Perry brown

It's a scandal-heavy August for Katy Perry. Two weeks after a copyright ruling in which she was ordered to pay damages, Perry is now being accused of sexual misconduct by her co-star in the music video for her 2010 hit Teenage Dream. Model and actor Josh Kloss, who played the singer's love interest in the video, alleged that Perry had pulled his sweatpants and underwear and exposed his private parts to a group of people while they were at a party. He described the incident in a long and detailed Instagram post: “And when I saw her, we hugged and she was still my crush. But as I turned to introduce my friend, she pulled my Adidas sweats and underwear out as far as she could to show a couple of her guy friends and the crowd around us, my penis.” He added that the interaction left him feeling “pathetic and embarrassed.” Kloss said he’s telling his story now “because our culture is set on proving men of power are perverse. But females with power are just as disgusting.” Among … [Read more...] about Katy Perry accused of sexual misconduct by Teenage Dream music video co-star

A Christian rapper was awarded US$2.7m (S$3.7m) on Thursday (Aug 1) by a Los Angeles jury that found that Katy Perry's 2013 hit Dark Horse contained a musical passage from one of his songs. The verdict, reported by Los Angeles City News Service, followed a copyright trial in which Marcus Gray, known as Flame, said the beat in his song Joyful Noise was lifted and used in Perry's single. The jury last week ruled that the short passage in the two songs was identical. Perry, who was not in federal court for the damages decision, testified last month that she believed Dark Horse was an original work. The song was created by her producers and writers after she was presented with a series of short instrumental passages, the pop star testified. Her attorney said she would appeal. "The writers of Dark Horse consider this a travesty of justice," attorney Christine Lepera told reporters outside the court, City News reported. Dark Horse brought in about US$31m (S$42.6m)  for … [Read more...] about Katy Perry told to pay S$3.7m for copying tune from a Christian rap song

A nun who had been battling Katy Perry on a contested property deal has accused the singer of having “blood on her hands”, according to the New York Post. Sister Rita Callanan’s best friend and fellow nun, Sister Catherine Rose Holzman, had collapsed and died in an LA courthouse last year as they were preparing to go against Perry’s legal team on a property deal gone wrong. The trouble began in 2015 when Perry agreed to buy a three-hectare property and its buildings from the Los Angeles archdiocese for US$14.5m (S$19.8m). The nuns of The Sisters of the Most Holy and Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary had lived on the property for over 40 years but not since 2011. Sister Callanan and Sister Holzman had tried to prevent the Dark Horse singer’s purchase by selling the property to restaurant owner Dana Hollister for US$44,000. That sale was declared invalid in 2016 as the sisters didn’t get the consent of Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez and the Vatican; a judge then … [Read more...] about Why were an 89-year-old dying nun’s last words, ‘Katy Perry. Please stop’?

The musical magpie is under threat. Recent legal judgments in both the US and Europe have made it harder for songwriters and producers to adopt samples, tunes or even moods from other people’s music in creating their own. Katy Perry and her team of songwriters were ordered by a US jury to pay US$2.8m (S$3.87m) in damages for copying part of an 11-year-old Christian rap song in her 2013 hit Dark Horse. Meanwhile, the pioneering German electronic band Kraftwerk won a long-running case in the European Court of Justice over the sampling of a two-second rhythm from their 1977 track Metall Auf Metall. READ: Katy Perry told to pay S$3.7m for copying tune from a Christian rap song The balance of freedom of artistic expression versus copyright protection has swung heavily to the latter, after the free-for-all era of musical copying and sampling in the early 2000s. The old philosophy was that creative property is theft; today’s is that composers control each note they write. … [Read more...] about From Katy Perry to Kraftwerk: What’s the problem with copying music?

Ed Morales ( @SpanglishKid ) is a journalist and lecturer at Columbia University's Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race and the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. He's the author of the book " Fantasy Island: Colonialism, Exploitation and the Betrayal of Puerto Rico ." The views expressed are his own. View more opinion articles on CNN. (CNN) Last month, an email obtained by Axios revealed that Joe Biden's administration is encouraging the elimination of the use of the term "alien" or "illegal alien" in favor of "undocumented individual" or "undocumented noncitizen" in all official documents, outreach efforts and other communications , to describe those in the US who are not citizens. It's a significant development that is welcomed by advocates of the undocumented, since the long-standing use of "alien" is a not-so-subtle dog whistle that has been effectively used to dehumanize not only the undocumented, but actual American citizens. … [Read more...] about Biden is right about ‘aliens’