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These times continue to prompt hundreds of rock documentaries and biopics every year, with increasing questions over privacy, authorization, defamation, and other legal issues of the music and the films.

We have many platforms of social media, and most people think we are better off for these connections, but a growing number recognize the false intimacy can invade privacy, steal our personal and financial secrets, share embarrassing data and pictures, and hack our election systems and troll the unwary. One can reasonably wonder about the inherent tradeoffs between knowing more about more people, and relinquishing our autonomy.

A computerized song search from licensors BMI and ASCAP—turns up more than 140 song titles with the words “law,” “court/courtroom,” "lawyer," or "attorney." And judges, including the US Supreme Court do cite popular music in opinions, sometimes surprisingly so.

Artists do not always have control over or reap the financial rewards of musical festivals, but the successful alternative models are scarce, and have a poor rate of return. What are the alternatives?

Entertainment has had its share of cultural appropriation, especially when white artists took Black music and blanched it for white listeners. To be sure, as long as royalties are paid and copyrights are observed, music can be had by anyone. But a most interesting backstory to me has been that of one of my favorite singer-songwriters, Paul Simon, and his work with another favorite group, Los Lobos.

Today’s Class considers breakups, where bands take on special projects or collaborations, and it does not work out, leading to bad relations and often, lawsuits.

An interesting pattern has emerged with classic artists and old materials that have not yet been published, turning legal tools into a plastic surgeon’s scalpel, to rejuvenate these hidden works.

As with many other intersections of entertainment law and the larger world with which it interacts, boycotts have become more common, more prevalent, and more politically complex.

For anyone who loves attending concerts, theatrical shows, and other forms of live entertainment, these are the best and the worst of all times. Not only has the formal means of ticket purchasing become almost impossible to navigate, but the entire infrastructure is being undermined by the informal ticket scalping economy, made more efficient by bots, the electronic trolls that can dial and redial and sign on to email faster than we can.

Given how hard it is to become known, all bands zealously guard their names, using a variety of legal means to secure their trademarks and other forms of intellectual property, so as not to dilute their performance identities without service mark protection or other means to prohibit unfair exploitation. Virtually all groups morph and change identities over time, in part as new members come and go, leading to legal disputes over who owned the naming rights and legal control of many well-known bands.