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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 09 2019, @06:54PM
You have a point that a microscopic part of a work might not be actionable. But no, the copyright attaches to the work and all parts of it. Switching to publishing take a closer look at substantiality. The section about Ford's memoir, where 0.2% of the work was dismissed as being not being fair use. Try writing a novel only about Luke Skywalker - he's just one character of an ensemble of at least a dozen or so characters. Then get back to us about whether lifting just one little chunk is OK. Or just [wikipedia.org]have a look here [medium.com] and see if you rethink anything.