Eminem has asked a federal judge to dismiss his copyright infringement case against The Source magazine in a dispute dating back to November 2003, saying that the remaining legal issues are not worth the time and effort, his lawyer tells The New York Times.
The problems began when the editors of The Source, a hip-hop publication, held a news conference to play an audio tape of an early recording from a pre-famous Eminem that featured racially derogatory comments about African-American women.
Eminem (real name: Marshall Mathers III), now 32, issued two apologies, blaming his relative young age of 16 when he made the recording and his recent relationship split with an African American woman.
In December 2003, Eminem sued the Source for copyright infringement and was granted an injunction barring the Source from releasing the songs on a CD with its February 2004 issue.
Later, the judge – Gerald E. Lynch of Federal District Court in Manhattan, whom The Times describes as an avid music fan – ruled that the publication could include 20-second snippets of the songs. Eminem subsequently sought an appeal to that decision.
Eminem's attorney, Donald N. David, said the case is being dropped because, he tells New York Daily News: "There is nothing left to win. The judge already decided we have the copyright, and he awarded us $131,000 in sanctions. So the case has no purpose anymore."
Source publisher Dave Mays, however, said dropping the case is a victory for him. He tells the Detroit Free Press: "Basically, a lot of the truth behind this is gonna come out to people. ... Their goal with the lawsuit has been to suppress a lot of the very bigoted and racist and offensive material that Eminem recorded when he was about 20 or 21 years old. Not 16, which has been commonly reported."
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