from the http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html dept.
The latest battle has been over their classic song "Stairway to Heaven," and amazingly, court proceedings are now in their fifth year. On September 23rd, the battle continues — once again — in federal court.
That's when the full 'en banc' panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the copyright infringement lawsuit that the descendants of Randy Wolfe initially filed against Led Zeppelin. The descendants insist that the opening cords of "Stairway to Heaven" were stolen from a song that the late guitarist wrote called "Taurus," which was performed by the band Spirit.
[...] In August, more than 120 music artists filed an amicus brief in support of the band. The artists have said that if the lawsuit against Led Zeppelin succeeds, it could seriously hamper creativity in music. Even more impressively, the U.S. government also filed an amicus brief on behalf of Led Zeppelin, citing the need to "foster innovation and creative expression."
Previously:
Led Zeppelin Appear in Court Over Stairway to Heaven Vs Spirits Taurus Dispute
Music Copyright Laws Worsen as Artists Give Up
Related Stories
Members of the rock band Led Zeppelin have appeared in court to deny borrowing from another song for their 1971 hit Stairway To Heaven.
Guitarist Jimmy Page and singer Robert Plant are expected to give evidence at the civil case in Los Angeles.
They are accused of lifting the song's opening notes from Taurus, a 1967 track by the band Spirit.
Page, 72, and Plant, 67, are being sued by a trust acting for a founding member of Spirit who died in 1997.
Page and Plant say they wrote the song in a remote cottage in Wales and were not influenced by Wolfe's chord progression.
...
The copyright infringement action is being taken by a trust set up to manage the legacy of the late guitarist Randy Wolfe, also known as Randy California, a founding member of Spirit who played on the same bill as Led Zeppelin later that year.
He died in 1997 while saving his son from drowning.
Lawyers for Wolfe say Page and Plant wrote Stairway To Heaven after hearing their client play Taurus, and that he should be given a writing credit.
Page and Plant say the song was their masterpiece, written in a remote cottage in Wales.
The plaintiff is reportedly seeking royalties and other compensation of around $40m (£28m).
According to Bloomberg Businessweek, Stairway To Heaven had earned $562m (£334m) as of 2008.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36534469
How low can copyright law go? Much further if the current lawsuits being flung around are any indication. Ed Sheeran is taking a hiatus to deal with a copyright claim from Sam Chokri against his song Shape Of You. The suit accuses Sheeran of stealing the Chorus from the song Oh Why after Chokri voluntarily submitted it to Sheeran's management. The resemblance between the tracks is said to be 'very slight', but this is not the first time Sheeran has been challenged in this matter, with the previous accusation being resolved by adding songwriting credits for parts borrowed from TLC's No Scrubs. Sam Smith caved in to Tom Petty's claim that his song Stay with me was in some way related to I Want Back Down, which must take a musician to spot, while Katy Perry lost a suit filed by a Christian hip hop artist who claimed that her song Dark Horse infringed on Joyful Noise due to that they both have "a slightly similar sharp stabbing synth and a basic trap beat" which resulted in Petty's lawyer commenting that “they’re trying to own basic building blocks of music, the alphabet of music that should be available to everyone.” With these big names being taken down by claims of similarity of the "feel" of the music this may be the beginning of the end of the music industry shooting itself in the foot.
Money better spent on hookers and blow.
See also, the short story Melancholy Elephants by Spider Robinson.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday September 22 2019, @03:29PM (13 children)
I just listened to "Taurus" and agree with the U.S. Government, because the two songs sound nothing alike. You really, really have to stretch your imagination to say that the songs are similar. It's like saying the composer of Super Mario World was ripping off Supertramp, or that the final Kefka battle theme from Final Fantasy 6 was a ripoff of Emerson Lake and Palmer.
There are plenty of examples of obvious ripoffs in music, even one Metallica admitted to (though they didn't identify the band), but this ain't one of them.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Sunday September 22 2019, @03:34PM (3 children)
You could even say that Ethanol-fueled is a ripoff of a tired old wino.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday September 22 2019, @03:39PM (1 child)
And just like Metallica, I keep on going even though my content sucks and I should have retired a long time ago. NIGGERS.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @05:07PM
Some moderators seem to have a big problem with your endorsement of Ralph Northam and Justin Trudeau.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @03:52PM
It almost like "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind" ripped off the first 5 notes from "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star"
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @04:33PM (1 child)
If you listen very hard, the tune will come to you at last.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @01:07AM
Not many zep fans on SN!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @05:28PM (3 children)
It's like saying the composer of Super Mario World was ripping off Supertramp
May want to rethink that comment :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDvMuGz-PWY [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBNJ5cAxcQ8 [youtube.com]
The bit they are talking about is at about 57 seconds in
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFHLO_2_THg&t=57 [youtube.com]
and the intro here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXQUu5Dti4g [youtube.com]
They are thematically similar with a few bits switched and the second part punched out a bit. Very similar but not the same. Rippoff? Plausible. But they switched enough of it up that it is different. Inspired would be better.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:46PM (2 children)
Ir it's just that there is a large but finite combination of notes that people find musical and so composers in isolation will occasionally come up with similar combinations. That's why there have been infringement claims against videos featuring the sound of wild bird song.
A fair number of these copyright complaints amount to a mechanical engineer complaining that someone else used screws to hold a box together in clear infringement of their design.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @07:45PM (1 child)
You realize the coincidence of about 50 notes in a row being the same is fairly astronomical in nature right? This is not black midi set to random and seeing what pops out. You may want to click on the links I put in my post. You will find it is very different than what you want it to be.
More than likely they heard the melody and had it rolling around in their heads and plunked that other one out. They changed it up. But it is similar. The one bringing the lawsuit is however just digging for cash.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Sunday September 22 2019, @11:40PM
It would be if the notes were drawn at random out of a hat without regard to aesthetics.
However, the guitar line in Taurus and Stairway do not share 50 notes. The sharing first breaks on the 3rd note.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @07:49PM (1 child)
Not Randy Wolfe, but the descendants of Randy Wolfe. I think there lies the key. They are not musicians, or involved. They just caught a whiff of the dollar breeze, a highly contagious disease. Fanned on by a greedy lawyer of three, the sue wagon was boarded, ticket or no ticket. Sad, and it ties up legal resources better expended on taking down real baddies.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday September 23 2019, @12:49AM
I wonder what will happen when Mick Jagger's grandchildren find out the money has all been squandered and set about looking for someone to sue?
The never-ending copyrights we have had forced on us by Disney are not for the benefit of any artists.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday September 23 2019, @09:18AM
Confusion will be your epitaph.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Funny) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Sunday September 22 2019, @03:57PM (1 child)
The sooner this riff is outlawed - especially in guitar stores the world over, the better.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @07:38PM
It's Hazzard County's national anthem.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bradley13 on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:35PM (11 children)
Nuts. Creators gain nothing from nutty copyright law. Drop copyright term to 3 to 5 years. Sanity might return.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday September 22 2019, @08:00PM (9 children)
3 to 5 isn't really enough for a common person to adequately disseminate a work, particularly to the global markets - but it is about the right timeframe for a major label like Sony to finish a rollout and extract significant sales volumes/profits.
I like a "pay to play" approach to copyright. Declare for free, get those 3 years covered just by publishing and declaring "this is mine." If, at the end of 3 years, you think your work merits further protection, send in a nominal - say $10 - filing fee with any/all agencies you seek copyright protection with. That fee might buy you another 3 years. Sales going well? This thing is worth protecting some more? Fine. Double the filing fee and get another 3 years. This is 9 years of copyright protection for $30, hardly onerous, particularly since the fees start at 0 for the first 3 years. 9 years is coming up, do you think that ongoing copyright protection is something you want to pursue? Good, your next filing fee for the next 3 years is $40. 12-15 costs $80, 15-18 costs $160, 18-21 costs $320 - if you haven't made an additional $630 on your copyrighted work in the first 21 years, you probably didn't need copyright protection in the first place... but, 21-24 $640, 24-27 $1280, 27-30 $2560... getting serious now, something like Stairway to Heaven is probably worth the investment, but, otherwise, maybe 30 years is time to let it go public domain? 30-33 $5120, 33-36 $10240, 36-39 $20480, 39-42 $40960, 42-45 $81920, 45-48 $163840, 48-51 $327680 - now we're getting up in Mickey Mouse territory, 50 years old and still worth over $300K to keep that copyright protection going. Don't like it? Don't pay - copyright enforcement costs the courts and everyone else, if you, the rights holder, are still making a living off of material that was copyrighted over 50 years ago, it's high time to be giving some of those profits back to the system that protects your copyright. 51-54 $655360, 54-57 $1.3M, 57-60 $2.6M... now we're into million dollar a year territory, Mickey Mouse may be worth it, but Donald Duck? Goofy? I anticipate "group copyright" becoming a thing, where the whole cast of characters comes under a single filing, and, that's O.K. because: 63-66 $5.2M, 66-69 $10.4M, 69-72 $20.8M, 72-75 $41.6M - I'm O.K. with Disney having 75+ year copyrights, really I am, totally cool with that, they can even keep them longer if they want: years 75-78 $83.2M, etc.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by wisnoskij on Sunday September 22 2019, @08:27PM (2 children)
This is literally the worse idea I have ever heard. The idea of some sort of copyright system is to encourage innovation. Not make protecting your intellectual property impossible for the little guy nor to suck trillions of dollars from artists into the hands of accountants, lawyers, and law makers.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday September 22 2019, @11:43PM
Look at the figures again. If you aren't making well over those amounts in profit, there's nothing worth protecting no matter how small you are.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @06:46AM
Also, the last I checked lots of bands are making more money from touring ( https://www.businessinsider.com/how-do-musicians-make-money-2018-10/ [businessinsider.com] https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/how-musicians-make-money-or-dont-at-all-in-2018-706745/ [rollingstone.com] ) than due to copyright related income streams. Seems that's been true for a long time.
I also know some small time musicians and they don't earn the bulk of their money from albums or singles either.
So even if copyright law completely didn't exist it wouldn't affect the artists that much.
And see also: https://genius.com/Steve-albini-the-problem-with-music-annotated [genius.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 22 2019, @09:42PM (2 children)
For the common person, you could see the time limit to the heat death of the universe and it still wouldn't be enough time.
I do like the exponentially increasing fees. Someone like Disney probably would lobby to cap the fees. But not much different than the present infinite expansion of copyright.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday September 23 2019, @12:51AM (1 child)
Someone like Disney probably would
lobbywrite a law and pay congress to pass it to cap the fees.FTFY.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday September 23 2019, @01:25AM
This is my thinking - they're already investing millions in distorting the law for their own benefit and screwing up everyone else in the process... why not just formalize it, systematize it, and get it out in the open: who really cares about copyright on their material? If that's Disney and they've kept the Marvel copyrights up-to-date to the tune of millions of dollars in the recent filing, then, sure, people should respect that.
If Jimi Hendrix estate has decided that the filing fees aren't worth it anymore, then that becomes public record too, and electric ladyland is now fair game for remixing.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Monday September 23 2019, @08:21AM (2 children)
It's far from the worst idea I've ever heard and it is certainly worth considering and debating, but I personally don't like it.
The true goal should be to make all ideas available to the public. That is what we need to protect. Patents, copyrights, etc, are simply there to encourage innovation by letting the person or entity making these things have an opportunity to profit. Even Mickey Mouse, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Indiana Jones should be public domain. There is nothing stopping the Mouse from making a new Star Wars or Indy Jones movie and hiring the original actors. But why should they be the only ones after more than 10 or 20 or 30 years? How is that benefiting the public?
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Monday September 23 2019, @08:33AM (1 child)
I should add: Stairway to Heaven is a perfect example of what I just gave my opinion on and why something should be public domain as soon as possible. It's a classic stepping stone for young guitarists. It's simple to play, yet boost confidence in the guitar player that they are doing ok and can now play more complex songs. (I don't know if they still teach it or not.) By dropping things into public domain ASAP, society benefits in unexpected ways. If we keep Stairway to Heaven out of public reach, then we may need to rely on a song not as well suited. Even if another song is just as challenging/easy to play, it may not be enjoyed as much by the guitar player and that can have an impact in how fast confidence is built up.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday September 23 2019, @12:53PM
By making the fees optional, artists can make the decision: does this popular song go public domain, or do I instead "pay taxes" to ensure it remains exclusively mine? As it is, copyright protection is "free" for all artists, and any agent or legal representation would be negligent to not enforce copyright for all works under their care.
I like the three year intervals - starting artists can just take the free 3 years, and... if a publishing house gets interested in them, they can start paying for protection. The fees don't really amount to anything significant for the first 30 years, it wouldn't be surprising to me if publishers just prepaid the first 20-30 years to avoid the clerical work and possibility of missing a filing. Further, as works approach expiration, you might see publishers offering to buy the rights and extend protection on valuable IP.
Now, how does any of this get Stairway to Heaven into the public domain any faster? Maybe it doesn't work for Stairway to Heaven, but it does open up hundreds of contemporary songs by lesser known artists which are just as good, and gives the lesser known works a competitive advantage in the popularity game, because people can practice them without fear of prosecution.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @08:15PM
20 years, or even 50 years, would be a vast improvement. I'm not even sure when a modern blockbuster without a sole creator goes out of copyright.
(Score: 3, Funny) by jelizondo on Sunday September 22 2019, @09:08PM (2 children)
Probably you seen Pachelbel rant [youtube.com], if not, it does indeed explain quite a bit about chords being "stolen".
Which is like saying it's all musical notes and they used the same ones as me!
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday September 23 2019, @10:31AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @11:22AM
Yeah except that the thing about Pachibel rant is that it isn't really the notes, and it isn't even really the chords. It's just the tonal pattern of drop a fourth, raise one minor, drop a third, raise a half minor, drop a third, raise a third, raise one. Execute that pattern in any key and it resembles the Canon, and AFAIK you can do it in any key you like. Claiming that's a copy is somewhat/almost/not quite what's going on with this case (and most any other one).
I think what I'm saying is, humor aside, copyright vios need more than just imitating a tonal pattern. Which is why commercials and shows get away with sound-alikes all the time and it's not a copyvio.
(Score: 1) by CheesyMoo on Sunday September 22 2019, @10:29PM
is one of the greatest cover bands of all time