News: Sale of "Ready to Die" Album Put on Hold

If fans of the late rapper Notorious B.I.G. don't already have his classic album Ready To Die, they might have missed their chance.

A U.S. District Court jury decided in Nashville yesterday that the title track is in violation of copyright laws because it included portions of a 1992 Ohio Players song without permission or paying royalties.

The jury awarded $3.5 million in punitive damages and at least $733,000 in direct damages plus interest to the rightful owners of the song. But that's not all.

District Judge Todd Campbell ordered that, effective yesterday, the 1994 album Ready To Die and the individual song of the same name must basically cease to exist in the retail world: no more compact discs in stores, no more downloads from the Internet and no more radio plays. He said the decision was necessary to "vindicate the integrity of the copyright law."

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