Eminem’s longtime publishing company, Eight Mile Style, isn’t backing down from Big Tech—it’s suiting up for war.
In a blistering new court filing, the Detroit-based publisher accused Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Platforms of wielding its vast wealth to “crush” smaller competitors while allegedly profiting from the unlicensed use of Eminem’s catalog across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
“Meta is one of the most valuable companies in the world… with teams of lawyers at the ready to crush any legitimate attempt at opposing many of the egregious tactics it employs in pursuit of its limitless expansion,” the filing reads.
The filing marks Eight Mile’s official counterstrike against Meta’s attempt to dismiss its sweeping copyright lawsuit.
The company, co-owned by Eminem and his longtime collaborators Jeff and Mark Bass, claims Meta deliberately uploaded 243 of the rapper’s compositions into its in-app music libraries without permission.
Eight Mile’s lawyers, Richard Busch and Howard Hertz, frame the fight as an uneven but deliberate one — a David vs. Goliath clash between Detroit’s most famous lyricist and Silicon Valley’s social media empire.
The filing paints Meta as a “corporate juggernaut” using delay tactics to exhaust smaller rights holders. “Meta may effortlessly start and then endure a war of attrition in order to force a smaller opposing party into submission,” Busch wrote.
The lawsuit argues that Meta directly infringed by storing, reproducing, and distributing Eminem’s songs to billions of users without a license.
“Meta objectively knew it did not have a license to exploit the Eight Mile Compositions, and was aware that it was providing infringing material on a massive scale, thereby culpably causing direct infringement by its users every time they copied, synched, downloaded, or streamed the Eight Mile Compositions from its Music Libraries, which it deliberately placed there,” Busch said.
When Meta’s motion to dismiss claimed the complaint lacked detail, Eight Mile fired back, noting that Meta knows exactly what it did and pointing out that Facebook and Instagram quietly removed certain Eminem songs after being notified.
The company also accuses Meta of reusing arguments that failed in a nearly identical case against Epidemic Sound, in which a California judge rejected Meta’s bid to have the lawsuit dismissed.
“This Court should ignore Meta’s recycled tactics,” Eight Mile’s lawyers argued.
Eight Mile’s filing leaves little doubt it’s ready to take the case as far as needed — a posture fitting for the publisher behind “Lose Yourself,” a song about seizing one shot against impossible odds. While Meta touts its global dominance and nearly $200 billion in annual revenue, Eminem’s camp portrays itself as the small but defiant force from Ferndale, ready to stand up for creative rights.
The clash pits Eminem’s legacy and Detroit’s independent spirit against Zuckerberg’s algorithmic empire — a cultural showdown that stretches far beyond music.
If the case moves forward, discovery could expose how Meta manages the music that fuels its social platforms and how much of it may have been used without artists’ consent.
Related
