Pop Smoke’s label is getting sued.
A reporter who interviewed Pop Smoke prior to his death is now suing Victor Victor Worldwide for the use of her work on Pop’s posthumous album, Shoot For The Stars, Aim For The Moon. According to AllHipHop, blogger Victoria Inoyo is pursuing legal action against the record label for use an interview she conducted at Rolling Loud in December 2019, shortly before Pop was gunned down in February of this year.
The interview takes up sixteen seconds of “Tunnel Vision (Outro)” on the hit project, and Inoyo is asking for $1.5 million in compensation for what she claims is the illegal use of her work.
According to Inoyo’s legal team, Victor Victor had previously contacted Victoria to make an offer for use of the interview, saying they would pay her a whole dollar for the audio. To be clear, that is $1 they allegedly offered her in exchange for use of the interview. Inoyo claims that when she turned down the insulting proposition and attempted to negotiate a fair price, a deal was never reached.
However, Inoyo does claim to own a copyright of the recording which she registered for earlier this year.
Inoyo’s lawyer, Andrew Williams, says, “The label knew that it did not have Ms. Inoyo’s permission to use the interview; yet, rather than negotiate with Ms. Inoyo in good faith in order to obtain her permission to use the interview, the label inexcusably and unjustifiably used the interview and released the album and the song for commercial distribution in violation of, among other things, Ms. Inoyo’s copyrights and her intellectual property.”
The lawsuit argues that Victor Victor committed copyright infringement and unjust enrichment when they went ahead with use of the interview. In addition to monetary compensation, Inoyo is requesting that she be credited as a writer on the album.
