Leonard Cohen's Estate Warns Trump Never to Use His Song

[Ms. Toad]

5. There are ways to try to prevent political uses of a song - posting a note on Facebook isn't one of them.

Hallelujah can be licensed for public performance through a performing rights organization ("PRO" - e.g. ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, etc.). That means anyone who pays the appropriate license fee can perform it.

Some of the PRO organizations (but not all) have a separate license for political uses of their works. The appropriate way to try to prohibit Trump's use is to exclude their works from being licensed under the political use license. This may (or may not) be successful - generally, a use license grants the rights to all items in the entire PRO catalog for the licensed purpose (and an attempted exclusion of works licensed in the general performance category from use under the political use license may not be effective).

So a statement on facebook (or to the media, or even a cease and desist letter) is purely performative.

(This is within my area of practice when I was actively engaged in the practice of IP law, and I frequently obtained PRO licenses on behalf of clients. The controversy over whether artists can effectively exclude their works (in part or in whole) from the political use license post-dates my active practice. But the last information I found with quick research is that it was unlikely that artists could successfully exclude works from licensing under the political use license.)