By: Lea Washington What do you get when you put a roll and gravy together? A lawsuit apparently. The “Rickrollin’” star Rick Astley is suing upcoming rapper Yung Gravy and his team. Gravy’s song “Betty” is the focus of this dispute, as it borrows from the song “Never Gonna Give You Up” which boasts 1.3 […]
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) provides protection for copyright holders to quickly allow for the removal of their material from the Internet if it is used illegally. It has a major presence in much of our entertainment world, particularly in the streaming community. The process of a DMCA takedown takes place as companies and
Regulating the Blanket License: A Path Towards Terminating the ASCAP/BMI Consent Decrees By Dallin Earl Dallin Earl is a 2020 graduate of Harvard Law School and former president of the Recording Artists Project at HLS. The introduction to Regulating the Blanket License: A Path Towards Terminating the ASCAP/BMI Consent Decrees is below and you can
Loren Cheri Shokes received her J.D. from Harvard Law School (2017), her B.A., summa cum laude, from the University of California, Los Angeles (2013), and is the author of Life After Death: How to Protect Artists’ Post-Mortem Rights, 9 Harv. J. Sports & Ent. L. 27 and Note, Financing Music Labels in the Digital Era
Ariana Grande’s “Sweetener” World Tour is not so sweet for the press photographers tasked with capturing her star power on stage. Major media outlets including The New York Times, Associated Press, and the Los Angeles Times have joined forces with the National Press Photographers Association to protest the pop star’s markedly restrictive photo policies. According
On Monday, October 22nd, 2018, Tracy Chapman slapped Nicki Minaj with a copyright lawsuit. In her complaint, Chapman alleges that her song “Baby Can I Hold You” was sampled in Minaj’s song entitled “Sorry” without Chapman’s permission. Beginning in June 2018, Minaj and her representatives made multiple requests to license “Baby Can I Hold You,”
At a ceremony in the Oval Office on Thursday, President Trump signed the Music Modernization Act into law. The Act represents a major reform of Section 115 of the U.S. Copyright Act. It received bipartisan support in Congress and has been widely praised by major record labels, streaming services, consumer groups and artists. Three provisions
On February 15, 2016, Kanye West tweeted that his album, The Life of Pablo, “will never never never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale… You can only get it on Tidal.” A month and a half later, not only was the album on Apple, but it was also for sale on
The United States District Court for the Central District of California has granted summary judgment in a copyright case stemming from singer Gwen Stefani’s 2014 hit song “Spark the Fire.” The suit was brought by Stefani’s former hairdresser Richard Morrill. He alleged that he played Stefani a song called “Who’s Got My Lightah” while working
Law360 reported a Texas rock band’s representatives, Platinum Jack Entertainment Inc., filed suit against Chick-Fil-A Inc. and ESPN Inc. in Texas federal court on Tuesday. The suit alleges that the pair of companies stole a song from Dallas rock band Drayter for in the background of two commercials the companies released featuring the well-known Chick-Fil-A
The Allocation for Music Producers (AMP) Act was recently introduced in the Senate. If signed into law, this bill will create a way for producers and engineers to receive direct payments from SoundExchange instead of relying on the artists to fulfill their contractual obligations for payment. The industry has always been plagued by complaints of
