Trump Loses Copyright Suit Over ‘Electric Avenue’ 2020 Campaign Video In Summary Judgement
from the and-then-we'll-take-it-higher dept
Here’s a phrase I have to use but hate doing so: let’s go back to the 2020 presidential campaign. During what was essentially a multi-year advertisement for just how absolutely petty, stupid, and disingenuous a political system could possibly be, the 2020 American presidential election also featured a video sent out by the Trump campaign on social media that resulted in a copyright infringement lawsuit. You can see below a news clip that features the video, which is an admittedly fairly funny poke at his then rival, Joe Biden, but which also uses a healthy chunk of the Eddy Grant song Electric Avenue within it.
The Trump campaign used the music without permission. That appears to have pissed off Eddy Grant, who filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the Trump campaign as a result.
Now, it’s important to point out that this is unlike many other infringement claims we’ve seen in the past and in the present from bands and musical artists unhappy about Trump using their music at campaign rallies and events. As we’ve pointed out before, those uses are often covered by licenses that the venues themselves have to play the music. Again, that’s not always the case, and in fact some of those licenses give artists an opt-out for specific uses by campaigns, but that’s not the norm.
In this case, however, there is no defending this through venue licenses. The song wasn’t played in a venue at all. It was played in a campaign video tweeted out by the campaign. As a result, the Trump campaign’s defense was instead fair use. And, as I detailed in my original post above, the fair use defense in this case is fairly laughable.
The judge overseeing the case apparently agrees, having found for Eddy Grant on summary judgement. The court went through the four factors test for fair use and found that every one of them was in favor of Grant and against fair use. The use of the song could encourage other political campaigns to make use of Grant’s work unlicensed, impeding his ability to market his song in that way. The song played for the majority of the video, making it an important factor in the overall video production. The song is obviously a creative work. And on the topic of transformation, well:
The court first found that Trump’s use did not “transform” Grant’s original work. In its words, “the video is best described as a wholesale copying of music to accompany a political campaign ad,” . . . “[T]he video’s creator did not edit the song’s lyrics, vocals or instrumentals at all.”
Fair use as a defense here was always going to be a longshot. And while I don’t make a habit of agreeing with creative artists in stories on Techdirt when it comes to infringement claims, this one is fairly straight forward. Trump made a campaign video, used an artist’s song for it, and didn’t bother to license it or get permission.
Now because this is 2024, I’m quite sure the judge will be accused of being “woke”, or a “communist”, or maybe a feline-consuming person of some national origin or another. Explain it away however you like; Donald Trump’s campaign committed copyright infringement, full stop.
Filed Under: campaign video, copyright, donald trump, eddy grant, electric avenue, fair use
Comments on “Trump Loses Copyright Suit Over ‘Electric Avenue’ 2020 Campaign Video In Summary Judgement”
Just another judgement he'll ignore
Trump will just add this to the long list of judgements he’s lost and never pay it, assuming there are any monetary damages granted the artist.
Re:
Or more likely, his campaign fund (which unlike Trump, actually has a lot of money) will quietly pay it while Trump bombastically says he’ll never pay a penny of it as it’s a fraud and a targeted attack.
Re: Re:
I think Trump’s campaign fund is not nearly as flush as you picture it. However, Trump’s campaign did capture the RNC, and their funds, so the theory still holds.
Re: no choice
Courts do have the power to order assets be confiscated. Regular bills he can say “sue me” and get away with it, but here the plaintiff already did that.
Now because this is 2024, I’m quite sure the judge will be accused of being “woke”, or a “communist”…
If these morons knew what the freaking song is about, they would say that it is woke and communist.
I wonder who Trump didn’t pay to make that video using music that wasn’t paid for?
Perhaps, next time, a different Eddy Grant composition could be used–like Police on My Back.
Maybe Trump should contest the fine.
And then they’ll take it higher…
$150,000? How much will the judgement cost the Trump campaign?
Par for the course with 45, get off scot-free without paying damages of any type.
Re: may be hard to collect
It may be hard to collect damages from the 2020 campaign committee, because chances are that very few people are still donating to that. The comparison is to “Trump for President 2024, Inc.”, which is, as of this past week, sending out fund-raising solicitations.
I do recall that some venues claimed to have had some difficulty in collecting rental fees. It may be that even if the 2020 campaign were still raising funds, they might fail to pay the ultimate judgment.
I say ultimate judgment because this appear to just be summary judgment as to liability, with damages to follow.
Copyright actually makes one less likely to respect the justice system, because people would be more willing to go to prison to break these rules, and in so doing often benefit society.
An own-goal that would have been trivial to avoid
The real kicker is that by my understanding unless a contract allows the artist or copyright owner(not necessarily the same person) the ability to veto a particular use of a song all they had to do was pay the licensing fee and they would have been in the clear, but instead they used it without paying and then when caught rather than admit that they screwed up and just pay the required money they tried to weasel their way out of even that by pulling a laughably bad ‘fair use’ claim.
This was such an insanely easy face-plant to avoid but the campaign managers, much like their convicted felon boss were just so damn arrogant and with a glaring self-entitlement mindset that they just couldn’t resist getting bench-slapped.
$150,000 per infringement
Isn’t it $150,000 for each infringement? How many people did they send it to?