{"id":491684,"date":"2019-10-28T21:52:51","date_gmt":"2019-10-29T03:52:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=905019"},"modified":"2019-10-28T21:52:51","modified_gmt":"2019-10-29T03:52:51","slug":"taylor-swifts-shake-it-off-appeals-court-revives-copyright-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/music-news\/taylor-swifts-shake-it-off-appeals-court-revives-copyright-lawsuit\/","title":{"rendered":"Taylor Swift\u2019s \u2018Shake It Off\u2019: Appeals Court Revives Copyright Lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Taylor Swift<\/a>\u2019s 2014 hit \u201cShake It Off\u201d<\/a> is once again at the center of a legal battle. On Monday, a federal appeals court revived a previously dismissed copyright lawsuit from songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler, who allege the single lifts lyrics from their 2001 composition \u201cPlayas Gon\u2019 Play.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

A rep for Swift did not immediately reply to a request for comment.<\/span><\/p>\n

While both songs include variations on the phrases \u201cplayas gonna play\u201d and \u201chaters gonna hate,\u201d a U.S. District Court judge dismissed the lawsuit<\/a> in February 2018. Judge Michael Fitzgerald concluded at the time, \u201cBy 2001, American popular culture was heavily steeped in the concepts of players, haters, and player haters \u2026 The concept of actors acting in accordance with their essential nature is not at all creative; it is banal.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Now a three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has reinstated the 2017 suit, citing a 1903 ruling from Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. \u201cIt would be a dangerous undertaking for persons trained only to the law to constitute themselves final judges of the worth of pictorial illustrations, outside of the narrowest and most obvious limits,\u201d Holmes wrote at the time. \u201cAt the one extreme, some works of genius would be sure to miss appreciation. Their very novelty would make them repulsive until the public had learned the new language in which their author spoke.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In their reversal<\/a>, Judges John Owens, Andrew Hurwitz and Kenneth Lee wrote that \u201coriginality, as we have long recognized, is normally a question of fact \u2026 Justice Holmes\u2019 century-old warning remains valid. By concluding that, \u2018for such short phrases to be protected under the Copyright Act, they must be more creative than the lyrics at issues here,\u2019 the district court constituted itself as the final judge of the worth of an expressive work. Because the absence of originality is not established either on the face of the complaint or through the judicially noticed matters, we reverse the district court\u2019s dismissal.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The case is now headed back to U.S. District Court for further proceedings. <\/span><\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Taylor Swift\u2019s 2014 hit \u201cShake It Off\u201d is once again at the center of a legal battle. On Monday, a federal appeals court revived a previously dismissed copyright lawsuit from songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler, who allege the single lifts lyrics from their 2001 composition \u201cPlayas Gon\u2019 Play.\u201d A rep for Swift did not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-491684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-music-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-22 04:29:29","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KQZR - The Reel","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491684\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}