L.A. Music Publisher's Suit Against Lil Wayne Threatens to Rewrite Rules on Mixtapes

Kyle T. Webster

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More About

• Lil' Wayne
• Jim Jonsin
• Jonathan Lazar
• Hip-Hop and Rap
• Dirty South

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USC’s Lerner finds the “I Feel Like Dying” case extraordinarily compelling for legal scholars because it touches on the idea of “fair use” and the imbalance between the United States’ notoriously strong copyright laws and new traditions that have cropped up in the 21st century with the advent of podcasts, MP3 blogs, mash-ups and mixtapes.

As it stands now, the power rests with copyright owners, says Lerner. “The mixtape tradition has and will carry on as long as the rights holders permit it, no matter how valuable it is to the culture or how much users, artists and the public rely on that tradition.” Whether that remains true depends on the outcomes of cases like Urband & Lazar’s.