{"id":2666,"date":"2024-09-18T15:51:15","date_gmt":"2024-09-18T15:51:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/diddy-indictment-miley-cyrus-case-trump-loss-more-music-law-news\/"},"modified":"2024-09-18T15:51:15","modified_gmt":"2024-09-18T15:51:15","slug":"diddy-indictment-miley-cyrus-case-trump-loss-more-music-law-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/diddy-indictment-miley-cyrus-case-trump-loss-more-music-law-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Diddy Indictment, Miley Cyrus Case, Trump Loss & 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: Diddy faces a sweeping criminal indictment that accuses him of decades of sexual abuse; Miley Cyrus gets hit with a copyright lawsuit over allegations that her chart-topping \u201cFlowers\u201d infringed a Bruno Mars track; Eddy Grant wins his case against Donald Trump over the use of \u201cElectric Avenue\u201d in a campaign video; and much more.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n\t\tTHE BIG STORY: Diddy\u2019s Downfall<\/strong>\t<\/h2>\n

\n\tLess than a year after news broke about a civil lawsuit containing brutal accusations of sexual abuse against Sean \u201cDiddy\u201d Combs, the other shoe has finally dropped.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe once-powerful rapper was arrested in New York City on Monday night on federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges. When prosecutors unsealed the indictment on Tuesday, they detailed allegations of a sprawling criminal operation with a single aim: \u201cfulfilling the personal desires of Combs, particularly those related to sexual gratification.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFor decades, Sean Combs \u2026 abused, threatened and coerced women and others around him to fulfill his sexual desires, protect his reputation and conceal his conduct,\u201d the indictment reads. If convicted of the charges, Combs is facing a minimum sentence of 15 years in prison and a maximum of life behind bars.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tLater on Tuesday, Combs was arraigned in federal court and denied bail, leaving him in jail until an eventual trial. The judge said Diddy posed a flight risk and was potentially a danger to others, swayed by arguments from prosecutors that he was a \u201cserial abuser\u201d who had a history of both violence and witness intimidation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn many ways, the charges against Diddy mirror those against R. Kelly, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2022 over a decades-long scheme to abuse underage women.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tLike Kelly, prosecutors are targeting Combs under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a federal statute that bans criminal enterprises composed of multiple people. While RICO is best known as a tool to fight mobsters and drug cartels, the Kelly case proved that it can be equally effective at targeting a superstar musician who used his fame and money to build what amounts to a criminal organization \u2013 only one aimed at facilitating sexual abuse.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd like the Kelly case, the indictment of Combs has led to tough questions about why it took so long for law enforcement to act. When asked directly at Tuesday\u2019s press conference, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams demurred: \u201cI can\u2019t tell you why it took so long. I think the better focus is on the fact that we are here today and we are committed to making sure that justice is done.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tFor more on the case, go read our full story<\/strong>\u00a0on Combs\u2019 indictment, including access to the charging documents and statements from prosecutors, as well as our coverage on the bail hearing<\/strong>. And stay tuned as the case unfolds, because Billboard <\/em>will be keeping you updated with every development.<\/p>\n

\n\t\tTHE OTHER BIG STORY: I Can Write My Own Songs?<\/strong>\t<\/h3>\n

\n\tNearly two years after fans speculated that Miley Cyrus\u2019 chart-topping \u201cFlowers\u201d was making pointed references to Bruno Mars\u2019 \u201cWhen I Was Your Man,\u201d a company that owns part of the Mars song is suing her for copyright infringement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The complaint was filed not by Mars himself but by an entity called Tempo Music Investments that bought a share of the copyright to his song from one of its co-writers. In it, lawyers for that group claim the two songs have \u201cstriking similarities.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Whether or not they\u2019re \u201cstriking,\u201d the songs have clear connections. In the time-honored tradition of an \u201canswer song,\u201d Cyrus inverted Mars\u2019 lyrics and seemed to repeatedly rebut them \u2013 in one instance telling fans \u201cI can buy myself flowers\u201d when Mars said \u201cI should\u2019ve bought you flowers.\u201d The reason for the references? Mars\u2019 song was apparently a favorite of Cyrus\u2019 ex-husband Liam Hemsworth, and the theory goes that her repeated allusions were a reference to their split.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the time, legal experts told Billboard <\/em>that Cyrus was likely not violating copyrights simply by using similar lyrics to fire back at the earlier song. This week\u2019s lawsuit says the similarities go well beyond the lyrics, including \u201cmelodic and harmonic material,\u201d \u201cpitch ending pattern,\u201d and \u201cbass-line structure.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

But experts remain skeptical. To understand why, go read our full story<\/a><\/strong>, including comments from copyright lawyers and access to the full complaint filed against Cyrus.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\u2018ELECTRIC\u2019 INFRINGEMENT <\/strong>\u2013 A federal judge ruled that Donald Trump infringed copyrights<\/a><\/strong> by using Eddy Grant\u2019s iconic \u201cElectric Avenue\u201d in a 2020 campaign video without permission. Trump claimed that he made legal fair use of the song by using it in a video attacking Joe Biden, but the judge called it something else: \u201cwholesale copying of music to accompany a political campaign ad.\u201d Up next: A ruling on how much Grant is owed in damages.\u00a0<\/p>\n

MORE DIDDY <\/strong>-Tuesday\u2019s indictment overshadowed everything else, but it wasn\u2019t the only Diddy Law story from the past week. The rapper was hit with a new civil lawsuit<\/a><\/strong> from Dawn Richard, a winner of MTV\u2019s Making the Band who says he subjected her to years of \u201cabuse and exploitation.\u201d He also moved to set aside<\/a> <\/strong>a $100 million default judgment won by a Michigan inmate, arguing he was never served with the \u201cfrivolous\u201d sexual assault allegations and would have easily defeated them if he had been.\u00a0<\/p>\n

DOLAN DEPOSITION <\/strong>\u2013 A federal judge ruled that Madison Square Garden owner James Dolan must sit for a deposition<\/a><\/strong> over the infamous 2017 ejection of ex-NBA player Charles Oakley from the Manhattan arena, ruling that the CEO \u201chad a courtside seat\u201d for the incident. Defense lawyers argued that Dolan, who also controls the Las Vegas Sphere and Radio City Music Hall, shouldn\u2019t be personally dragged into a deposition, but a judge said the exec \u201clikely possesses relevant knowledge that cannot be obtained from other witnesses.\u201d<\/p>\n

RATE DEBATE <\/strong>\u2013 BMI filed a rate-setting case<\/a><\/strong> against SiriusXM in federal court after they failed to reach a deal during more than two years of negotiations, arguing the radio company is \u201cno longer a startup\u201d and must pay more to songwriters. Among other things, BMI pointed to SiriusXM\u2019s increasing reliance on internet streaming rather than old-school satellite radio. \u201cDigital music services pay higher rates to BMI than satellite radio, and the new SiriusXM rate should reflect this expansion of digital performances.\u201d<\/p>\n

TAYLOR ENDORSEMENT <\/strong>\u2013 When Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris for president, the singer said she was spurred to action by her fears about artificial intelligence<\/a><\/strong> \u2014 namely, an incident last month in which Donald Trump posted AI-generated images that falsely claimed the superstar\u2019s support. Experts told Billboard <\/em>at the time that Swift could have sued Trump, but they predicted<\/a> <\/strong>(accurately, it turns out) that the star would probably just fight Trump\u2019s fakery with a legitimate <\/em>endorsement of her own.<\/p>\n

PHARMA FIGHT <\/strong>\u2013 Johnson & Johnson was hit with a copyright lawsuit<\/a><\/strong> accusing the pharma giant of \u201crampant infringement\u201d of instrumental music in YouTube and Facebook videos. Associated Production Music (APM) \u2013 a joint venture of Sony Music Publishing and Universal Music Publishing \u2014 claimed J&J released nearly 80 different internet videos featuring unlicensed music from its catalog.<\/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":2667,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[294,1942,296,3447,153,1565,3475,593,310,409],"class_list":["post-2666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-case","tag-cyrus","tag-diddy","tag-indictment","tag-law","tag-loss","tag-miley","tag-music","tag-news","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2666","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=2666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}