It's easy to make light of GENIUS for suing GOOGLE for allegedly copying/stealing lyrics of songs that neither company wrote and that neither has any copyright claim on. Absent that copyright, Genius is claiming Google and one of its lyric partners, LYRICFIND, violated its terms of service and that Google engaged in anticompetitive behavior. The latter is based on the notion that Google isn't simply a competing lyric site; it's Google. As a number of legal experts quickly noted, the claims will be difficult ones for Genius to make in court, where it's seeking a minimum of $50 million in damages. They may be equally difficult to make in the court of public opinion, where anyone can simply point out that none of the companies involved in the suit owns the lyrics to SELENA GOMEZ's "LOSE YOU TO LOVE ME." Gomez, her co-writers (JULIA MICHAELS, JUSTIN TRANTER and the production team MATTMAN & ROBIN) and their respective publishers own them. Genius and Google both license them from the publishers, who, oddly, don't necessarily provide the lyrics along with the license. The companies often have to source the words themselves. What Genius does own is the rather ingenious bit of hidden Morse code it embedded in the Gomez song and others as a watermark, as well as the considerable labor required to transcribe, verify and organize all those lyrics. If another company scrapes the Genius site to get the lyrics for itself, that's what it's stealing. What protection does that labor deserve? What right does anyone else have to its output? Do songwriters, who are engaged in a daily battle to scrape pennies out of streaming companies who also don't own their work, see that labor as a natural ally or a natural enemy? Does the likelihood that they're seeing even fewer pennies from the Googles and Geniuses of the world change that math? If a music publisher who didn't supply its own lyrics to either Genius or LyricFind copy-pasted one of those companies' transcriptions and delivered them to everyone else, would *that* be a problem? If Genius wins in court, do Gomez, Michaels, Tranter, Mattman and Robin get any of that $50 million? I don't know what questions the court will ask. These are my questions... While APPLE TV+ hasn't said who's the subject of its upcoming OPRAH WINFREY-produced documentary on a sexual assault case in the music industry, the LOS ANGELES TIMES spotted several of RUSSELL SIMMONS' accusers in the official description of the movie by the SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL, where it will premiere in January. The Sundance slate also includes NETFLIX's TAYLOR SWIFT documentary MISS AMERICANA (which apparently has the clearances it needs from BIG MACHINE) as well as docs on ST. VINCENT (co-written and -produced with CARRIE BROWNSTEIN) and the GO-GO'S... Has Apple, meanwhile, paid BILLIE EILISH $25 million for a documentary about her due in 2020?... Speaking of Eilish, JEM ASWAD's deep dive with her and her brother FINNEAS into their songwriting process is fantastic. Also, she's well versed in the BEATLES, who are way older than VAN HALEN... Add WILLIE NELSON himself to the list of people who'll never smoke weed with WILLIE again. But he'll continue to enjoy cannabis in other forms, according to his publicist, who notes there are "numerous ways of consumption," which is a good song title if you're reading, TOBY KEITH... Federal prosecutors speaking highly of TEKASHI69.