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1: Californian Court Dismisses One of the Shake It Off Plagiarism Lawsuits, Again
First off today, Chris Cooke at Complete Music Update reports that Taylor Swift has emerged victorious again in a lawsuit over her 2014 hit song Shake it Off and this time the judge says the plaintiff could be declared a “vexatious litigant” if he doesn’t drop the issue.
The case involved musician Jesse Graham, who first sued in 2015 claiming that Shake it Off was an infringement of his 2013 song Haters Gonna Hate. Specifically, he took issue with similarities between the lyrics, but the courts quickly dismissed the original case. However, after a separate lawsuit over the song had a similar dismissal overturned, Graham decided to try his hand again and, once again has been shut down.
This was actually his fourth attempt at the case. In this one, he sued through is company in a bid to get around that his last attempted was dismissed with prejudice, meaning he couldn’t refile the lawsuit directly. Swift’s team quickly picked apart his case, noting the lengthy history and issues with Graham’s copyright registration. That resulted in another dismissal though Graham has said he is planning an appeal.
2: The Record Industry Is Going After Parody Songs Written By an Algorithm
Next up today, Kevin Truong at Vice reports that a researcher that studies artificial intelligence has caused a stir in the music industry as the IFPI have demanded the removal of an AI-generated parody of the Michael Jackson song Beat It.
The bot, dubbed “Weird A.I. Yankovic” creates karaoke-style parodies of songs by using the backing track of the music but writing all new lyrics. One of those videos, namely for Beat It, was removed from Twitter due to a copyright notice filed by the IFPI.
The researcher, Mark Riedl, says that he feels comfortable the video falls under fair use though others note that there is a lot of room for debate. Riedl has contested the takedown with Twitter but says he has not heard a response. However, he admits that this project was created for fun so that it is unlikely he’ll take further action to restore the video.
3: ‘Star Trek’ At Comic-Con@Home Panel Goes Dark For Short Spell Over CBS Copyright Glitch
Finally today, Dominic Patten at Deadline reports that a Comic-Con@Home panel featuring the cast and crew of current Star Trek shows went offline briefly due to a copyright snafu when some footage from the show tripped a copyright bot.
The panel was halted for about 20 minutes as people worked behind the scenes to try and fix the issue. Eventually, it was resolved and the panel resumed as normal.
According to the report, it was the only hiccup in the panel, which was the first of the new Comic-Con@Home format.
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