To show that Katy Perry and the team that wrote
her 2013 hit “Dark Horse” may have heard his
song and stole from it, Christian rapper Marcus
Gray’s primary evidence was that his 2009
song, “Joyful Noise” had plays in the millions on
YouTube and Spotify.
Plaintiffs in copyright cases like Gray, who won
a $2.78 million victory over Perry and her co-
writers, must prove that the artist who stole
from them had a reasonable opportunity to hear
a song that was widely disseminated, a principle
lawyers simply refer to as “access.”
But does access have any meaning in a
streaming era when almost everyone has access
to almost everything?
ron
(Ron)
#1