Eminem vs National

The Herald reports:

The publisher of United States’ rap star Eminem is taking the National Party to court, with a hearing set down for next week.

Last year it was revealed that Eight Mile Style LLC and Martin Affiliated LLC, the Detroit-based publishers of Eminem’s copyrights, intended to sue the The National Party.

They allege the National Party breached copyright by using a song that sounded similar to Eminem’s ‘Lose Yourself’ in its campaign advertisements throughout the 2014 election.

In its earlier statement, the party rejected allegations the library music used in its campaign advertisements was a copyright infringement of any artist’s work.

The party had purchased the music from production music supplier Beatbox, based in Australia and Singapore, the statement said.

“As with all works licensed by the Beatbox library music service, the National Party was assured the music in question did not infringe any copyright and was an original work,” last year’s statement read.

The music license and fee were arranged through the Australasian Performing Rights Association and Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society (APRA/AMCOS), who act as agents for Beatbox in Australia and New Zealand, organisations which existed to protect the rights of artists, the party said.

It will be interesting to see how it goes in court. I would have thought the legal action should be between Eminem and Beatbox, as Beatbox is the company that was selling the music National used.

Regardless of whether or not the National Party purchased the music through what they considered a “reputable supplier” such as Beatbox, Eight Mile Style was within its rights to sue as the party had used the song in their campaign advertisement, Mr Hazel said.

“The reason they will be going after the National Party is because they are the ones that actually used the work.”

However, Mr Hazel said if the National Party was found liable it could go after Beatbox with a claim to help pay any remedies, depending on the details of their contract with Beatbox.

When you pay a reputable supplier for rights to a song, it is pretty tough if you are the one in the gun if another artist then alleges it infringes.