Hey folks. Long time lurker, very infrequent poster.
Apologies if this has been discussed in another thread, but I did a search and couldn’t see anything.
I’ve only just become aware of this whole legal dispute between Kesha, Sony and her producer Dr Luke. Are we okay to talk about this or is it legally sensitive?
There’s copious information online about it all. I won’t repeat it all here.
I don’t really know much about Kesha and her music. I think that makes me more objective, but you can decide. Maybe if it was an artist whose work I had an emotional stake in I might feel different.
Anyway, the dispute.
As an overall general observation, I would just say that I can see all three sides in this. I mean I can see the motivation for each point of view, and I can’t see any easy way to resolve it all. I’m always reluctant to get on a moral high horse until I know the facts, and I feel that a court case is probably the best place for all the allegations being made. Kesha wants out of her contract, Sony want to preserve the contract, Dr Luke wants to defend the allegations against him. Fair enough. Let the courts decide, I say.
But the one aspect of the whole thing that is bugging me is this statement from Kesha’s legal team that (paraphrase) all she wants is the freedom to make music and she is being prevented from doing so by Sony refusing to release her. I don’t buy it. I think it’s a false argument and I call for common sense. If she wants to make music… then why doesn’t she?? Who is stopping her? Perform, record, share it all online on a non-profit basis. If the music is good then once this all blows over she will be in a position to financially capitalise on it.
What I think is REALLY what she wants is the luxury of a major label record contract and the career benefits this involves. And I find that a difficult position to sympathise with, just as I would find it difficult to sympathise with any argument from a financial rather than artistic basis.
Am I being naïve?
Someone might correct me (Bingo?) but I don’t think artists can independently record and release music on a non-profit basis while they’re tied into a recording contract.
That might change things a wee bit.
But I actually think even then my comment would still stand. If she just put her music out there, let Sony sue her. It’ll all just add to the whole legal battle that’s going to be a mess anyway. Pedantically speaking, no one is actually holding a gun to her head and stopping her from writing and performing songs.
That’s my understanding too. I’ve heard of labels effectively killing acts careers by refusing to release them from contracts and refusing to release any product by them.
Depends entirely on the terms of the contract, but I would imagine the terms of Kesha’s particular deal expressly prevent this. A label isn’t going to spend a fortune on recording time and marketing for an artist just to have them skirt the terms of their deal by releasing music for free.
And you’re my fact-checking cuz.
I chickedy-check yo facts, before ya wrickedy-wreck yo facts.
I think speculating about the motives of a woman who claims to have been raped is a bit distasteful. Mind you, the hate campaign being waged against the alleged perpetrator is also unfair. These things are a matter for the law.
I think this is the central point.
It’s a matter for the law. Not Twitter, not Facebook, not reddit. A decision should be taken by the courts, and that decision should be respected.
If the courts find Kesha’s claims re: sexual assault to be with foundation then, obviously, she should be released from her deal – she can’t possibly be expected to work with her attacker. If they find no basis in the claims then she will have to honour the deal she signed.
There’s an interesting debate to be had about whether law enforcement agencies/the courts are doing enough to protect women, given the woeful report/conviction rates for rape/sexual assault, but that debate is not helped by Guardian articles and Lena Dunham essentially proclaiming that anyone accused of rape is automatically a rapist until proven otherwise (we discussed this a bit on another thread yesterday).
Also – welcome, Arthur, and thanks for the OP. I’ve been waiting for this story to come up on here, I think there’s a lot going on in it.
Ha ha, cheers. There’s definitely a lot going on here.
I agree it might be distasteful to speculate about someone’s motives in this position. In my defence, I was trying my hardest not to ride my high horse and was just trying to comment on the surrounding issues!
As ever, there will be a large amount of detail in the case that will be overlooked in the rush to judgement on social media. While the idea that Facebook or Twitter are swamped in poorly thought through or inconsistent opinions is hardly novel, it does tie in with something that’s been bugging me over the last couple of days. I saw a FB post from a friend of a friend related to some kind of sexual assault in the news (it might have been this story or something more local, I honestly can’t remember). The thrust of the rant was that this behaviour was a problem for all men, and that all men had to take responsibility for their gender’s behaviour and so on. Which is fair enough – I don’t particularly agree with it but I can see the thought process and the arguments about education and so on. Rewind a couple of posts, however, and this same person is taking someone else to task for supporting the old saw that all Muslims should be apologising for al-Qaeda and ISIS by arguing that they’re individuals and what one subset does doesn’t reflect on the group as a whole. At which point my brain fuses and I step away from the keyboard. It’s still nagging at me though. I shouldn’t be surprised, after all I have been out of my front door several times, but I really genuinely don’t get how two such wildly contradicting opinions can exist in one mind.
I suspect typical liberal lefty inconsistency as to who is always excused and who is always at fault. There’s a lot of it about.
Let me have a wild guess as to her newspaper of choice.
The Daily Star?
I was going to suggest The Chester Chronicle.
Well of course. Lady Gaga said “I don’t want to live in a world where the government decides whether you were raped or not”, which is a ridiculous thing to say.
I find it rather more disturbing that the probable Democratic candidate for President stated that all ‘survivors of sexual assault’…’must be believed’. Pity she didn’t follow her own advice when dealing with the numerous and various ‘bimbo eruptions’, nor when Jones and Broddrick made their complaints of sexual assault against her husband.
***ADMIN POST: SENSITIVE THREAD***
Thanks for checking Arthur – usual rules apply. You can quote any source that has reported something about this case; however please make it clear you’re quoting someone else, and do avoid making any accusations yourself.
Thanks Hannah, no problem.
You are having a busy time, Hannah! Good to see you anyway.
Hey Tigger!
Isn’t part of the problem that Kesha hasn’t reported Dr Luke to the police, so there has been no investigation, let alone a test in a court of law?
The court she went to was to settle a contract dispute. Without official evidence of a crime, the court decided to maintain the existing contract with Sony.
Or have I got all this wrong!?
That’s my understanding too.
I think that’s about the size of it Tiggerlion, but if you say that on Twitter you’ll literally get called a rape apologist.
It’s fortunate, then, that I’m not on Twitter!
That’s exactly what a massive rape apologise would say.
Yeah! I apologise massively for rape.
I believe that Sony have said that contract is actually with Dr Luke’s label, not them, so they can’t actually do anything.
Make of that what you will.
Oh. Because I had a solution.
I thought Sony could sit down with Kesha and say; “You have made a very serious allegation. Please report it to the police or we will. Whilst the investigation is taking place, we will suspend Luke and remove him from any workplace contact with you. You will work with others. We will review the situation once the police investigation is complete.”
But, if Sony say they don’t hold the contract, then that wouldn’t work.
Most producers don’t tend to be employed by the record company, hence they end up working with all sorts of different artists from various labels.