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The 2014 Taylor Swift manifesto Shake It Off has been at the centre of a lawsuit. Two songwriters for 3LW’s track Playas Go’ Play have called copyright infringement over the use of Swift’s phrase “the players gonna play play play play play, and the haters gonna hate hate hate hate hate.” Yes, we wonder what the court judge thought as well.
U.S. District Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald was delivered this exact conundrum. Under U.S. copyright law, a song is protected from litigation if it’s lyrics are, what the court deemed to be, “banal or trivial”. In Lemann’s terms, Swift’s use of such a phrase lacks creativity and the case is said to have been shut down by the judge. “The concept of actors acting in accordance with their essential nature is not at all creative; it is banal,” Fitzgerald wrote. “In the early 2000s, popular culture was adequately suffused with the concepts of players and haters to render the phrases ‘playas . . . gonna play’ or ‘haters . . . gonna hate,’ standing on their own, no more creative than ‘runners gonna run,’ ‘drummers gonna drum,’ or ‘swimmers gonna swim.’”
The songwriters are appealing the response. It’s not the first time someone has tried to sue the popstar over the same set of lyrics. In 2015, a man named Jessie Braham sought U.S. $42 million in damages for copyright of his 2013 single he released a year prior, Haters Gone Hate. The case was thrown out of court by one sassy AF judge. “At present, the Court is not saying that Braham can never, ever, ever get his case back in court,” U.S. District Court Judge Gail Standish said. “But, for now, we have got problems, and the Court is not sure Braham can solve them. . . . And, upon consideration of the Court’s explanation . . . Braham may discover that mere pleading Band-Aids will not fix the bullet holes in his case. At least for the moment, Defendants have shaken off this lawsuit.”
