07/20: Bad Boy Records Among Labels Involved in Copyright Suit Against Adult Sites
Jennifer Valentino-DeVries of The Wall Street Journal's Digits blog reports that eleven record labels have filed a lawsuit against adult website operators RK Netmedia and RealityKings.com (warning: inappropriate content) claiming copyright infringement through the unauthorized use of copyrighted songs more than 500 times.
A
report by CHARTattack mentioned that Bad Boy was one of the eleven labels. Together, the group is requesting $150,000 per infringement, or unspecified damages and profits made by the defendants. They are also seeking an injunction to prevent the videos from being played further.
XBIZ Newswire spoke with Lawrence Walters, an attorney representing RK Netmedia. He suggested that there may be a fair use and freedom of speech issue.
"As a copyright holder, RK greatly respects the need to enforce one's intellectual property rights," said Walters. "That being said, there are some important fair use and 1st Amendment issues inherent in this action. It is RK's hope that we can achieve a resolution to this matter that protects both the plaintiff's copyright interests and RK's right to free expression and commentary on popular culture."
According to a
copy of the complaint posted online, the Bad Boy songs that allegedly were infringed upon were The Notorious B.I.G.'s "Mo Money Mo Problems" (3 times) and "Hypnotize" (3), Gorilla Zoe's "Hood Figga" (3), Yung Joc's "It's Goin' Down" (13), Diddy's "I Need a Girl, Part 1" and "It's All About the Benjamins," Cassie's "Me & U" (9) and 112's "Dance With Me."
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