There was a lot of court activity today, but instead of focusing on these serious US decisions, I’m going to bring your attention to a rather silly decision from the fifty-first state:

The United Kingdom apparently has some stronger copyright moral rights protection than we do here in the US. I haven’t studied UK copyright law, but this case would never make it to trial in the US where our moral rights laws allow for protection of the artist’s name (for visual works only) and not much more. In the UK, however, a garage producer got to court by suing some MCs for spewing violent lyrics over the beats. This left the judge attempting to determine whether the lyrics were in fact violent. He was unclear as to the meaning of phrases like, “shizzle my nizzle”. Fo’ rizzle.

The garage scene does have a problem with violence, so I’m assuming the claim is not completely unfounded. Radio 1 did a documentary a couple years back.

An article is here.