Eminem won his court case against a New Zealand political party for copyrights. The American rapper had sued the political party for using music similar to his ‘Lose Yourself’ track in a political ad.
In other off-the-court news, recently Pink released ‘Revenge,’ her dreamy collaboration with the rapper.
Prophetic lyrics, Marshall Mathers
A New Zealand judge proved to be worthy of the particular case when he said Eminem’s lyrics “You own it, you better never let it go” turned out to be quite prophetic.
On Wednesday, the judge ruled in favor of Eminem and found that the conservative National Party effectively breached copyright in a 2014 election campaign advertisement.
He also ordered the Party to pay $414,000 plus interest in damages. The ad played 186 times over a period of 10 days in August 2014.
The court ruling came in an interesting timing, marking less than a week after National was ousted from government in the latest election.
“This decision is a warning to ‘soundalike’ music producers and their clients everywhere,” said lawyer Adam Simpson who acted for Eminem’s music company Eight Mile Style.
“The ruling clarifies and confirms the rights of artists and songwriters. It sets a major precedent in New Zealand and will be influential in Australia, the U.K. and elsewhere.”
According to National, they believed it had purchased the music legally, titled literally “Eminem Esque,” as it came from a reputable Australian-based music production library and it was licensed with the Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society.
Revenge is coming
Last week, Pink made her dream come true and released her ‘Revenge’ collaboration with Eminem. The song is part of Pink’s ‘Beautiful Trauma.’
The song seems to channel Eminem’s ‘Slim Shady’ as the pair sing dark lyrics about revenge under a kind of happy musical bed.
Pink recently opened up about the collaboration and explained it all began with a wine bottle and a love letter.
“I had written this song. I had gone to the studio and drank a lot of wine, I wrote ‘Revenge,'” she said.
She went on explaining that she headed home and started drinking wine and reach out to him.
“And I wrote him an email, and I said, ‘I love you. I’ve always loved you. I’ve loved you since you gave me your autograph at the 2001 MTV Music Video Awards. I love that you always work with the same people.'”
“I just wrote this love letter, and he just wrote back, ‘OK.'”
Source: Business Insider