So, the new hit song and dance phenomenon is called the "Harlem Shake". There's also the older musical group called "Cali Swag District". I was thinking about it recently, and wondering if you could name a song after a state? What about naming it after a person? Or having a person's (usually a celebrity's) name in a song or song lyrics? What are the legalities with all of these things vs. the rights of free speech?
I did some research and found an interesting blog about a person trying to write a celebrity's name in a song and they were also wondering about the legalities of that. The response to the post was "Certainly. If you are defaming them, of course they could sue you for defamation - but you have the right to parody. Also, their name might be their trademark, in which case you couldn't pretend to be them. Otherwise, you have the write to write about anybody. You can't "copy protect" your name." (blog link below)
http://www.musesmuse.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=53818
I really agree with this person who wrote the response because I believe that we all have a right to say what we want, about whoever we want AS LONG AS it is not something offensive or false. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything online about writing city names in song titles and having that be a LEGAL issue. I guess there really is no way a whole state could sue someone unless the song was extremely controversial and represented the state in a bad way.
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