After many a false start (and a few traffic-related delays), R. Kelly’s trial for child pornography finally got under way this past spring, some six years after he was arrested for allegedly doing the dirty with a 14-year-old and videotaping the whole sordid affair. What followed was a courtroom circus that many pointed out would have made excellent fodder for another series of Kells’ “Trapped In The Closet” series, or at the very least an episode or two of Law & Order: It had conspiracy theory-obsessed jurors, First Amendment arguments involving music critics, and defenses based on Wayans Brothers vehcles. Just to start.
In a move that is a bit of a surprise (to me, at least), the Recording Industry Association of America has announced that it’s moving on from its strategy of using the legal system to crack down on those people sharing music from member labels. After 35,000 lawsuits since 2003, what changed?
The record industry’s attempts to throw spaghetti at the wall and see if it stuck, no matter how rancid the pasta or listeria-laced the meat sauce, resulted in guttersniping blogger Perez Hilton getting courted for an A & R by major labels who were confused about that maxim regarding all press being the good kind. But then his dreams of record-industry riches were torpedoed by the company formerly known as Sony BMG, who sued his brightly clad ass for streaming Britney Spears tracks on his site without permission. Because he had to get all “this means war” about it!
It’s difficult to think of a thornier or more complicated issue in copyright law than that brought up by Bopaboo, a startup that purports to provide a forum for consumers to buy and sell used digital audio files online, so I’ll try to keep this brief. I’m not going to comment specifically on Bopaboo, but rather on the legal implications of after-market sales of digital audio files, referred to in this article under the appropriate legalese of “digital phonorecords.”
Remember when Taco Bell tried to pull off that dumb publicity stunt where it would have donated $10,000 to charity if 50 Cent changed his name to 79, 89, or 99 Cent for a day? Remember how pissy Curtis got about the whole thing, how he said that Taco Bell had ruined his reputation among bloggers and how he was going to sue the MexiMelts off the fast-food chain? He wasn’t kidding: He filed a suit against the Bell in July, saying that the company “stole his endorsement” when they sent out that admittedly goofy letter and got press for it. (He also said that Taco Bell “diluted the value of his good name,” although if he was going to sue everyone guilty of that, you’d think he’d be suing a) the radio programmers who haven’t given a crap about any of his singles lately; b) all those people who didn’t buy the last G-Unit album; and c) himself.) Now, Taco Bell has responded with a 13-page court filing that basically asks, “Why don’t you show some courtesy, Curtis?”
