Don Henley Gets Damages from Chuck DeVore

Singer Don Henley, former frontman of the Eagles, Mike Campbell and Danny Kortchmar have reached a settlement of undisclosed proportions with California politician Chuck DeVore and campaign worker Justin Hart. Chuck DeVore and Hart were sued by the musicians over the use of the hit songs, “The Boys of Summer” and “All She Wants To Do Is Dance,” in what the politicians thought were parodies.

Interesting case because DeVore’s camp evidently really believed their use of the copyrighted material was both parody and fair use. Why we don’t know, but the court ruled against them in June, finding that the videos were in fact satire because the messages were not aimed at the original creators, but were about third parties.

It makes sense to us — surely DeVore and Hart know that if X company wants to use Y’s song that is still under copyright protection to promote their company and/or its products, whether they change the words or not, they need to pay some licensing fees.

DeVore and Hart issued the following statement: “We apologize for using the musical works of Don Henley, Mike Campbell and Danny Kortchmar without respect for their rights under copyright law. The court’s ruling in this case confirms that political candidates, regardless of affiliation, should seek appropriate license authority before they use copyrighted works,” and they apologized for “all inaccurate, derogatory or disparaging remarks made about Mr. Henley during the course of this dispute.”

For some interesting commentary on the case, see Tech Dirt’s Don Henley Hates YouTube; Complains that the Gov’t Needs to do Something .

Also see Don Henley Kicks Chuck DeVore’s Ass in Court (The LiberalOC.com).

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Tags: chuck, danny, don, justin, mike