Eight Mile Style alleges 'Lose Yourself' and many of the rapper's hits aren't licensed by the streamer. Now comes a suit eyeing Spotify's billions.
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In a suit filed Wednesday in federal court in Nashville, Eight Mile accuses Spotify of willful copyright infringement by reproducing "Lose Yourself" and about 250 of the rapper's songs on its service to the tune of potentially billions of dollars in alleged damages. The suit also targets the Music Modernization Act, a federal law enacted last October that was intended to make life easier for tech companies and to get songwriters paid.
Before the Music Modernization Act, a persistent problem for those digitally distributing music was identifying and locating the co-authors of tens of millions of copyrighted musical works. Under copyright law, Spotify could obtain a compulsory license for its mechanical reproduction of a song, but it needed to send out a "notice of intention" and make required payments.
Eight Mile now alleges Spotify's attempts to serve notices of intent for Eminem's music are "untimely and ineffective" and that the streamer can't demonstrate compliance with the Music Modernization Act. how between October 2018 and Dec. 31, 2020, the mechanism for obtaining a compulsory license was no longer operative and there was "risk" in situations where it had no direct license and couldn't locate the owner of a composition. Additionally, Spotify warned that the Music Modernization Act, when fully implemented, could actually increase the cost and difficulty of obtaining licenses, especially upon any delay in adoption of new regulations.
But as Eight Mile contends, the attempt to retroactively wipe out a copyright holder's ability to recover profits, statutory damages and attorneys fees amounts to "an unconstitutional taking of Eight Mile’s vested property right," basically meaning the Music Modernization Act is allegedly in violation of the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
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