Stray Kids member HAN’s solo track “back to life” is at the centre of a US copyright lawsuit filed by JYP Entertainment. The company alleges that a recording from the group’s YouTube channel appeared on streaming services under another artist’s name without permission. Miles Gaines, one of the defendants, says a third party submitted the file and that he was unaware of the upload.
A solo song from Stray Kids member HAN appeared on the group’s YouTube channel on May 9. JYP Entertainment says it turned up on other services only days later, attributed to an artist called yungzzz. The company has asked a federal court in California to hear its claims about who distributed the recording and what happened to the credits along the way.
JYP filed the complaint on November 4 in the Central District of California. The docket lists the case as 2:2026cv12960. The defendants are OneSync Media LLC and its founder, Miles Gaines. The case concerns the alleged use of the recording without permission and the alleged removal or alteration of information identifying the people and company associated with it. The filing establishes what JYP is alleging. It does not establish that a court has found the defendants responsible.
HAN introduced “back to life” through SKZ-PLAYER, the video series that gives members of Stray Kids a place to present music outside the group’s regular releases. The recording was therefore publicly available on the official channel before the song’s authorised digital release in June. The alleged redistribution falls in the interval between those events, when listeners could hear it in its original setting and, according to JYP, could encounter another listing elsewhere.
The company says the recording appeared under the yungzzz name on Spotify, Apple Music and services operated by YouTube. Its complaint concerns both the sound file and the way a listener would have identified it. An artist name and the information associated with a track can make a listing appear to be a distinct release. JYP says the version it found did not correctly identify HAN or its own interest in the recording.
According to the complaint, the company used metadata available through YouTube to trace the distribution to Hitmaker Music Group. JYP says it was then directed, through that company’s lawyers, to Gaines as the holder of the distribution account connected with yungzzz. Hitmaker figures in that account as part of the path by which JYP says it traced the file. The complaint names Gaines and OneSync Media as defendants.
Gaines has offered a different account. He said a third party submitted the recording to OneSync and that he had not known about the upload. He also said it had been removed and that the service was reviewing information about the account and submission. Those comments put the identity of the person who supplied the file and the knowledge of the people involved among the factual questions in the case.
The lawsuit includes claims under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act relating to copyright management information. That part of the complaint concerns details associated with the recording that can help identify its creators or rights holders. JYP alleges those details were removed or replaced. The allegation is related to the distribution claim, but it addresses a different part of what happens when a file is made available through a service.
For Stray Kids listeners, “back to life” has a clear official point of origin in the SKZ-PLAYER video. A digital distributor sees a different part of the process, an account submitting a track with the information that will identify it when it goes live. The case brings those two views of the same recording together and raises the question of what the companies involved could know from the material they received.
Gaines has said OneSync has procedures intended to identify material that may be submitted without the necessary rights. He said he would cooperate through the legal process. JYP is seeking damages and court relief. The parties’ statements do not resolve who made the submission or whether the defendants knew the recording came from the Stray Kids channel.
The company has pursued another case involving the same song and a different distribution chain. This filing concerns the release attributed to yungzzz and the two defendants named in the November 4 complaint. Keeping the cases distinct matters because an unauthorised listing can have its own route from a source file to a platform, even when the underlying recording is identical.
For HAN, the song remains an individual recording presented through Stray Kids’ own video series. The official video still supplies the context in which it was introduced. The court case asks what happened after that appearance, how another listing came to carry the recording and whether the people or service behind it can be held liable. Those questions are now before the court, alongside Gaines’s account of a submission made by somebody else.
