she could change her name to a symbol and then go by “The Artist” 
The label she worked with, Big Machine, which owned those masters was purchased by another company that Scooter worked for.
I don’t know all the ins and outs of the deal or even how this stuff typically works, but I don’t think Scooter had anything to do with her first several albums.
He bought them all, though, didn’t he?
True, but what counts as parody for legal purposes isn’t as clear cut as you may think. It has to actually make fun of what is being used. It can’t just be satire. To avoid the issue altogether, Yankovic always asks.
See the case where someone reused “This Land is Your Land” in a political “parody.” It was found to be infringing.
" Scooter Braun — who obtained control of Swift’s masters when his company Ithaca Holdings acquired Big Machine Label Group in June 2019 from founder Scott Borchetta — sold the master rights of her first six albums for more than $300 million, Variety reported Monday."
Without her permission. She wasn’t part of that deal. Even if she had known he was a douchbag, which you said she should have known, it wouldn’t have changed anything. In fact, she made a public stink about it way back then. Her trying to stop the deal is why people outside of the industry are even aware of him.
If your point is that the law considers parody and satire to be two different things, then, yes, that’s true. I don’t think there’s a significant risk of Weird Al’s stuff not being parody. And many many people who have much less money that Weird Al make parodies without taking the extra step of seeking permission. (After all, if you ask, they might say “no.”) Weird Al doesn’t do it for legal reasons.
What does that have to do with anything? Because she might have made a mistake in the past (which she didn’t), she can’t do anything about it now?
So with that in mind, how is your comment “She should have known what sort of douchebag Scooter Braun is. She’s not the first client he’s screwed over” relevant? She didn’t sign with him, she didn’t sell to him, he bought them as part of a bigger purchase that she didn’t have any control over.
Except for when the Democratic Party of California wanted him to run for Governor.
Exactly. Remember, Taylor Swift controls the composition rights. She never owned the sound recording rights (“masters”). With these new recordings, she’ll presumably be able to keep ownership of the sound recording rights.
I’m going to assume I’m not alone here in having no idea what most of that means.
Copyright laws, which I’m assume this is part of, is all very unfamiliar territory to me.
I’m honestly not even sure if you’re agreeing or disagreeing with me.
Under U.S. copyright law, when you’re looking at a piece of recorded music (“sound recording”), there are two rights–the composition rights (the rights of the songwriter, composer, lyricist, etc.), and the sound recording rights (the rights of the person who made the sound recording).
Normally, the songwriter keeps the composition rights (or controls it through a music publishing company), and thus has full rights over use of the song–that means any use of the song, whether it’s a cover version or a derivation or whatever.
In an ideal case, the performing artist (singer/musician/etc.) who made a particular recording would be the owner of the sound recording rights. However, the way recording contracts are structured, the performing artists usually sign away their rights to the record company (“label”). So the label owns the sound recording only. It’s a much more limited right. This sound recording right is sometimes called “owning the master recording” or the “masters.”
So, Taylor Swift kept her composition rights, but at some point the label sold off the sound recording rights and they ended up with Scooter’s company.
That confuses me, because I read (in his autobiography) that Allen Sherman, after his successful first record, parodied only songs in the public domain, in order to avoid royalty payments to the songwriters.
I don’t know a whole lot about that situation, but my guess would be not that he didn’t want to pay royalties, but that he wanted to avoid the whole issue. Parodies are fair use and owe no royalties, but if someone chooses to sue you, then you bear the burden of proving that your song is a parody. Defending that in court can be time consuming and expensive, even if you win in the end.
If, however, you use only clearly public domain works, it’s a lot less likely that someone is going to try to sue you.
As @Ascenray said, it was by perusing internet speculation and spoilers.
Taylor was the first artist to ever sign with Big Machine - it was pretty much created (with financial backing from Toby Keith) for the purpose of releasing her debut album.
At the time, I don’t think anyone anticipated her becoming such an international mega-star that the label would be worth nine figures a decade later.
First off, I’m agreeing with you. It’s a lot like what an old Boss told me: “…everyone gets screwed over when they buy their first new car”. I can emphasize with her… a lot. For the past two years, in my free time, I became involved with a fan page for The Late Show. I often wrote funny bits for other people who wrote on the page under my name so we could entertain each other. Slowly but surely I noticed some of what I wrote appearing in monologues. I have to tell you, I was ecstatic! “Hey, look I’m Famous!”.
The problem was that “Hey look I’m Famous” was often responded to with “Hey look, you’re a Liar” which wasn’t true. So, I’d print what I wrote with it’s time stamps and I’d tell people to look for the episode on YouTube or FB that broadcast the following day. They’d see my point, but they’d then say,
“Yeah? Then how come you aren’t in the credits? How come he never says your name on the air? There’s no accreditation there that we can see. Also, his show pulls in huge amounts of money from CBS and he is wealthy beyond compare. Where’s your paycheck?”
They were right. It was my work, my comedy… it was what I’d written… but there was absolutely nothing that I could put into a portfolio and present to an agent or an employer as examples of my work. It started to really bother me in 2019 when the show was nominated for two Emmys and my material was used in the monologues for both of those episodes. At that point, when I wrote my comedy, I started adding a line at the bottom that I was the creator of the work and asking that the work not be used without attributing my work to me.
Keep in mind that during all those years that I had been applying for jobs with CBS/VIACOM daily … even internships … because I felt I was that good and that I had what it takes to succeed if I could get my foot in the door. Not one application was ever taken seriously; not one interview ever occurred even though my work was being broadcast on their network weekly. Family advised me that they’re just acting like thieves by stealing my work w/o paying for it or attributing me for it, so I stopped submitting new things.
That’s when I funny thing happened: my old submissions that hadn’t been used before? They started showing up on the air! It was if they had run a search filter through and were squeezing the last drops out of the lemon. That’s when I tweeted to the show “Hey, bit XX was really funny last night! I would know, I wrote it. If you want to use my work, you need to credit me for it on the show. I mean, you’re not a thief, right?” No response, no reply.
Long story short, if you don’t know the business, it’s very easy to get ripped off/stolen from.
It happens every day. It happened to me.
Representation costs money, something that young artists often don’t have. Also even if the knew they were getting screwed they might not have any pull in negotiations to get a better deal. It’s usually a “take or leave it” situation and often “leave it” means giving up all chance of making it in the business. They’re very motivated to take that break when they get it.
This is an industry problem, not a “Taylor Swift did something dumb” problem.