{"id":7257,"date":"2025-08-05T21:51:33","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T21:51:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/led-zeppelin-case-beyonce-sample-napster-suit-more-music-law-news\/"},"modified":"2025-08-05T21:51:33","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T21:51:33","slug":"led-zeppelin-case-beyonce-sample-napster-suit-more-music-law-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/led-zeppelin-case-beyonce-sample-napster-suit-more-music-law-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Led Zeppelin Case, Beyonc\u00e9 Sample, Napster Suit & More Music Law News"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tDEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN: <\/strong>Decades after lawsuits from record labels killed Napster, Sony Music says the descendant of the industry-shaking file-sharing service is still ignoring copyright law.<\/p>\n

\n\tShortly after Shawn Fanning <\/strong>and Sean Parker<\/strong>\u2019s creation took the country by storm in 1999, it was facing infringement lawsuits, including from Metallica and the major labels. Those cases were quickly successful: A federal judge issued an injunction in 2001, effectively forcing Napster to shut down.<\/p>\n

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\n\tBut the Napster name<\/em> never really died. In the years since, it\u2019s been purchased by a series of owners who wanted to capitalize on the name recognition for a fully-licensed music service \u2014 first by Roxio, then by Best Buy, and finally in 2011 by Rhapsody, an early music streaming service, which rebranded itself under the Napster banner in 2016.<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to Sony Music, Napster\u2019s pirate spirit never died, either. In a lawsuit filed last week, the music giant claimed that the company owes millions in unpaid royalties after refusing to pay its licensing bills for more than a year. And Sony says Napster has continued to illegally play songs even after the record company terminated the deal. <\/p>\n

\n\tFor more details on the new Napster case \u2014 including access to the actual lawsuit filed in court \u2014 go read the full story here.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou\u2019re reading The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from <\/em>Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between. To get the newsletter in your inbox every Tuesday, go subscribe here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

\n\tTURNING THE PAGE <\/strong>\u2013 Led Zeppelin\u2018s Jimmy Page reached a settlement with songwriter Jake Holmes to resolve the latest lawsuit over the disputed credits to the band\u2019s iconic song \u201cDazed and Confused.\u201d Holmes has claimed for years that he actually wrote the song in 1967 and that Page simply reworked it into the famed 1969 Zeppelin track without credit or permission.<\/p>\n

\n\tCLEARANCE COMPLEXITIES <\/strong>\u2013 Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s company, Parkwood Entertainment, was hit with a copyright lawsuit over a sample used as the introduction to her hit 2022 Renaissance track \u201cAlien Superstar.\u201d The case, filed by the owner of indie house music label Soundmen on Wax Records, claims that Bey cleared the sample \u2014 but did so with the wrong party.<\/p>\n

\n\tNO BAIL FOR DIDDY<\/strong> \u2013 A month after his stunning acquittal on sex-trafficking and racketeering charges, Diddy was denied bail again, meaning he\u2019ll remain in jail until his October sentencing for interstate prostitution. The star\u2019s lawyers argued it was extremely unusual for a mere customer<\/em> of prostitution to be denied bail, and got unexpected support from one of his alleged victims. But the judge was unswayed, ruling that the argument might work if the case \u201cdidn\u2019t involve evidence of violence, coercion or subjugation in connection with the acts of prostitution at issue, but the record here contains evidence of all three.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBOOSIE PLEA DEAL<\/strong> \u2013 Rapper Boosie Badazz took a plea deal in his federal gun possession case, more than two years after he was first charged. Prosecutors charged the rapper in 2023 after authorities spotted a handgun tucked into his waistband in an Instagram video \u2014 a crime because Boosie was previously convicted on drug charges back in 2011. The rapper announced the deal on social media, telling fans he was \u201ctired of fighting\u201d and had made \u201cthe right decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tUGLY ALLEGATIONS<\/strong> \u2013 Kate Bowman, the wife of former Maroon 5 member Mickey Madden, made shocking allegations in court filings seeking a restraining order, claiming the bassist repeatedly physically assaulted her after she confronted him about \u201csexting with teenage girls.\u201d The filings said that the texts were sent to \u201cat least two high school girls\u201d and included \u201cfantasies\u201d about \u201craping one of the girls.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTUPAC MURDER CASE<\/strong> \u2013 Duane \u201cKeffe D\u201d Davis, the man facing a looming murder trial over the 1996 killing of Tupac Shakur, filed a petition asking the Nevada Supreme Court to dismiss the charges. Attorneys for Davis say prosecutors lack any hard evidence tying him to the crime and are instead improperly relying solely on statements he\u2019s made about the killing, including a seeming confession in a 2019 tell-all memoir.<\/p>\n

\n\tSOLO SETTLEMENT <\/strong>\u2013 Ty Dolla $ign reached a settlement to escape a copyright lawsuit over an allegedly uncleared sample on Vultures 1<\/em>. But the case, filed by a group of Memphis rappers, will move ahead against Ye (formerly known as Kanye West), who was not involved in the settlement.<\/p>\n

\n\tDIVORCE DRAMA<\/strong> \u2013 Tyrese\u2019s ex-wife Samantha asked to have the singer thrown in jail over accusations that he still owes almost $500,000 in fees to her attorneys in their never-ending divorce case. The filing claims that the Fast & Furious<\/em> star has \u201cmade no effort whatsoever\u201d to pay the fine and should be held in criminal contempt for his \u201cblatant disregard for this court\u2019s order on fees.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBRING IN BIGLAW<\/strong> \u2013 The organizers of FireAid, the all-star benefit concerts for Los Angeles wildfire relief in January, hired the BigLaw firm of Latham & Watkins to review its grantmaking process amid a growing furor about the distribution of $100 million raised by the events. The blowback has been fueled by allegations from Republican congressman Kevin Kiley, who claims donations were diverted to undeserving non-profits; FireAid has called those claims \u201cmisinformation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCARDI IN COURT <\/strong>\u2013 Cardi B won a key ruling in a civil lawsuit that claims she assaulted a security guard at her OBGYN\u2019s office in 2018. With the trial looming, a judge ruled that the plaintiff\u2019s lawyers cannot dig up dirt from Cardi\u2019s past in front of the jury, including her past work as a stripper or her misdemeanor assault conviction for throwing a bottle at a New York strip club.<\/p>\n

\n\tDANCE COPYRIGHTS<\/strong> \u2013 Fefe Burgos, a dancer who\u2019s worked with Usher, Jennifer Lopez and Selena Gomez, filed a lawsuit against Fortnite maker Epic Games, claiming it stole his copyrighted choreography from a recent Rauw Alejandro music video and then sold it as an add-on within the popular online video game.<\/p>\n

\n\tBREEZY BRAND BATTLE <\/strong>\u2013 Chris Brown and Live Nation were hit with a lawsuit from a Miami-based retailer called Breezy Swim over his Breezy Bowl XX tour \u2014 a name that the company claims infringes its trademark rights.<\/p>\n

\n\tLEGAL BILLS REPAID<\/strong> \u2013 An ex-staffer suing Ye (formerly Kanye West) for antisemitism asked a judge to order the rapper to repay nearly $100,000 incurred by her legal team in fending off a \u201cfrivolous and absurd\u201d motion he unsuccessfully filed in the case. Ye\u2019s lawyers argued that his offensive outbursts were part of a \u201cprovocative performance\u201d protected by the First Amendment, but the judge flatly rejected that argument in June.<\/p>\n

\n\tSTIFF PUNISHMENT<\/strong> \u2013 Federal prosecutors urged a judge to sentence Latin music executive \u00c1ngel Del Villar<\/strong> to more than six years in prison following his conviction in March on felony charges of doing business with a concert promoter linked to Mexican drug cartels. The feds said the sanctions Del Villar violated were imposed on \u201cone of the world\u2019s most brutal criminal organizations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBATTLE OF THE BAND<\/strong> \u2013 Chris Beattie, the founding bassist for hardcore band Hatebreed, filed a lawsuit alleging that the group\u2019s frontman, Jamey Jasta, had unceremoniously kicked him out after 30 years so he could get a larger cut of the band\u2019s profits. Beattie claims Jasta used a \u201cfalse narrative\u201d \u2014 that the bassist had harassed a Live Nation security guard at a concert \u2014 as a pretext to oust him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN: Decades after lawsuits from record labels killed Napster, Sony Music says the descendant of the industry-shaking file-sharing service is still ignoring copyright law. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7258,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1304,294,153,815,593,6595,310,1307,339,5832],"class_list":["post-7257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-beyonce","tag-case","tag-law","tag-led","tag-music","tag-napster","tag-news","tag-sample","tag-suit","tag-zeppelin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7257","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=7257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}