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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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McDonald's -- Because you're worth it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 11 2020, @04:15AM (7 children)
Indeed.
Why? It wouldn't require policing of "all works produced in similar media" to discover that Led Zepplin was playing other peoples' songs. It'd just require a timely response. The dude who came up with the earlier work allegedly knew of the plagiarism from some point in the 1980s (I dimly recall he allegedly complained about the alleged plagiarism at that time), and probably knew of it almost instantly from 1971, given Led Zepplin's popularity. So why in that light did a lawsuit finally surface in 2014?
My point is that knowledge of the alleged violation happened long before the lawsuit did, and that the violation was very material with huge sales. That should by itself be enough to throw out the lawsuit. Sue them in a timely manner or GTFO.
The terms of copyright, particularly, their duration, are already absolutely ridiculous in their burden on society. There's no need to make it worse by allowing for lawsuits many decades after the plaintiff gets standing to sue. Keep in mind that US copyright on music is presently good for life plus 75 years. The song that Led Zeppelin was accused of infringing was written by a Randy Palmer who died in 1997. Technically, that means that his estate could sue through to 2072 long past the deaths of anyone involved with any alleged violations.
While a couple of posters have proposed ending copyrights altogether (which in my view is better than the current regime - yes, I think it better to have nothing at all than copyrights that will greatly outlive me), we don't need to go that far to merely eliminate vexatious lawsuits submitted decades later than any reasonable limit.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday March 12 2020, @03:11AM (6 children)
Yes, it absolutely would require listening to every bit of audio recorded after your wonderful creation was released to ensure that your copyright was not violated. That is part of why lawsuits are allowed to happen way after the infringement. The burden is on the copyright holder and they have no real way except word of mouth, random chance, or the infringing work becoming insanely popular to even find out if their rights have been infringed.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 12 2020, @05:00PM (5 children)
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday March 13 2020, @10:45AM (4 children)
Duh. You're making blanket policy statements though not specific-to-this-case arguments. And your blanket policy statements are flat out wrong for the reasons I've already put forward and many more.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 13 2020, @12:23PM (3 children)
And I'm quite comfortable with making those policy statements since that actually is the policy. Keep in mind the phrase that I used in the beginning, "statute of limitations". Most crimes and virtually every civil case in the US follows statutes of limitations that are well under 43 years. And it turns out that copyright also has a statute of limitations of three years [forbes.com].
My view is to extend that. If someone has been aware of a violation for decades and done nothing, that should revoke their right to enforce their copyright over the violation - particularly in light of the ridiculous length of copyright.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday March 13 2020, @02:28PM (2 children)
And your view is incorrect. It's slapping idiotic rules on top of idiotic rules in an attempt to mitigate the idiocy. The proper solution is to remove the idiocy not mitigate it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 14 2020, @12:55PM (1 child)
Idiocy mitigation need not be idiotic. Sometimes you can't implement proper solutions - after all the idiocy wouldn't exist in the first place, if it was easy to remove.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday March 14 2020, @01:41PM
Yeah, no. I just ain't gonna get behind leaving idiocy in place. And I'm certainly not going to get behind piling more idiocy on top of it to make it even harder to remove. You don't wrap duct tape around a leaking water pipe, you fix the fucking pipe. You're not even advocating duct tape, you're advocating toilet paper.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.