{"id":491701,"date":"2019-10-29T12:49:53","date_gmt":"2019-10-29T18:49:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=905369"},"modified":"2019-10-29T12:49:53","modified_gmt":"2019-10-29T18:49:53","slug":"taylor-swift-rep-on-shake-it-off-lawsuit-they-did-not-invent-these-common-phrases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/music-news\/taylor-swift-rep-on-shake-it-off-lawsuit-they-did-not-invent-these-common-phrases\/","title":{"rendered":"Taylor Swift Rep on \u2018Shake It Off\u2019 Lawsuit: \u2018They Did Not Invent These Common Phrases\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

A representative for Taylor Swift<\/a> brushed aside the revival of a copyright case centered around her 2014 hit \u201cShake It Off,\u201d<\/a> saying the pop star \u201cwill prevail again.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2017, songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler sued Swift, claiming her 2014 hit, \u201cShake It Off,\u201d lifted lyrics from their 2001 song for 3LW, \u201cPlayas Gon\u2019 Play.\u201d While both songs include variations of the phrases, \u201cplayas gonna play\u201d and \u201chaters gonna hate,\u201d a U.S. District court judge dismissed the case<\/a> in February 2018.<\/p>\n

On Monday, however, a three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals revived the suit<\/a> and sent it back to a U.S. District Court. In a statement, Hall praised the decision, saying, \u201cWe are happy the court unanimously sided with us,\u201d and, \u201cThis case is giving voice to all of those creatives who can\u2019t afford to stand up and protect their work in the face of well-financed Goliaths.\u201d<\/p>\n

In response, a rep for Swift said, \u201cMr. Hall is incorrect, the court did not unanimously side in their favor, the court sent the case back to the lower court for further determination. These men are not the originators, or creators, of the common phrases \u2018Players\u2019 or \u2018Haters\u2019 or combinations of them. They did not invent these common phrases nor are they the first to use them in a song. We are confident the true writers of \u2018Shake It Off\u2019 will prevail again. Their claim is not a crusade for all creatives, it is a crusade for Mr. Hall\u2019s bank account.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Upon dismissing the case in 2018, Judge Michael Fitzgerald said that when \u201cPlayas Gon\u2019 Play\u201d was released in 2001, \u201cAmerican 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 creative at all; it is banal.\u201d<\/p>\n

In its reversal, however, the Ninth Circuit judges cited a 1903 Supreme Court ruling, in which Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, \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<\/p>\n

The Ninth Circuit judges added 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

A representative for Taylor Swift brushed aside the revival of a copyright case centered around her 2014 hit \u201cShake It Off,\u201d saying the pop star \u201cwill prevail again.\u201d In 2017, songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler sued Swift, claiming her 2014 hit, \u201cShake It Off,\u201d lifted lyrics from their 2001 song for 3LW, \u201cPlayas Gon\u2019 […]<\/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":{"0":"post-491701","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-21 07:07:49","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\/491701","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=491701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491701\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}