{"id":3787,"date":"2025-01-20T13:15:14","date_gmt":"2025-01-20T13:15:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/tiktok-ban-at-scotus-megan-thee-stallion-order-more-music-law-news\/"},"modified":"2025-01-20T13:15:14","modified_gmt":"2025-01-20T13:15:14","slug":"tiktok-ban-at-scotus-megan-thee-stallion-order-more-music-law-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/tiktok-ban-at-scotus-megan-thee-stallion-order-more-music-law-news\/","title":{"rendered":"TikTok Ban At SCOTUS, Megan Thee Stallion Order & 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: TikTok \u2013 and the music industry \u2013 wait for a Supreme Court ruling on the app\u2019s fate; Megan Thee Stallion wins a new civil restraining order against Tory Lanez; Travis Scott and SZA face a copyright lawsuit over their collab hit; and much more.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n\t\tTHE BIG STORY: TikTok\u2019s Future Hangs In The Balance<\/strong>\t<\/h2>\n

\n\tThe U.S. Supreme Court could rule at any moment on the future of TikTok \u2013 a key cog in the modern music industry. And it doesn\u2019t look good for TikTok.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt arguments on Thursday, justices on both sides of the high court\u2019s ideological divide seemed to signal that they plan uphold a law requiring the app\u2019s Chinese-owned parent ByteDance to either sell TikTok to a U.S. company or face a total ban on January 19. TikTok and groups of users argued that the law violates the First Amendment\u2019s protections for free speech, but the justices appeared more concerned about national security concerns cited by the government.<\/p>\n

\n\tJustice Brett Kavanaugh said China could use internal TikTok data to \u201cdevelop spies, to turn people, to blackmail people.\u201d Justice Elena Kagan noted that the First Amendment doesn\u2019t even apply to a foreign firm like ByteDance. Chief Justice John Roberts pointedly asked TikTok\u2019s lawyer if the court was \u201csupposed to ignore the fact that the ultimate parent is, in fact, subject to doing intelligence work for the Chinese government?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFollowing the hearing, courtwatchers weren\u2019t optimistic about TikTok\u2019s chances: \u201cI think it\u2019s more likely than not that TikTok & TikTok users lose this case 9-0,\u201d wrote Leah Litman, a constitutional law professor at the University of Michigan Law School, in a post on Bluesky<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\n\tMany legal battles have big stakes for the industry, but few are on the scale of the TikTok case. With more 170 million American users, the app has become a key part of the modern music ecosystem \u2013 a core promotional tool for labels and a jumping off point for many new artists, albeit one that has occasionally butted heads with rights owners and can sometimes prove difficult to harness into lasting success.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs Billboard<\/em>\u2018s Elias Leight writes, record labels are already gearing up for the potential of life without TikTok \u2014 an outcome that executives tell him is hard to even imagine: \u201cWhere is new artist discovery happening in 2025 if this app completely disappears?\u201d The live music business is also preparing to lose the platform, Billboard<\/em>\u2019s Dave Brooks writes, since festivals and other promoters have increasingly relied upon TikTok in recent years to reach ticket buyers.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe wild card in all of this, of course, is President-elect Donald Trump \u2013 who was very famously For It Before He Was Against It<\/em> when it comes to the TikTok ban but has now said he wants to \u201cnegotiate a resolution\u201d to save the platform. <\/p>\n

\n\tTrump is set to take office on Jan 20, just hours after the ban is scheduled to go into effect. Stay tuned.<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\u201cWON\u2019T LET ME FORGET IT\u201d<\/strong> \u2013 Megan Thee Stallion won a civil restraining order against Tory Lanez after tearfully testifying before a Los Angeles judge that she was scared he\u2019ll \u201cshoot me again\u201d when released from prison and \u201cmaybe this time I won\u2019t make it.\u201d The order came more than two years after Lanez was convicted of shooting the superstar rapper in the foot during a drunken incident in the Hollywood Hills. Lanez is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence, but Megan warned the judge that he has continued to harass her from behind bars: \u201cIt just seems like I have to relive it every day. The person who shot me won\u2019t let me forget it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCOPYRIGHT CLASH \u2013<\/strong> Travis Scott, SZA and Future were hit with a copyright lawsuit by Victory Boyd (a singer signed to Jay-Z\u2018s Roc Nation record label) over allegations that they stole key elements of their 2023 hit \u201cTelekinesis\u201d from her 2019 song \u201cLike The Way It Sounds.\u201d Boyd says she initially shared her song with none other than Kanye West, who then allegedly shared it with Scott.<\/p>\n

\n\tUNMASKING ORDER<\/strong> \u2013 K-hip-hop star Jay Park asked a U.S. court to force Google to identify an anonymous YouTube user so he could sue the person in Korean court, citing allegedly defamatory internet videos linking him to drug traffickers and disparaging Korean-Americans. The case isn\u2019t entirelys surprising: As K-pop has exploded in global popularity \u2014 and with it an intense online fan culture \u2014 \u00a0superstar acts like BTS and BLACKPINK have repeatedly turned to Korea\u2019s strict libel laws to target statements made on the internet. Last year, NewJeans filed a similar U.S. case seeking to reveal a YouTuber\u2019s identity.<\/p>\n

\n\tRELEASE DATE<\/strong> \u2013 YoungBoy Never Broke Again (a.k.a. NBA YoungBoy) will be released from prison in July, according to federal inmate records \u2014 far sooner than indicated by his formal two-year sentence handed down last month. The rapper (real name Kentrell Gaulden) received the sentence after taking a plea deal last year to resolve federal gun possession charges in Louisiana and Utah. The likely explanation: YoungBoy is being credited with time-served for jail stints while he awaited trial.<\/p>\n

\n\tCASE CLOSED (FOR NOW) <\/strong>\u2013 An anonymous Jane Doe accusing Diplo of sharing \u201crevenge porn\u201d dropped her lawsuit against the DJ, just weeks after a federal judge ruled she would need to reveal her identity if she wanted to proceed with the case. The move to end the suit was filed \u201cwithout prejudice,\u201d meaning she could still refile her lawsuit at some point in the future.<\/p>\n

\n\tCARDI v. TASHA CONTINUES <\/strong>\u2013 Years after Cardi B won a multi-million dollar defamation verdict against gossip blogger Tasha K, the superstar is still battling to get that money. In a court filing last month, Cardi accused Tasha of using bankruptcy as part of a \u201cfraudulent scheme to shield debtor\u2019s assets and income from creditors.\u201d Tasha then fired back last week, arguing that the rapper is trying to \u201csabotage\u201d her career and \u201csilence\u201d her.<\/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":3788,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[524,153,455,593,310,1574,350,457,456,182],"class_list":["post-3787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-ban","tag-law","tag-megan","tag-music","tag-news","tag-order","tag-scotus","tag-stallion","tag-thee","tag-tiktok"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3787","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=3787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}