggestion that their services equitably compensated Jackson.”
Taylor Swift has reached an agreement with two songwriters to end a five-year long copyright lawsuit claiming she stole the lyrics to “Shake It Off” from an earlier song about “playas” and “haters,” resolving one of the music industry’s biggest legal battles without a climactic trial or ruling.
In a joint filing made on Monday in California federal court, attorneys for both Swift and her accusers – songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler – asked a judge for an order “dismissing this action in its entirety.” Before the deal, a trial had been scheduled to kick off in January.
The public filings did not include any specific terms of the apparent settlement, like whether any money exchanged or songwriting credits would be changed. Attorneys for both sides and a rep for Swift did not immediately return requests for comment.
The agreement means a sudden end for a blockbuster case that seemed headed toward the next landmark ruling on music copyrights. Following legal battles over Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” and Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” the case against Swift posed fundamental questions about the limits of copyright protection, with her lawyers arguing that the accusers were trying to “cheat the public domain” by monopolizing basic lyrical phrases.
Hall and Butler first sued way back in 2017, claiming Swift stole her lyrics to “Shake It Off” from their “Playas Gon’ Play,” a song released by R&B group 3LW in 2001. That was no small accusation, given the song in question: “Shake It Off” debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in September 2014 and ultimately spent 50 weeks on the chart, a mega-hit even for one of music’s biggest stars.
In Hall and Butler’s song, the line was “playas, they gonna play, and haters, they gonna hate”; in Swift’s track, she sings, “‘Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play and the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.” In their complaint, the duo said Swift’s lyric was clearly copied from their song.
In the years since, Swift’s attorneys repeatedly pushed to dismiss the case, arguing that a short snippet of lyrics about “players” and “haters” was not creative or unique enough to be covered by copyrights. They cited more than a dozen earlier songs that had used similar phrases, including 1997’s “Playa Hater” by Notorious B.I.G and 1999’s “Don’t Hate the Player” by Ice-T.
Swift initially won a decision in 2018 dismissing the case on those grounds, with a federal judge ruling that Hall and Butler’s lyrics were not protected because popular culture in 2001 had had been “heavily steeped in the concepts of players, haters, and player haters.” But an appeals court later overruled that decision, and a judge ruled last year that the case would need to be decided by a jury trial.
“Even though there are some noticeable differences between the works, there are also significant similarities in word usage and sequence/structure,” the judge wrote at the time.
More recently, Swift’s team again asked the judge to dismiss the case, this time making a new argument: That documents turned over during the case had revealed that Hall and Butler voluntarily signed away their right to file the lawsuit in the first place.
In an August filing, Swift’s lawyers said the documents proved that Hall and Butler had granted their music publishers the exclusive rights to bring an infringement lawsuit over the song, meaning they lacked the legal standing to do so. Her lawyers said the pair had even emailed their publishers – Sony Music Publishing and Universal Music Publishing Group, respectively – asking for permission to sue, but that both companies had refused the request.
“After their music publishers refused to assign to plaintiffs the claim they assert in this action, their manager unsuccessfully lobbied a United States Congressman to get a House sub-committee to intervene,” Swift’s lawyers alleged in the filing.
That motion was still pending when Monday’s settlement was filed.