BREAKING CULTURE CITY NEWS

THE WHITE/DIAMOND ROALYEY DISPUTE GOES TO THE JURY

The Detroit Free Press web sight at 2:08 PM is reporting that Jury have got the case in a royalty despuite between the Lead singer of the white stripes and the racoutues Jack White and Local producer Jim Diamond.

Jurors at federal court in Detroit heard closing arguments Thursday morning from attorneys in the case, in which studio owner Jim Diamond is suing rockers Jack and Meg White for part ownership of copyrights in the group’s first two albums.

At issue is the degree of Diamond’s creative contribution to the 1999 and 2000 albums, independent releases that sold nearly 600,000 copies in the wake of the White Stripes’ 2001 international breakout.

With Jack and Meg White looking on, Los Angeles attorney Bert Deixler told jurors that Diamond’s assertion was akin to the claim-jumping of unscrupulous Old West miners. He argued that Diamond’s engineering work on the records -- microphone placement, reverberation effects, mixing -- did not meet the standard for authorship.

“None of that constitutes originating an original work or causing it to come into being,” Deixler said Thursday in court.

Royal Oak attorney Stephen Wasinger, arguing for Diamond, cited liner notes from the 1999 album “The White Stripes,” in which the band voluntarily gave Diamond a co-producer credit. He called it his client’s most persuasive evidence, from a time period “when credit was more important than money.”

“Mr. Diamond at that time, in that place, was equally talented,” Wasinger told the jury.

Before sending jurors to deliberate, federal judge Avern Cohn patiently walked the eight-person panel through the basics of the notoriously complicated field of copyright law, a field in which he’d earlier acknowledged a lack of experience.

Jurors would continue deliberations Friday morning if a verdict was not reached Thursday afternoon.

there have been lack of fire work in the trial but the only real drama was on Tuesday where Von Bondies Lead singer Jason Stollsteimer and White were fored in rehashing about there famoue brawl at the Magic Stick on Dec.13 2003 where Stollsteimer testified about finding a message he said was from White. "I found a note stuck to my door with a knife in it," Stollsteimer told the jury.

The knife held up a magazine interview in which White allegedly thought Stollsteimer slighted him by minimizing his role in producing a Von Bondies album. The article, Stollsteimer said, had written across it: "That's the last … time I help you out." Earlier, White said it was "a laughable lie" that he stuck a knife in Stollsteimer's door.

When asked in court if he remembered threatening to ruin Diamond's career in the music industry if he went forward with the suit, the Detroit News quoted White as replying, "I believe I said this was going to ruin his reputation, if he did something like this."

Also on Tuesday, Meg White also took the stand and testified that though Diamond is listed as a co-producer on the band's first album, he should not have been and that Jack White deserved all the credit for producing the album.

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