{"id":2537,"date":"2024-09-10T18:07:04","date_gmt":"2024-09-10T18:07:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/streaming-fraud-indicted-white-stripes-v-trump-more-music-law-news\/"},"modified":"2024-09-10T18:07:04","modified_gmt":"2024-09-10T18:07:04","slug":"streaming-fraud-indicted-white-stripes-v-trump-more-music-law-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/streaming-fraud-indicted-white-stripes-v-trump-more-music-law-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Streaming Fraud Indicted, White Stripes v. Trump & More Music Law News"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tThis 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. <\/em><\/p>\n

\n\tThis week: Prosecutors file a first-of-its-kind criminal case against an alleged streaming fraudster who made $10 million with fake songs; the White Stripes file a copyright case against Donald Trump over use of their music; Spotify wins a strongly-worded ruling dismissing a long-running lawsuit filed by Eminem\u2019s publisher; and much more.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n\t\tTHE BIG STORY: Streaming Fraud Finally Goes To Court<\/strong>\t<\/h2>\n

\n\tWhen Manhattan federal prosecutors indicted a North Carolina musician named Michael Smith last week, accusing him of stealing $10 million in streaming royalties as part of a \u201cbrazen fraud scheme,\u201d they told a story that much of the music industry already knew.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Streaming fraud \u2013 artificially boosting traffic for certain songs\u00a0\u2013 has been a growing problem for years. One study found that 1% to 3% of plays in France in 2021 were fraudulent; a 2022 report by fraud-detection service Beatdapp estimated that more than 10% of global streams were fake. \u00a0<\/p>\n

And this isn\u2019t the scam from \u201cOffice Space,\u201d stealing fractions of a penny<\/a> from a faceless tech giant. Because royalties are calculated as a percentage of a finite pie, every phony stream represents real money being diverted away from music that consumers actually played and the artists who created it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the first-of-its-kind indictment<\/a>, the feds say Smith created thousands of fake songs, then used an army of bots to play them billions of times on Spotify and other streamers. At one point, Smith estimated that he could play his songs 661,440 times each day, raking in as much as $1.2 million per year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Prosecutors say Smith\u2019s plot was aided by artificial intelligence \u2013 another growing problem for the industry. When he couldn\u2019t create enough fake tracks to make the scam work, Smith allegedly partnered with an unnamed executive at an A.I. music company to produce grist for his mill, funneling money back in the form of percentage cuts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For more details go read Kristin Robinson\u2019s stories \u2013 on\u00a0the filing of the charges<\/a><\/strong>, and on an AI company\u00a0with strong ties<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0to the accused fraudster.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\tOther top stories this week\u2026<\/strong>\t<\/h3>\n

\n\t\u201cSUES FASCISTS\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>\u2013 The White Stripes\u00a0filed a copyright lawsuit<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>against Donald Trump for using their iconic \u201cSeven Nation Army\u201d in a social media post, arguing that any association with the president was \u201coffensive\u201d because they \u201cvehemently oppose\u201d his policies and his bid for another term in the White House. In announcing the case, Jack White included a screenshot of the complaint with the caption \u201cthis machine sues fascists\u201d \u2013 an allusion to Woody Guthrie\u2019s famous use of a sticker reading \u201cthis machine kills fascists\u201d<\/a> on his guitar during World War II. The White Stripes are the latest in a long list of musical artists to threaten or take legal action against Trump over his use of music.\u00a0<\/p>\n

LOSE YOUR CASE<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Spotify\u00a0defeated a long-running lawsuit<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0filed by Eminem\u2019s publisher, Eight Mile Style, that claimed the rapper\u2019s music had been streamed illegally \u201cbillions\u201d of times on the platform. Rather than order Spotify to pay, the judge sharply criticized Eight Mile for suing in the first place, ruling that the company had effectively manufactured the lawsuit in an effort to win legal damages. \u201cEight Mile Style was not a hapless victim,\u201d the judge wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n

DIDDY DAMAGES<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 A Michigan inmate named Derrick Lee Cardello-Smith\u00a0won a $100 million default judgment<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0against Sean \u201cDiddy\u201d Combs in a sexual assault lawsuit \u2014 an eye-popping figure that was handed down after the rapper did not show up in court or file any formal response to the case. Following the ruling, Combs\u2019 lawyers strongly denied that the rapper was served with the lawsuit and said he \u201clooks forward to having this judgment swiftly dismissed.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

GUESS WHO TRUCE\u00a0<\/strong>\u2013 The members of classic rock band The Guess Who\u00a0settled a bitter trademark lawsuit<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0in which two bandmates (Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings) referred to a recent iteration of the group run by two others (Jim Kale and Garry Peterson) as nothing more than a \u201ccover band.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

COPYRIGHT CLAPBACK\u00a0<\/strong>\u2013 Verizon\u00a0fired back at a lawsuit<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0filed by Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment over allegations of \u201cstaggering\u201d piracy on its network. The labels claim Verizon \u201cburied its head in the sand\u201d and enabled illegal filesharing, but in a motion to dismiss, the telecom giant blasted the \u201clegally deficient\u201d premise of the case: \u201cWhen people do bad things online, their internet service providers are not typically the ones to blame. This lawsuit claims otherwise.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2538,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[643,3341,153,593,310,2322,3340,409,1257],"class_list":["post-2537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-fraud","tag-indicted","tag-law","tag-music","tag-news","tag-streaming","tag-stripes","tag-trump","tag-white"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}