Techdirt: Yes, the new 9th Circuit surprising reversal of the jury verdict looks like "Blurred Lines" all over again -- only in reverse. Whereas in "Blurred Lines," the jury reached the "wrong" conclusion, and the Ninth Circuit refused to fix the jury's mistake, here it looks like the jury reached the "right" conclusion," and the Ninth Circuit is screwing up the jury's work. Techdirt all but said so, in an article 9th Cir Never Misses a Chance to Mess Up Copyright Law: Reopens Led Zeppelin 'Stairway to Heaven' Case.
1 comment:
This is a pretty dense article that gets into the nitty gritty of copyright law, and I can't claim that it is a particularly engaging read, but it is important information for artists to have. There is a huge grey area in art between copyright infringement and taking inspiration from someone else's work. The distinction between different frameworks for proving copyright infringement and the idea of the inverse-ratio rule are extremely important for understanding how not to fall into this grey area. They are not directly related: ultimately copying versus inspiration is a conscious choice and has nothing to do with access (either way, you obviously have access to the original work), but if you create something that might fall on the edge of that grey area, and if you are worried it could get you in trouble with someone that misinterprets it, a knowledge of the models of proving copyright infringement is vital to self-testing your work and deciding if it might be too close to someone else's work, or if it might get you in trouble.
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