Taylor Swift Claims Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun Are Preventing Her From Performing... • Page 3

My point is, I'm not some fly-by-night contrarian trying to stir the pot and rile people up. I agree with Jason and most of the site's power users the vast majority of the time, and we've usually had a good rapport on the site over the years. I'm genuinely perplexed why this thread has turned so venomous when I was just trying to square the public statements with the law and deal terms as I understood them. I thought other people might be interested in that. I appear to have been badly mistaken.

 

I'd say maybe that is a sign it's time to reevaluate who you're vocally supporting and if you are actually seeing this entire thing as clearly as you think you are? It's been multiple threads where you take really, really fucking horrible people's best possible side of their "arguments" and then see the absolute worst in the artist getting (IMO) fucked over under the guise of legality or faux objectivity. To with a straight face try and start it all up up again by saying Taylor "misrepresented" what went on (she didn't, and I think you know this to be true if you're honest with yourself) and has a history of "misrepresenting" things (I would argue that's a very unfair characterization of her history at best, especially when compared to the party you are giving wild benefit of the doubt). So, yes, I believe it's a morally repugnant position to hold and can't be silent about it. I think defending Scott and Scooter at all is actively hostile to things I deeply believe. The snappy retorts are because I think you're not just wrong, with that I'd just say so, but I believe you are upholding the absolutely worst people and the absolute worst part of the music industry. I've read the posts, what benefit of the doubt am I supposed to give? I think you're very wrong and take issue with the language you used of accusing Taylor of exploiting feminism and weaponizing a culture movement, and take issue with any 'defense' of two people I think have done nothing but hurt multiple women, artists, and the music industry as whole and continue to do so while given a cloud of doubt or legitimacy by these "well, actually, technically" defenses.

And, I look at multiple posters that have had, to put it gently, very bad interactions around women's or social issues on this website liking your posts and I can't help but see that undercurrent. I don't like it. I think you're on the wrong side of this and I'm going to say so regardless of our history. My moral compass doesn't shift because someone gives me money as a supporter. Maybe I'd be a better businessman if it did. But, I'd rather not have the money, even as much as I need it to run this site, than change my beliefs or silence myself. That's not who I am.

Edit: I don't want to be mad and angry at the posts I read! I like your legal analysis in different threads and contributions around the website (like the absurdist thread), and do appreciate your support of the website over the years, but I think you're so wildly off base here that I can't not say anything.

 

Confusion Abounds Over Taylor Swift’s Performance at the American Music Awards 2019

Whoa. I am shocked that BM would put out a less than truthful statement.

 

Man. This whole issue aside, the method with which people are arguing with you is driving me absolutely crazy. The whole thing is just predetermined and being a thoughtful person who takes a pause to examine something on a deeper level than good man vs bad man is met with such intense and unwarranted scorn. Your ability to not hang yourself makes me admire you greatly. I wanna jump in front of a train from just reading the replies to you. Stay reasonable, pal.

 

Such bravery.

 

First off, thank you for giving me an in-depth explanation of your thoughts. That's immensely helpful, because if I'm clearly in the wrong, I obviously don't want to be! An involved discussion is the only way to properly correct that.

I'm not sure what other threads you're referring to beyond the dedicated Lover thread, where all I posted was a short summary of my analysis here (focused, as I have been, on the technicalities of the dispute, which I happen to find interesting as an attorney and thought other people might as well). But my intent was never to suggest that the technicalities somehow exonerate Braun and Borchetta in the moral arc of this story. They can be pieces of shit who also employ business tactics that, in a less toxic context with different parties, would actually come off as savvy. Maybe this is where my legal training comes off as tone-deaf. I prize accuracy, and I can more easily compartmentalize stories when I see things being framed in a way I find inaccurate -- especially when I feel like the inaccuracy is being papered over with sociopolitical messaging, which tends to strike me as cynical. I deal with it all the time in litigation. There's an old saying in my field: "When the facts are on your side, pound the facts. When the law is on your side, pound the law. And when neither are on your side, pound the table." I took Swift's statement as table pounding, and my first instinct was to look past it. Here, I can see why that rush to correct rather than identify with the broad strokes of the story (in which Taylor is obviously the overall victim) caused people to vigorously leap to her defense, even if it resulted in us talking past one another.

Another element at play here was probably the relativity of the slight as compared to what I deal with in private practice. I routinely represent artists who have been truly and massively fucked over by their labels. I'm talking about labels withholding all of an artist's royalties and basically forcing them into destitution over business disputes. When I saw Swift using the incendiary language she did over something as relatively low-stakes as an award show performance, it got under my skin, and I disconnected it from the parties' history. But that's a poor instinct on my part. In retrospect, it reminds me of the people who say McDonald's workers shouldn't get paid $15/hour because, say, paramedics make less than that. The correct instinct is obviously that both should be making more, and here, the fact that my clients have it worse doesn't mean Swift should be excoriated just for being able to argue from a position of relative comfort and security. I let my distaste for her rhetoric (including what I still contend was an unnecessarily direct and not-very-well-thought-through directive to her fans) color my presumptions about her motives, and I'll fall down on my sword for that one. It's no fairer than presuming BMLG is being forthright about the positions they've taken -- I should have (a) been more skeptical of both sides, and (b) not tried to analyze this in the ether, which inherently makes Swift's side seem less reasonable.

All of this is to say that, while I think I'm still generally correct with my legal analysis, my other characterizations were not nearly as dispassionate as I thought, and given how they appear to give aid and comfort to objectively terrible people, I deserve to be dinged for it. I just wish people had pointed that out rather than taken all my opinions and dumped them in the trash. I know it's hard to not throw the baby out with the bathwater when dealing with hot-button issues like this, and maybe I'm wrong for expecting that people should try (especially if they have trauma of their own). I don't mind people telling me I'm wrong if it leads to a genuine discussion where we try to pin down why I'm wrong, but I also recognize the emotional labor that can take, and I would never presume to ask for that from other victims. All I wanted was recognition that I was making an argument that, while perhaps misguided in certain respects, was not so wildly off-base as to deserve complete discounting or framing as bad-faith musings from a compromised poster.

 

Posters like you are the worst thing about coming back to this site. Every time I see one of these 'siq burn' gif responses I imagine you spinning around in your chair looking for a high five. It adds nothing to the conversation and is insanely dismissive.

 

I try not to completely discount posters like Scott because I'm also guilty of shifting into full-on dunk mode when I feel like the other side is either not engaging in good-faith or is so wildly off-base that it would take too long to correct them. It just sucks that I've apparently been put in one of those boxes when I honestly tried to walk a fine line of reasonable critique.

The boot comment especially stings -- I've burned numerous bridges to lucrative defense-oriented positions in my career because I believe in fighting for artists. I've worked on successful pro-talent cases going all the way up to the Supreme Court. I have three different class actions going on right now (two against major record labels and one against the guilds) for stealing artists' royalties. A lot of people talk the talk (generally with no tangible results), but I dedicate my waking hours to actually walking the walk.

That said, part of my class action work is identifying when someone makes a good "representative" for a group of aggrieved individuals, meaning their facts line up well with everyone else's and they have no individualized issues or problems that could undermine the overall case they're making. I thought Swift had several of those issues (including the specifics of her contract, options she was sweeping under the rug, and certain ill-advised negotiating tactics I've already discussed ad nauseum), and I thought it was important to point those out before building a movement around her (notwithstanding that it would certainly be difficult to find anyone with a bigger microphone). Instead, it was treated like my overarching goal was to tear Swift down and build Braun/Borchetta up -- not at all my intent, but I can see why people used to bad-faith contrarianism would misidentify my contributions as that.