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from the Gets-worse-before-it-can-get-better dept.
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: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Monday September 09 2019, @12:22AM (1 child)
The big difference is that Shakespeare had freedoms we in the 21st century don't.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 09 2019, @11:28AM
I think you missed his point. Everyone knows the laws were different in Shakespere's day. They had both more and less freedom than we have. Try being a homosexual Jew in the 1600s.
His point was that even someone revered as Shakespeare didn't consider himself too good to do derivative work. Besides, your point is moot because the story Romeo and Juliet was based on was a few hundred years old by Shakespere's time anyway. It was public domain (by today's standards -- don't get huffy and accuse me for being ignorant that they didn't have PD back then.)
I was in a business that got sued for patent infringement. Our lawyers managed to find older patents that had all the bits and pieces in our product. We were stunned to discover how "unoriginal" our product was. When the other lawyers saw the pre-existing versions of both our products, the suit was dropped. What I learned is that MOST of these kinds of lawsuits are fishing expeditions, hoping someone doesn't know how to fight back.
If there truly are such a limited amount of notes and arrangements, then they're already out there in the older works too. Before you publish your song, do a little research and document the public domain instances of every measure. Keep it in a file. When they sue you, have your lawyer tell their lawyer (using their secret magic word sauce) that you're prepared and armed for the fight. They'll drop the suit in a hurry. (Don't dare try to be the lawyer yourself. You can very easily commit a felony by "tampering with a witness" if you even try to apologize to someone or have a casual conversation. Our ENTIRE legal system is truly fucked up.)