Tag: LEGAL

Less than two weeks after a federal jury ruled that Ed Sheeran’s 2014 single “Thinking Out Loud” did not plagiarize elements of Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On,” the English musician has beaten a second lawsuit involving the two songs. According to court documents obtained by Pitchfork, a New York federal judge, Louis L. Stanton, dismissed a complaint originally filed against Sheeran and others in 2018 by Structured Asset Sales, LLC (SAS), whose CEO, David Pullman, owns one-third of the copyright to Ed Townsend’s catalog. Townsend co-wrote “Let’s Get It On” with Marvin Gaye, making Pullman partial owner of its copyright. Townsend’s family was behind the other major lawsuit against Sheeran.

In the complaint, viewed by Pitchfork, SAS alleged that “Thinking Out Loud” specifically infringed upon on the copyright of the sheet music for “Let’s Get It On.” The lawsuit also outlined multiple points of alleged plagiarism, including comparisons of the songs’ chord progressions, time signatures, bass lines, and more. At one point, SAS stated that Sheeran “experienced a sharp and sudden rise as an international music star in less than eighteen (18) months as a direct result of the commercial success of the release of “‘Thinking Out Loud.’”

Judge Stanton reached a similar conclusion to the jury who awarded Sheeran his trial victory earlier this month, dismissing the case with prejudice. “It is an unassailable reality that the chord progression and harmonic rhythm in ‘Let’s Get It On’ are so commonplace, in isolation and in combination, that to protect their combination would give ‘Let’s Get It On’ an impermissible monopoly over a basic musical building block,” Stanton wrote in the filing.

Stanton added that the chord progression for “Let’s Get It On” had been used “at least twenty-nine times” before Gaye and Townsend wrote the hit, and appeared in “another twenty-three songs” before “Thinking Out Loud” emerged.

“There is no genuine issue of material fact as to whether defendants infringed the protected elements of ‘Let’s Get It On,” Stanton wrote. “The answer is that they did not.”

Last year, Stanton had denied Sheeran’s bid for dismissal of SAS’ lawsuit. When reached today by Pitchfork, David Pullman said over the phone that it’s “unusual for a judge to reconsider his own decision.”

As The Guardian notes, Sheeran is facing another pending lawsuit from SAS that compares the finished recordings of “Thinking Out Loud” and “Let’s Get It On.”

Brooklyn drill rappers Sheff G (born Michael Williams) and Sleepy Hallow (born Tegan Chambers) have been indicted alongside 30 other alleged members of the 8 Trey Crips and the affiliated 9 Ways gang. Both men were charged with conspiracy to commit murder in the second degree and criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree. Of the 32 defendants, 24 were in custody and arraigned in Brooklyn Supreme Court today; if convicted, Sheff G faces up to 25 years in prison. Pitchfork has reached out to his attorney and representatives for comment.

Prosecutors accuse Sheff G of offering money and jewelry in exchange for “acts of violence,” including murder, presenting video evidence from cell phones and surveillance cameras, text messages, and property searches. The indictment describes one incident in which the rapper allegedly assembled three shooters and drove them to and from the crime scene. In another, on October 21, 2020, surveillance video captured suspects firing from a white vehicle at alleged members of the Folk Nation gang, killing one and injuring five more. 

Prosecutors allege that Sheff G and his sister Crystal Williams conspired with the shooters to commit murder, and treated a group of nine people—including Sleepy Hallow—to dinner at a Manhattan steakhouse as a reward for carrying out the Folk Nation shooting. “This is not an indictment of rap music,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzales said today at a press conference. “In fact, this investigation did not rely on a single lyric to prove any of the alleged crimes.” 

Sheff G is currently incarcerated, having been sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty to criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree in November 2021. He had been arrested in January after police stopped him and found a loaded gun in his car. Sheff G would have been eligible for release in June. 

Sheff G was one of five Brooklyn drill rappers removed from the lineup at Rolling Loud New York in 2019 at the request of NYPD, who cited safety concerns. 

An 18-year-old who was charged in the death of Pop Smoke confessed to killing the rapper amid a home invasion on February 19, 2020, as the Los Angeles Times reports. He further confessed to other charges for home invasion robbery; his name has been withheld from the media because he was 15 years old at the time of the break-in. He was charged in juvenile court, and could remain incarcerated until he turns 25.

Earlier this year, a 20-year-old defendant in the same case pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter. He was 17 at the time of the shooting, and was also charged as a juvenile. Five people were arrested in July 2020, nearly five months after they had broken into the Los Angeles Airbnb where Pop Smoke was temporarily staying. Two men, Keandre Rodgers and Corey Walker, are still facing murder charges in the case, and could face the death penalty if convicted. One more man was arrested but not ultimately charged in connection to the home invasion.

A slate of major labels represented by the Recording Industry Association of America—including Atlantic, Sony, Warner, Roc A Fella, and others—have won a $50 million judgement in a copyright infringement case against the mixtape hosting platform Spinrilla. Judge Amy Totenberg, of the Northern District Court of Georgia handed down the ruling, viewed by Pitchfork, which further dictated that the site must shut down on Monday, May 8, at 12 a.m.

Spinrilla was launched as an iOS app in 2013, expanding to Android the next year. The platform was primarily used by independent rappers to distribute their mixtapes, some of which used sampled material that had not been cleared with copyright holders. The RIAA filed a lawsuit on behalf of labels in 2017, claiming that Spinrilla had illegally hosted copyrighted material, advertised the infringed material on the site, and that it continued to host the content even after being alerted to violations. 

Nearly 4,100 recordings were ultimately determined eligible for consideration in the case. Judge Totenberg ruled in 2020 that Spinrilla was liable for direct copyright infringement on those recordings. 

Fugees rapper Prakazrel “Pras” Michel has been found guilty in federal court on charges including conspiracy, witness tampering, and failing to register as an agent of China, The Associated Press and NBC News reports.

Michel, a founding Fugee who later reinvented himself as a businessman and political figure, was found guilty of all charges, which included conspiracy to defraud the United States government and making foreign and conduit campaign contributions, one count of concealing material facts, and two counts of making a false entry in a record in connection with the conspiracy.

Michel was first charged in 2019, alongside the Malaysian fugitive Low Taek Jho (aka Jho Low), who is still at large and wanted internationally, both in relation to this case and for his role in the 1MDB scandal. Michel was accused of funneling money to Jho Low for political campaigns and also of making false statements in connection with the conspiracy.

Leonardo DiCaprio was called as a witness during the trial due to his connection with Jho Low, a Hollywood fixture who helped finance DiCaprio’s film The Wolf of Wall Street. “I understood him to be a huge businessman with many different connections in Abu Dhabi and Malaysia,” the actor testified, noting that he and Michel both attended group vacations with Jho Low.

Prosecutors alleged that Jho Low paid Michel roughly $100 million to influence American politics, first with illegal political payments intended to support Barack Obama’s reelection in 2012, and later to influence Donald J. Trump and his administration to end a Department of Justice investigation into Jho Low.

In the first instance, prosecutors alleged Michel was involved in a scheme to enlist attendees for an Obama fundraising dinner, then reimburse them for the tickets using foreign sources of money—and to threaten them if they came clean to authorities. The second alleged scheme took root as Low’s illegal lobbying came unravelled. It had been said to involve attempts to influence White House and justice officials to help return Chinese dissident Miles Guo, wanted for a separate fraud, to China. (Guo, who had also developed ties with former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, was arrested in March.)

In court, Michel argued that he had been acting on the advice of his lawyers when he met a Chinese minister at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York in 2017. He denied “willfully and knowingly” acting as a “secret agent under the direction and control of China when he approached the FBI,” his defense lawyers David Kenner and Charles Haskell wrote in court filings.

On April 18, Michel testified in court. He described himself as a “celebrity surrogate” for Low, claiming he was paid $20 million in an effort to get him a photo with Obama in 2012. Michel told jurors that he “basically asked for $1 million to start thinking about how” he might make the photo happen. The amount eventually grew to $20 million; Jho Low got the photo at a White House Christmas party. Michel also said he used his own money when he paid for friends to attend a 2012 Obama fundraiser.

Michel also testified that his alleged efforts to have Guo extradited were not as an agent of China, but he took meetings with the FBI agents voluntarily. “I took it upon myself to report because I thought the FBI should know,” he said. The case was sent for jury deliberation on Monday, April 24. 

A 20-year-old man has pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter for the murder of Pop Smoke, The Associated Press reports. The man, one among four others charged in the killing, also pleaded guilty in Inglewood juvenile court to home invasion robbery. His name has been withheld from the court because he was 17 years old at the time of the killing. He was sentenced to four years and two months in a juvenile facility.

Three adults and two juveniles were arrested in connection with the Brooklyn rapper’s death, which occurred as part of a home invasion at a Los Angeles AirBnB on February 19, 2020. Two of the adults, Corey Walker and Keandre Rodgers, are charged with murder and face the death penalty if convicted. The other juvenile in the case, whose name is being withheld because he was 15 years old at the time of the shooting, also faces charges of murder during the commission of a robbery and burglary. The fifth man who was arrested, Jaquan Murphy, was not ultimately charged in connection with the killing.