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Led Zeppelin have triumphed in a long-running copyright dispute after a US appeals court ruled they did not steal the opening riff in Stairway To Heaven.
The British rock legends were accused in 2014 of ripping off a song called Taurus by the US band Spirit.
Taurus was written in 1968, three years before Stairway To Heaven.
Now, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has upheld a 2016 trial verdict that found Led Zeppelin did not copy it.
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-51805905
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Appeals Court Rules Led Zeppelin Did Not Steal Stairway to Heaven Riff
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Either I'm dead or my watch has stopped.
-- Groucho Marx's last words
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2020, @08:51AM (10 children)
Decades? Seriously?
Limit copyright to 20 years. Done.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by FatPhil on Tuesday March 10 2020, @10:11AM (7 children)
Of course, that was created in a time when the flow of information, of intellectual property as we would now call it, was incredibly slow. The ability to make money from your inventiveness was severely restricted. It's much easier to turn creativity into profit nowadays, so one could argue that copyright terms should be shorter. That's heresy though, so don't ever get caught saying that in a public place, or they'll sic the MAFIAA on you.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Interesting) by deimtee on Tuesday March 10 2020, @01:26PM (6 children)
I'm a little conflicted. On one hand I think 20 years is plenty long enough for commercial works like films and albums. On the other hand there are series writers who have carefully crafted a universe in their works over longer spans than that and I think they should be protected for at least as long as they keep writing. The problem is that any series/setting protection will be abused by commercial entities to extend their copyrights indefinitely.
On the gripping hand, I would support a law that says copyright is not transferable. It must have a designated human author, and the most the author can do is license it out. All such licences must have a maximum term of five years. All copyrights terminate five years after the author's death.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Pino P on Tuesday March 10 2020, @02:16PM (2 children)
How would your law handle the case of a work with hundreds of contributors that provide identifiable creative input, such as a feature film?
Which would certainly raise the stakes in wrongful death suits.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Tuesday March 10 2020, @02:25PM (1 child)
1/ That's up to them to designate someone. It would probably be whoever put up the money or the director. How many of those hundreds of people own the copyright now?
2/ The five years was to match up to the contract term. All contracts would expire before the copyright does.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday March 11 2020, @02:20AM
I can understand a producer as a work's author of record.
But here's the exploit I had in mind: Someone wants to produce a derivative of a particular work but finds its author of record unwilling to license it at any price. So to start the life + 5 clock ticking, someone frustrated with the uncooperative MAFIAA hires someone from the real Mafia to make this author disappear and then waits out the five years.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Tuesday March 10 2020, @02:52PM
Not many people state the "only the author has the copyright, everything else is a licence" line, it's nice to see it repeated as it's one idea I've thrown into discussions on the topic several times over the years, sometimes to much confusion, as it's a radical change from what we currently have. It would somewhat mess up the smooth running of the exploitative fairy-story-driven music business we currently have. Which is a good thing for almost everyone involved in music.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Wednesday March 11 2020, @04:15AM
I'm not conflicted at all. Why shouldn't I be able to write stories about Discworld? Even while Terri Pratchett was still alive? Fans will know which one is the "real Discworld" and which one is the knockoff / Rule 34 version. With that said, I can see protecting Discworld from being commercialized by someone for a certain period of time (a few years, but not a lifetime), but after that?
Why shouldn't I be able to finish Game of Thrones my way? George R. R. Martin doesn't seem to be writing it anymore. And if he does manage to finish his series, people will know which one is the official version. The cherry on top is that this has already been done. Two versions of Game of Thrones happened between him and the television series. It didn't seem to dampen the excitement of George's fans for his next book.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 13 2020, @12:33PM
Why? My take is that they don't need protecting and we're missing out on other peoples' interpretations by doing that. The paying fans can police this stuff.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday March 10 2020, @11:23PM (1 child)
copyright makes no sense when copy has zero cost. Eliminate copyright tomorrow and people will keep making music. In fact you will hear much more music around. People made music when copyright wasn't and the planet did not collapse.
As an artist you should only credit those you copy or get inspired from, as a moral imperative.
As of now, musicians are like youtubers. They can win the lottery and enter the limited VIP club, or basically work for free for the platform (not even the label anymore), it's the distributor with large catalog that makes money. So we might as well eliminate all the hassles with using music freely instead of submitting to the questionable idea of Intellectual Property.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Wednesday March 11 2020, @04:20AM
A band can still make money with live performances. Very few people are going to pay to watch an author read a book, which is why wordsmiths need copyright in order to make a living from their work.