George Santos sues late-night host Jimmy Kimmel for tricking him into making videos to ridicule him

MicroWave@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 377 points – George Santos sues late-night host Jimmy Kimmel for tricking him into making videos to ridicule him
apnews.com

Former U.S. Rep. George Santos alleged in a lawsuit filed Saturday that late-night host Jimmy Kimmel deceived him into making videos on the Cameo app that were used to ridicule the disgraced New York Republican on the show.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. district court for the southern district of New York names Kimmel, ABC and Walt Disney Co. as defendants. A Disney representative listed as a media contact for the Jimmy Kimmel Live! show didn’t immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press seeking comment.

Santos, who was expelled from the House of Representatives last year after being charged with multiple counts of fraud and stealing from donors, is suing over alleged copyright infringement, fraudulent inducement, breach of contract and unjust enrichment.

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"Frankly, Kimmel’s fake requests were funny, but what he did was clear violation of copyright law,”

How?

Cameo sounds like work for hire to me. You pay, it's yours.

For each CAMEO Video (other than a Business CAMEO Video), you hereby grant to the User and the Recipient a non-exclusive, royalty-free, fully paid, worldwide, sublicensable, and perpetual license to use, reproduce, distribute, and publicly display the CAMEO Video, in each case, solely in accordance with the Site Terms, in any and all media, whether now known or hereafter invented or devised (including social media channels and third-party websites and platforms).

I'm only a humbly country space chicken lawyer but the terms explicitly say that Kimmel can do whatever the fuck he wants with the recording.

The idea that Kimmel doesn't have a legal team that checks for this stuff is laughable.

I'm really not surprised. They wouldn't even want to limit commercial use, because I'd assume companies paying celebrities for little blurbs for company parties and stuff like that is a meaningful chunk of their business.

Hard to take a lawyer seriously when the language is so clear and the direct premise of the site, though. It's not some obscure power grab in the EULA of a site focused on something different. It's what you're getting paid for.