Taylor Swift sued for $42m over lyric "haters gonna hate, players gonna play"

boing
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  1. I guess the first person to write, “Throw your hands in the air, wave 'em like you just don’t care” is suing about a hundred people for a truckload

  2. I was so desperately disappointed when I hear “Shake it Off” by Taylor Swift:
    https://soundcloud.com/peesmith/ninja-high-school-shake-it-off

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Good artists borrow; great artists apparently sue the shit out of good artists.

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So is he going to sue the WWE over their tag team champions, The New Day?

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Um, thinking…

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…And the estates of Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse for their song “Feeling Good”. I had to Google that one, but Jesse Graham seems like a pretty sharp fellow, so it’s only a matter of time before he makes the same connection.

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in this case “shit” is $583k per “Haters Gone Hate”, according to the Daily News article :smile:

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It’s like a modern day feud between Shakespeare and Homer.

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The guy’s only real standing would be to sue the English language.

It is much harder to rhyme in English than in a lot of other languages. Thus, the same rhymes have a tendency to come up over and over again.

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I guess the question is - was “haters gonna hate, players gonna play” a common phrase (as it is now) in the English language before he put it into a song in 2003? I’m guessing it was.

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It was in a song in 2001, at least.

The hit maker
Yeah yeah yeah
The playas gon’ play
Them haters gonna hate
Them callers gonna call
Them ballers gonna ball
Let 'em know

Can I bill Taylor Swift’s legal team for 10s of Googling?

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Google Translate isn’t giving an exact translation for “click”, but if we substitute “Let them hate, so long as they enter” it becomes “Oderint, dum intrant.”.

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Does it need to predate the proposed original work? It’s such a short phrase that I would have thought it would be subject to something like the common usage clause in trademarks, although that would imply sanity in copyright legislation

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I thought this was a Ryan Adams song? Boy, am I disappointed.

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“Players only love you when they’re playing.”

Fleetwood Mac - Dreams

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Logged in especially to mention this track : ) It’s a guilty pleasure, but I still like it.

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Oh well, litigators gonna litigate-gate-gate-gate-gate…

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That was my initial reaction as well, when a trademarked term becomes generic (like Kleenex, or Hoover). But I’m pretty sure no such thing exists in copyright.

I keep meaning to give his version of the album a listen, though reviews don’t seem to be great.

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Can we stop with this nonsense already?

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Who?

“If I didn’t write the song ‘Haters Gone Hate,’ there wouldn’t be a song called ‘Shake It Off.’”

Yeah - I doubt she had heard your song, and I am 99% sure you didn’t come up with the phrase.

It is one thing to claim infringement for a sample. I don’t think you can copy right a clip or phrase like that. I mean how many songs (rap songs especially) reuse lyrics as either a reference or a homage to another rapper or song?

Of course I am stating the obvious. This guy is hoping he gets some “OMG, STFU and go away” money.

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