Happy Tuesday. Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, a curated list of the past week’s top stories from the intersection of politics and the all-inclusive world of technology.
Drake brings lawyers to a rap battle
Rapper Drake — who once dismissed artists who take legal action with the lyric, “a cease-and-desist is for hoes” — seems to have had a change of heart after taking a lyrical drubbing from Pulitzer-winning rapper Kendrick Lamar this summer.
In a petition filed Monday in New York, Drake launched a legal attack against his own record label, Universal Music Group, and Spotify, which he accuses of harming him by allegedly boosting Lamar’s song “They Not Like Us,” a scathing diss track aimed at Drake and his associates. (Lamar is also signed to UMG.)
Drake’s petition, which seeks information to support a potential lawsuit, claims that UMG and Spotify engaged in a high-tech “scheme” using bots, reduced licensing fees and paid influencers to boost the song illegally. A second petition, filed in Texas, alleges UMG engaged in a pay-for-play scheme with iHeartMedia to help boost the song, which the petition also claims defamed Drake.
UMG provided NBC News with a pretty scathing response to the first suit:
The suggestion that UMG would do anything to undermine any of its artists is offensive and untrue. We employ the highest ethical practices in our marketing and promotional campaigns. No amount of contrived and absurd legal arguments in this pre-action submission can mask the fact that fans choose the music they want to hear.”
Spotify declined to comment Tuesday to NBC News, but its website says the platform has practices in place to prevent artificial streaming.
As you might imagine, Drake resorting to the courts for help in the midst of a rap beef has been met with some pretty savage mockery. After all, Drake himself has put baseless claims about other artists, including Lamar, in his tracks, and he’s used social media influencers to hype his music. And he’s also taken advantage of shifts in the infrastructure of the music industry throughout his career, so in some ways, it seems Drake is raging against the machine that made him.
Now it looks like a messy legal battle is on the horizon, which could shake loose all sorts of details about the inner workings of the music industry. One thing is for certain: Drake has made history as the first rapper to take legal action against Big Tech for the L he took during a beef.
Newsom drives Musk mad
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has a plan to counter President-elect Donald Trump’s threats to undermine investment in electric vehicles. But the plan could exclude Elon Musk, and Musk is outraged.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
Trump seeks an ‘AI czar’
Axios reports Trump is searching for someone to serve as his “AI czar” and lead his administration’s efforts around artificial intelligence. Musk, who seems to have his hand in every aspect of the incoming Trump administration, is reportedly involved in this decision, as well. Remember last week when Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy wrote that their “department” of “government efficiency” would rely on “advanced technology” to root out government waste? Axios suggests the AI czar is going to help with that.
Read more at Axios.
The crypto Congress
CNBC dropped a report on the hundreds of millions of dollars the cryptocurrency industry plunged into this year’s elections, and its success in “buying” the most pro-crypto Congress in history.
Read more at CNBC.
Trump’s FCC is MAGA to the bone
Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Communications Committee won’t stop issuing threats. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr has spent his first couple of weeks in the spotlight threatening media companies’ broadcast licenses and has vowed to end what he portrayed as governmental “lawfare” against Musk.
Read more at Mediaite.
‘60 Minutes’ explores AI exploitation
Sunday night’s episode of “60 Minutes” featured a story on the disturbingly exploitative gigs, outsourced to countries across the globe, that involve employees training artificial intelligence tools to recognize items.
Watch the segment below:
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