{"id":5167,"date":"2025-04-08T23:57:06","date_gmt":"2025-04-08T23:57:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/young-thug-drama-diddy-case-mariah-carey-payback-more-music-law\/"},"modified":"2025-04-08T23:57:06","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T23:57:06","slug":"young-thug-drama-diddy-case-mariah-carey-payback-more-music-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/young-thug-drama-diddy-case-mariah-carey-payback-more-music-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Young Thug Drama, Diddy Case, Mariah Carey Payback & More Music Law"},"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: Young Thug\u2019s Atlanta prosecutors get really mad over a social media post; Diddy\u2019s sex trafficking case heats up as a trial date looms; Mariah Carey seeks payback after beating a \u201cChristmas\u201d copyright case; and much more.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n\t\tTHE BIG STORY: DA Gets Mad About Young Thug\u2019s Tweets\t<\/h2>\n

\n\tLess than six months after Young Thug pleaded guilty to gang charges and was sentenced to probation, he found himself facing accusations from Atlanta prosecutors that he had violated his release terms. The issue? A mean tweet.<\/p>\n

\n\tTo rewind: After sitting in jail for more than two years on felony accusations over his \u201cYSL\u201d group, Thug rebuffed a plea deal and simply pleaded guilty in October, winning a sentence of only probation \u2014 a humiliating result for the Fulton County District Attorney\u2019s office after the longest-running trial in state history had descended into chaos.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile Thug avoided prison, he was hit with strict release terms from the judge, who warned him that \u201cthere better be no violations.\u201d And on Wednesday (April 2), prosecutors accused him of just such a misstep \u2014 citing a social media post on X (formerly Twitter) in which the rapper had criticized an investigator as \u201cthe biggest liar in the DA\u2019s office.\u201d They called that post \u201ca blatant disregard for the law\u201d and part of a \u201ca calculated campaign of intimidation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tUnsurprisingly, Thug\u2019s attorneys disagreed \u2014 calling those accusations \u201cbaseless\u201d and arguing that the rapper was legally entitled to voice his opinion about the government even while under probation: \u201cMr. Williams can admit to all of the allegations alleged and still not have violated any term of his probationary sentence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen the dust settled Thursday (April 3), Judge Paige Reese Whitaker sided with Thug and declined to revoke his probation. But she also suggested that he be more careful on social media: \u201cWhile the court does not find that the cited social media post rises to the level of a violation of defendant\u2019s probation, it may be prudent for defendant to exercise restraint regarding certain topics.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\tOther top stories this week\u2026\t<\/h2>\n

\n\tDIDDY CASE HEATS UP<\/strong> \u2013 The sweeping sexual abuse case against Sean \u201cDiddy\u201d Combs heated up with the trial looming next month, first with a new superseding indictment that added new legal charges against the star, and then with news that his ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura would testify against him at the trial using her real name. Prosecutors argued that the other three alleged victims should remain anonymous, though, citing such treatment in previous cases against R. Kelly and Ghislaine Maxwell.<\/p>\n

\n\tPRE-TRIAL CLASH<\/strong> \u2013 Meanwhile, federal prosecutors and Diddy\u2019s defense attorneys sparred over a crucial pre-trial question: Whether jurors can hear testimony from numerous other accusers beyond the four women at the core of the government\u2019s case. His lawyers say the feds are trying to \u201cpollute the trial with decades of dirt\u201d by adding last-minute \u201cincendiary\u201d claims to paint him as a \u201cbad guy\u201d; the government says Combs is \u201cdesperately\u201d trying to keep relevant testimony about his other intent and knowledge \u201chidden from the jury.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMARIAH\u2019S REVENGE<\/strong> \u2013 After beating a copyright lawsuit over her holiday classic \u201cAll I Want for Christmas is You,\u201d Mariah Carey and other defendants demanded that Vince Vance, the little-known songwriter who filed the case, repay more than $180,000 they spent on lawyers defending certain \u201cfrivolous\u201d motions. That might sound like a lot for just a few motions, but Carey says she was \u201cperfectly justified\u201d in paying elite lawyers because Vance was seeking drastic remedies like $20 million in damages and the \u201cdestruction of all copies\u201d of the song.<\/p>\n

\n\tDRAKE DISCOVERY<\/strong> \u2013 A federal judge ruled that Drake could move forward with discovery in his defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group (UMG) over Kendrick Lamar\u2019s diss track \u201cNot Like Us,\u201d allowing his attorneys to begin demanding documents like Lamar\u2019s record deal. The ruling went against UMG, which had argued that Drake\u2019s case was so flawed that it would likely be quickly dismissed, making discovery a waste of everyone\u2019s time. But discovery in a civil lawsuit is a two-way street \u2014 infamously so in defamation cases \u2014 and UMG can now also seek vast swathes of sensitive materials about Drake, including demanding to depose the rapper himself.<\/p>\n

\n\tHAYES v. TRUMP SURVIVES<\/strong> \u2013 A federal judge ruled that President Donald Trump must face a copyright lawsuit filed by the estate of Isaac Hayes over the president\u2019s alleged use of the 1966 song \u201cHold On, I\u2019m Coming\u201d on the campaign trail. The president\u2019s attorneys had argued that Hayes\u2019 estate had failed to show that it even owned a copyright to the song, but a judge said the estate had done just enough to avoid having the case tossed at the outset.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNOTHING MISLEADING\u201d<\/strong> \u2013 SiriusXM asked a federal judge to dismiss a class action claiming the company earns billions by foisting a deceptive \u201cU.S. Music Royalty Fee\u201d onto subscribers, arguing there had been \u201cnothing misleading\u201d about its pricing and marketing. The lawsuit claims the fee makes the service far more expensive than advertised, but SiriusXM argued that users \u201creceived what they paid for\u201d and knew about the fee: \u201cSirius XM has done exactly what it said it would do: charge a monthly price for music subscriptions, plus \u2018fees and taxes\u2019.\u201d<\/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":5168,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2943,294,296,5437,153,2942,593,5438,1095,1094],"class_list":["post-5167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-carey","tag-case","tag-diddy","tag-drama","tag-law","tag-mariah","tag-music","tag-payback","tag-thug","tag-young"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5167","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=5167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}