licensing
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A new lawsuit claims that CNN used more than 100 different songs in international segments without paying for them, constituting copyright infringement on a “breathtaking scale.”
Freeplay Music, a company that sells so-called production music for use in web videos, television segments and other content – and hasn’t been afraid to sue over it – claims the cable news giant used the company’s library of music as “their own personal cookie jar” for segments on CNN Philippines, CNN Indonesia, CNN Chile.
“As high-profile news media companies which strive to provide the best news product all across the world, CNN and the international parties know they must obtain a license to use other’s intellectual property,” Freeplay’s lawyers wrote in the complaint. “Despite this, they willfully and consciously did not do so here on a breathtaking scale.”
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in California federal court, claimed that CNN used 115 songs across 283 segments. And Freeplay’s lawyers say they were “not minor uses” but rather “essential to each of the segment” – allegedly often used throughout entire segments.
Discovering the illicit use of their music in foreign media segments was like “finding a needle in a haystack,” Freeplay’s lawyers say, but that CNN knew that when it allegedly stole the music: “CNN apparently counted on the difficulty of being caught in deciding to engage in this massive willful copyright infringement.”
Freeplay is seeking at least $17 million in damages, saying anything less “would not get the attention of these media goliaths that continue to commit widespread infringement of FPM’s intellectual property.”
A spokesperson for CNN did not immediately return a request for comment on Thursday.
The case is hardly Freeplay’s first. Court records show that the company has filed dozens of similar copyright lawsuits over alleged unauthorized uses of its music, including cases against online retail giant Alibaba and guitar maker Gibson. Most recently, Freeplay sued Ford Motor Co. in 2020 over accusations that the car company had used 54 different songs in online promotional videos but was was “too cheap” to pay for them.
Ford later countersued in that case, accusing Freeplay of actively seeking out litigation with “bait-and-switch” practices. The carmaker said Freeplay falsely advertises that its music is free to lure companies and individuals to the platform, only to later sue them “to extort vast amounts of money” when they used the music.
“Freeplay has asserted copyright infringement claims in dozens of lawsuits, extracting settlements in these litigations and … in an untold number of other instances where the simple threat of litigation was enough to shake down Internet users who mistakenly thought they were getting exactly what Freeplay advertises – music that was “free” to use,” Ford’s lawyers wrote at the time.
The case between Freeplay and Ford ended in a settlement last year.
Kanye West is facing a copyright lawsuit over allegations that his “Life of the Party” illegally sampled a song by the pioneering rap group Boogie Down Productions – the latest in a string of such infringement case against the embattled rapper.
In a complaint filed Monday in New York federal court, Phase One Network (the group that owns Boogie Down’s copyrights) says Ye incorporated key aspects from the 1986 song “South Bronx” into “Life of the Party,” which was released in 2021 on West’s Stem Player streaming platform.
How do they know he did so? Phase One says West’s people reached out to clear the use of the Boogie Down song – and then released it anyway when a deal was never struck.
“The communications confirmed that ‘South Bronx’ had been incorporated into the infringing track even though West had yet to obtain such license,” Phase One’s lawyers wrote. “Despite the fact that final clearance for use of ‘South Bronx’ in the infringing track was never authorized, the infringing track wa nevertheless reproduced, sold, distributed, publicly performed and exploited.”
Amid his many, many other problems over the last year, West has been repeatedly sued for illegally sampling or interpolating in his tracks. In May, a Texas pastor named David P. Moten accused the rapper of sampling from his recorded sermon in “Come to Life.” In June he was sued again, that time for using a snippet of Marshall Jefferson’s 1986 house track “Move Your Body” in the song “Flowers.”
Though they’re coming at a faster clip in recent months, such lawsuits are nothing new for West. In 2019, he and Pusha T were sued 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,” “My Joy.” And thought he isn’t named in the case, Universal Music Group is currently facing a lawsuit that claims West used an initially-unlicensed sample of King Crimson’s 1969 “21st Century Schizoid Man” in his 2010 track “Power.”
In the new lawsuit, Phase One’s lawyers say West used an “exact reproduction” of “South Bronx,” featuring the song’s horn hits, a melodic figure and a drum fill. The company says it controls both the publishing and recording copyrights to the song, and accuses West of infringing both.
A spokesperson for West could not be located to comment on the new lawsuit. Multiple former press representatives for West have recently told Billboard that they no longer work with him.
Read the entire lawsuit here: