The year 2016 has not been an easy one for Ted Cruz — he lost the Republican primary, he accidentally elbowed his wife in the face multiple times on live television, his father was falsely linked to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and his old Princeton roommate spent weeks tweeting about how creepy he was in college. Cruz took another hit last week, when he settled a lawsuit for $55,000 that alleged his campaign played two copyrighted songs in political ads.
The Seattle music-licensing firm Audiosocket claimed that Cruz and an ad agency he hired, Madison McQueen, did not reveal that they planned to use the music of two artists for political advertisements. One of the ads ran on Fox Business News 86 times and was viewed on YouTube 7,800 times, the lawsuit stated. In addition to paying Audiosocket $55,000, Cruz's campaign released a statement saying it apologized for "unintentionally infringing upon the intellectual property rights" of the artists.
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