Eminem has had plenty of beefs in the past — from issues with Benzino to George W. Bush — and now he’s got another on his hands. The star rapper and his publishing companies are suing New Zealand’s National Party for copyright infringement on his song “Lose Yourself,” saying they used the track in a campaign ad.
“It is both disappointing and sadly ironic that the political party responsible for championing the rights of music publishers in New Zealand by the introduction of the three strikes copyright reforms should itself have so little regard for copyright,” Joel Martin, a spokesman for the publishing companies, Eight Mile Style and Martin Affiliated, told The Guardian.
The party, however, says they weren’t in the wrong. According to the Associated Press, the defendants say the track was originally published by a Los Angeles company called Spider Cues Music, and the party then bought it from an Australian-based supplier.
“We’ve got all the licensing, we’ve told them that and made it clear again this afternoon. We also incidentally moved on from this song about two weeks ago at the same time they first started to raise questions,” Campaign manager Steven Joyce said.
Check out a version of the commercial below, with clips of Em’s chart-topper interspersed throughout.
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