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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: Record labels sue the Internet Archive over a project to digitize old records; Dua Lipa loses a bid to dismiss one of the “Levitating” copyright lawsuits; a federal judge questions the fairness of Live Nation’s arbitration agreements with ticket buyers; and much more.
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THE BIG STORY: Historical Preservation or Blatant Infringement?
Like almost anything implicating copyright law, the Great 78 Project is something of a Rorschach test.
To the Internet Archive, it’s a project of “preservation, research and discovery,” aimed at creating a “digital reference collection of underrepresented artists and genres.” Digitizing hundreds of thousands of old 78rpm records is a much-needed effort to “ensure the survival of these cultural materials for future generations to study and enjoy.”
But according to a new lawsuit filed last week by Universal Music, Sony Music and Concord, the Great 78 is nothing more than “blatant” copyright infringement under a “smokescreen” of preservation.
“The Great 78 website is a massive, unauthorized, digital record store of recordings,” lawyers for the music companies wrote in the massive lawsuit this week, which claims the Internet Archive infringed more than 2,700 songs and potentially owes as much as $412 million in damages.
“Although Internet Archive describes the Great 78 Project’s goal as ‘the preservation, research and discovery of 78 rpm records,’ the Great 78 Project is actually an illegal effort to willfully defy copyright law on an astonishing scale,” the labels wrote.
At issue in the case are so-called pre-1972 songs — a category of music that was, when the Great 78 Project launched in 2006, not covered by federal sound recording copyrights. But in 2018, federal lawmakers extended such protection to the old records as part of the Music Modernization Act.
While the new law contained carveouts that allowed “non-commercial” uses of certain old records, the labels say the Internet Archive simply “ignored the new law and plowed forward as if the Music Modernization Act had never been enacted.”
For more, go read our full breakdown of the lawsuit, including access to the actual legal complaint filed against the Internet Archive.
Other top stories…
10 YEARS FOR TORY LANEZ – The rapper was sentenced to 10 years in prison for shooting Megan Thee Stallion in the foot, capping off three years of legal drama over the violent 2020 incident. The sentence was much harsher than the penalty sought by Lanez’s lawyers (just probation) but less than the 13 years that prosecutors had requested.
DUA LIPA CAN’T BEAT DISCO CASE – A federal judge ruled that Dua Lipa must face a copyright lawsuit accusing her of copying “Levitating” from a 1979 disco song, refusing the star’s early bid to end the case. Though she ruled that Lipa’s accusers had failed to show that the pop star had ever heard the song she was accused of copying, the judge said they had shown “just enough” to proceed on their claim that the song was so “strikingly similar” that it constitutes infringement.
TWITTER FIRES BACK AT PUBLISHERS – Twitter filed its first real response to a lawsuit from music publishers alleging widespread copyright infringement on the platform, arguing that it cannot be held liable for the actions of its users. The case claims that Twitter infringed over 1,700 different songs from writers like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, but in a motion to dismiss the case, lawyers for the Elon Musk-owned site (now rebranded to X) said the company itself was not on the hook for illegal posts by its users.
The 1975 KISS FALLOUT CONTINUES – The organizers of a Malaysian music festival are seeking 12.3 million ringgit ($2.7 million) in losses from British band The 1975 after lead singer Matty Healy’s on-stage protest of the country’s anti-gay laws prompted authorities to shut down the festival.
NO ARBITRATION FOR LIVE NATION – A federal judge ruled against Live Nation in an antitrust lawsuit over allegations of inflated ticket prices, declaring that the case should proceed as a federal class action rather than via private arbitration. Concertgoers opt into that out-of-court process when they buy tickets, but the judge ruled that the arbitration process posed a “serious risk of being fundamentally unfair” to consumers: “Because Defendants are often in effect the only ticketing game in town, would-be concertgoers are forced to accept Defendants’ [arbitration agreement] in full, or else forego the opportunity to attend events altogether.”
Elon Musk says his potential in-person fight with Mark Zuckerberg would be streamed on his social media site X, formerly known as Twitter.
The two tech billionaires seemingly agreed to a “cage match” face-off in late June. Zuckerberg is actually trained in mixed martial arts, and the CEO of Facebook’s parent company Meta posted about completing his first jiu jitsu tournament earlier this year.
“Zuck v Musk fight will be live-streamed on X,” Musk wrote in a post Sunday (Aug. 5) on the platform. “All proceeds will go to charity for veterans.”
Musk said earlier Sunday he was training for the fight by lifting weights.
“Don’t have time to work out, so I just bring them to work,” Musk wrote.
Whether or not Musk and Zuckerberg actually make it to the ring in Las Vegas has yet to be seen — especially as Musk often tweets about action prematurely or without following through. But even if their cage match agreement is all a joke, the banter has gained attention.
It all started when Musk, who owns X, responded to a tweet about Meta preparing to release a new Twitter rival called Threads. He took a dig about the world becoming “exclusively under Zuck’s thumb with no other options” — but then one Twitter user jokingly warned Musk of Zuckerberg’s jiu jitsu training.
“I’m up for a cage match if he is lol,” Musk wrote.
Representatives of X, Meta and Ultimate Fighting Championship, which owns the venue where the fight might take place, didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment.
Musk’s push to stream the video live on X comes as he aims to turn the platform into a “digital town square.” However, his much-publicized Twitter Spaces kickoff event in May with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announcing his run for president struggled with technical glitches and a near half-hour delay.
Musk had said the problems were due to “straining” servers because so many people were trying to listen to the audio-only event. But even at their highest, the number of listeners listed topped out at around 420,000, far from the millions of viewers that televised presidential announcements attract.
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Twitter is caught in controversy yet again, as Elon Musk is threatening to sue a group that’s been reporting on the increase of hate speech on the platform.
The social media platform which is now known as X is threatening legal action against the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). The group states that it received a letter from their attorney Alex Spiro expressing that intent on July 20th from the company accusing them of “a series of troubling and baseless claims that appear calculated to harm Twitter generally, and its digital advertising business specifically,” claiming it had used improper methodology in its research. A blog post claimed that a lawsuit was filed in Northern California on Monday (July 31st).
The CCDH has published numerous reports highlighting research that alleges that the social media platform is failing to protect its users from rampant hate speech, particularly from those who subscribe to Twitter Blue. A recent study done by the group showed that the company refused to take action against 99% of hate speech that originated with those subscribers. It also follows previous studies from the group that Twitter failed to act on 89% and 97% of posts that had anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hate speech, respectively.
In the letter, Spiro claims that CCDH’s findings weren’t credibly supported, continuing: “to the extent that CCDH is passing off as impartial “research” material that is, in fact, being funded in support of an ulterior agenda, your representations are all the more misleading.”
“Elon Musk’s actions represent a brazen attempt to silence honest criticism and independent research,” CCDH’s chief executive Imran Ahmed said when contacted by the New York Times, also adding that owner Elon Musk aimed to “stem the tide of negative stories and rebuild his relationship with advertisers.” Roberta Kaplan, the lawyer representing the CCDH, wrote in a statement: “These allegations not only have no basis in fact (your letter states none), but they represent a disturbing effort to intimidate those who have the courage to advocate against incitement, hate speech, and harmful content online.”
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Kanye West has kept a low profile for much of this year after spending the latter part of 2022 on a bizarre media tour in which he repeatedly made antisemitic remarks that led to the near-total meltdown of his once formidable fashion and music empire, and, according to the Anti-Defamation League, a rise in antisemitic […]
Ice Cube took a drive around South Central Los Angeles with fired Fox commentator Tucker Carlson on the latest episode of the controversial host’s new Twitter (né “X”) show on Tuesday and held forth on his opposition to the COVID-19 vaccines. “I never wanted to be controlled,” said the rapper born O’Shea Jackson, 54, during the chat.
“It wasn’t ready. It was six months, kind of a rush job. And I didn’t feel safe,” added Cube about the more than 670 million doses of vaccine administered to U.S citizens between Dec. 2020 and March 2023, which the CDC deemed “safe and effective,” with “rare” side effects; in fact, the CDC to date has confirmed just 9 deaths directly attributable to the COVID-19 vaccines as a result of a rare blood clot caused by the Johnson & Johnson shot. In addition, a December report from the Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy claiming that through Nov. 2022 the vaccines prevented more than 18.5 million U.S. hospitalizations and 3.2 million deaths, while saving the country $1.15 trillion.
The segment opened with Cube giving a smiling Carlson a driving tour through his childhood South Central neighborhood, during which the host was asked if he’d gotten vaccinated during the pandemic. “Of course not,” Carlson chuckled, noting that “they told you you were safe” in reference to the shots that were swiftly developed by the Trump administration to combat the global pandemic that killed nearly seven million people and resulted in 768 million cases of the disease.
A piece of tape rolled out in the 12-minute interview reported that Cube lost out on a $9 million payday for the film Oh Hell No because of his refusal to get the jab. “I know what they said. I heard what they said, I heard them loud and clear,” Cube said of his decision to not get vaxxed. “It’s not their decision. There is no repercussions if they are wrong. I get all the repercussions if they are wrong.” Cube said he wanted to be an example for his children and to ensure that they also declined to get vaccinated.
“Show them that I was wiling to stand on my convictions and that I was willing to lose $9 million and more,” he said in reference to the comedy he was slated to star in with Jack Black. Carlson then posited that America typically holds up people who stand by their convictions as heroes, noting that Cube was not treated that way for his stance on vaccines while rolling an SNL bit mocking the rapper for his vaxx veto.
“I never told anyone not to get vaccinated publicly,” Cube said of the shots that the New York Times reported went into the arms of more than 5.55 billion people around the world, representing nearly 72.3 percent of the global population. Actually, he added, he didn’t want anyone to know whether he’d been vaccinated or not, saying he was “pretty upset” when the information leaked. “I was going to quietly not take it and deal with the consequences as they came,” he said.
And, despite the low reported adverse reactions to the shots, Cube claimed he knows people who “suffer every day” from vaccine injuries. “It’s hard to watch,” he said without offering any details about the alleged injuries.
Cube also noted that he doesn’t give money to politicians because he doesn’t “believe” in them due to what he deemed their “hidden agendas.” He did, however, say he was “proud” that America elected Pres. Obama, before lamenting that “not much changed for people I know,” as Carlson loaded up a montage of news footage of Black Lives Matter protests and street violence.
The next episode of the conversation is slated to have the pair sitting down in Cube’s studio. Carlson was fired from his top-rated Fox News channel show in April after the network settled a massive lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems for $787 million over the conservative outlet’s admission that it aired false claims about the company’s ballot-counting machines. Carlson launched his Twitter show in June with strong ratings, but Business Insider reported recently that his viewership tanked by 86% within a month.
Check out the Cube chat here.
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Source: Dan Kitwood / Getty / X / Twitter
The masterclass in successfully ruining a good thing continues with the worst attempt at rebranding ever. Elon Musk has officially got rid of Twitter’s iconic bird logo and replaced it with an “X.”
“X,” or whatever the hell Elon Musk is trying to shape the bird app into, is here. Over the weekend, the Tesla chief announced the name change was officially coming and starting today. It is officially here.
If you log onto Twitter.com via desktop, you will see the new logo in the top left corner where the Twitter bird used to be. Also, if you type X.com, you will be redirected to the Twitter website.
To keep the stupid rebranding going, Musk shared a photo of the bland “X” symbol projected on the side of Twitter’s headquarters early Monday morning.
Musk left the explaining of what precisely this rebrand is all about to Twitter; oops, we X’s new CEO, Linda Yaccarino, who tried her best to break down this asinine decision.
“It’s an exceptionally rare thing – in life or in business – that you get a second chance to make another big impression,” Yaccarino begins her tweet. “Twitter made one massive impression and changed the way we communicate. Now, X will go further, transforming the global town square.”
She continues, “X is the future state of unlimited interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities. Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine.”
Uh, okay.
Twitter Users Are Still Baffled At The Decision & Are Clowning Elon Musk
No surprise, Twitter OGs are reacting to the name change negatively and are vowing to continue to call X its original name, Twitter.
They also see this as another opportunity to clown Elon Musk, and we don’t blame them because this is one of the dumbest executions we honestly have ever seen.
We’re always here for a Phony Stark, aka Elon Musk dragging. You can see more reactions in the gallery below.
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Photo: Dan Kitwood / Getty
1. Accurate
2. Behold, a masterclass in headassery.
Elon Musk said Sunday (July 23) that he plans to change the logo of Twitter to an “X” from the famous blue bird, marking what would be the latest big change since he bought the social media platform for $44 billion last year.
In a series of posts on his Twitter account starting just after 12 a.m. ET, Twitter’s owner said that he’s looking to make the change worldwide as soon as Monday.
“And soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” Musk wrote on his account.
The change isn’t surprising given Musk’s long history with the name “X,” says Allen Adamson, co-founder of marketing consultancy Metaforce. The billionaire Tesla CEO tweeted last October that “buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app.”
Musk’s rocket company, Space Exploration Technologies Corp., is commonly known as SpaceX. And in 1999, Musk founded a startup called X.com, an online financial services company now known as PayPal.
“Not sure what subtle clues gave it way, but I like the letter X,” Musk tweeted Sunday.
But the change on Twitter was met with sharp criticism on the social media platform.
The change will be very confusing to a huge chunk of the Twitter’s audience, which has been already souring on the social platform given a slew of other major changes Musk has made, Adamson said.
“They won’t get it,” he said. “It’s a fitting end to a phenomenal unwinding of an iconic brand and business.”
Earlier this month, Musk put new curfews on his digital town square, a move that met with sharp criticism that it could drive away more advertisers and undermine its cultural influence as a trendsetter.
The higher tweet-viewing threshold is part of an $8-per-month subscription service that Musk rolled out earlier this year in an attempt to boost Twitter revenue. Revenue has dropped sharply since Musk took over the company and laid off roughly three-fourths of the workforce to slash costs and avoid bankruptcy.
In May, Musk hired longtime NBC Universal executive Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s CEO.
Luring advertisers is essential for Musk and Twitter after many fled in the early months after his takeover of the social media platform, fearing damage to their brands in the enveloping chaos. Advertisers have cut back on spending partly because of changes Musk has made that has allowed for more hateful content to flourish and that has offended a wider part of the platform’s audience.
Musk said in late April that advertisers had returned, but provided no specifics.
Musk’s move to change Twitter’s logo to an “X” also comes as Twitter faces new competition from Meta’s new app, Threads, launched earlier this month. It has been seen as an alternative for those who have been upset with Twitter.
Threads is being billed as a text-based version of Meta’s photo-sharing app Instagram that the company has said offers “a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations.”
In the first five days of its launch, 100 million people had signed up for Threads, according to a post on Threads by Instagram head Adam Mosseri.
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Source: Anadolu Agency / Getty / Twitter
Elon Musk and Twitter are starting to look a little desperate as Threads continues to gain in popularity. Twitter is now dishing out payments to some content creators still on the platform.
Spotted on Engadget, Twitter’s “ad-revenue sharing program for creators” is a go, with some eligible Twitter Blue subscribers allegedly already getting a piece of that ad-revenue sharing pie in the form of payments.
The timing of the program’s rollout is quite convenient, but Phony Stark, aka Elon Musk, did tease the idea of the program in February while sharing as few details about how it will work. Some users have been sharing notifications from the platform informing them that payments are on the way.
One user shared that he received a $24,000 deposit based on the ads in the user’s replies.
Basically, the initiative is a way to keep popular content on Twitter and, at the same time, get more users to sign-up for the still very unpopular Twitter Blue subscription service.
But unfortunately, the program is only for Twitter users with at least five million post impressions in the past three months, and they must also be approved by a human moderator while adhering to Twitter’s Creator Subscriptions policies. Twitter will administer the payments through a Stripe account.
Twitter says it will soon drop an application process found under the Monetization hub in the account settings.
Twitter’s “Ad-Revenue Sharing Program Is Already Looking Suspicious
It hasn’t been three days, and Elon Musk’s “ad-revenue sharing program for creators” is already looking really shaky. The Washington Post reports that far-right influencers on the platform, including Andrew Tate, were first on the list to receive payments.
Per The Washington Post:
The first beneficiaries appear to be high-profile far-right influencers who tweeted before the announcement how much they’ve earned as part of the program. Ian Miles Cheong, Benny Johnson, and Ashley St. Claire all touted their earnings.
“Wow. Elon Musk wasn’t kidding. Content monetization is real,” tweeted an anonymous account called End Wokeness, with 1.4 million followers, accompanied by a screenshot showing earnings of over $10,400.
So far, many of the influencers who have publicly revealed that they’re part of the program are prominent figures on the right. Andrew Tate, for example, who was recently released from jail on rape and human trafficking charges, posted that he’d been paid over $20,000 by Twitter.
Again, this sounds like a desperate ploy to keep folks tweeting. We shall see how this works out for Musk and his platform.
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Photo: Anadolu Agency / Getty
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Source: SOPA Images / Getty / Threads
Is it a wrap for Twitter? Instagram’s Threads swiftly surpassed the 100 million users milestone.
Spotted on The Verge via Mark Zuckerberg’s Threads profile, the platform explicitly created to rival Twitter looks like a massive success for Meta.
The Threads app surpassed 100 million users faster than OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, which accomplished the feat in two months. It only took Instragram’s Threads mere days to reach that goal in a matter of days following its early Wednesday launch last week.
Per The Verge:
Threads proved to be an early hit almost immediately. In the first two hours, it hit 2 million users and steadily climbed from there to 5 million, 10 million, 30 million, and then 70 million. The launch has been “way beyond our expectations,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Friday.
On Monday, Zuckerberg said in a Threads post confirming the milestone that the growth was “mostly organic:”
Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, followed Zuckerberg, noting that it only took five days to reach the staggering number of users.
Now, whether that was achieved “organically” is another story. Before its launch, Threads was heavily pushed to the over 1 billion people using Instagram, allowing them to transfer their IG accounts quickly to the new platform. So we are sure that also significantly increased the number of people signing up to use Threads.
Users are also threading it up. According to The Verge, there have “been more than 95 million posts and 190 million likes shared on the app.”
Threads Accomplishing A Goal Adam Mosseri Claims It Doesn’t Want To Do
Despite these impressive numbers, Mosseri stated in a Threads post that his platform is not trying to replace Twitter and will not actively push politics or hard news. But you can’t stop users from talking about what they want to, and hard news is finding its way onto Threads.
Also, if its mission is not to replace Twitter, it seems to be failing at that mission. With some help from Elon Musk, Twitter’s traffic is reportedly “tanking,” according to CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince.
Twitter has been telling whatever advertisers it has left, probably Cheech and Chong, whose gummy ads are flooding Twitter users’ timelines, that it has “535 million monetizable monthly active users,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
Prince’s claims say otherwise.
Right now, it’s looking like Twitter is dying a slow death. Twitter better hope that the lawsuit bears fruit. But we are here for anything hurting Elon Musk’s pockets.
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Photo: SOPA Images / Getty / Threads
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Source: Anadolu Agency / Getty / Threads / Twitter
Elon Musk and his hot mess of a social media platform, Twitter, are looking salty in these digital streets after threatening to sue Meta for allegedly biting Twitter with Threads.
Spotted on The Verge, it looks like Elon Musk is shaking in his Allbirds following Threads’ successful launch and looks to be a strong contender to knock out the bird app.
In a letter addressed to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg obtained by Semafor, Twitter lawyer Alex Spiro alleges that Meta is using te company’s trade secrets and intellectual property when making bringing Threads to life and is threatening legal action in “both civil remedies and injunctive relief.”
Per The Verge:
Spiro, who is also Elon Musk’s personal lawyer and a partner at the Quinn Emanuel law firm, claims that Meta hired “dozens” of ex-Twitter employees to develop Threads, which wouldn’t be all that surprising given just how many people were fired following Musk’s takeover.
But according to Twitter, many of these former workers still have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other confidential information. Twitter alleges that Meta took advantage of this and tasked these employees with developing a “copycat” app “in violation of both state and federal law.”
In response to the claims, the communications director for Meta, Andy Stone, said, “No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that’s just not a thing.”
Meta also doesn’t seem phased by Musk’s threat to sue, being that is usually the course of action the company seems to take, most recently threatening Microsoft with a lawsuit for allegedly abusing Twitter’s API.
In response to the letter, Musk said, “Competition is fine, cheating is not.”
Threads Is Winning Out The Gate
Musk and his company’s lawsuit comes on the heels of Thread’s incredible launch that saw over 10 million users eager to ditch Musk’s platform signup.
According to The Verge, Threads has over 30 million registered users, including big names like Kim Kardashian, Khloé Kardashian, J.Lo, and more already on board with the app.
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Photo: Anadolu Agency / Getty
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