Free Republic

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Katy Perry, her collaborators and her record label must pay more than $2.78 million because the pop star’s 2013 hit “Dark Horse” copied a 2009 Christian rap song, a federal jury decided Thursday. It was an underdog victory for rapper Marcus Gray, a relatively obscure artist once known as Flame, whose 5-year-old lawsuit survived constant court challenges and a trial against top-flight attorneys for Perry and the five other music-industry heavyweights who wrote her song. The amount fell well short of the nearly $20 million sought by attorneys for Gray and the two co-writers of “Joyful...

Expert witness Todd Decker alleges “five or six points of similarity" between Perry's 2013 hit [Dark Horse] and the 2008 Christian rap song "Joyful Noise." Day two of the copyright infringement trial over Katy Perry’s 2013 single “Dark Horse” was characterized by more than one instance of live singing, but it wasn’t the pop star who was giving the performance. Instead, Todd Decker -- a musicologist and professor who serves as the chair of music at Washington University in St. Louis -- belted out some tunes during his testimony on Friday (July 19). Serving as the plaintiffs' expert witness, Decker...

Dolly Parton is back on the big screen, starring alongside Queen Latifah in the Gospel-driven “Joyful Noise.” But the country music legend insisted that there is more to the movie than just music and a good time. “The film is uplifting and I want people to go away feeling better than they did when they got here, because times are hard right now. Everybody's been feeling a little scared and a little down, and the economy has been bad and people don't know what to think. We just seem to have lost all our morals and principles and values these...