www.forbes.com: Although lawyers and musicologists can argue over the finer points, for the longest time the judgments in copyright infringement cases made sense to the average music lover. It didn’t take an advanced degree to recognize that George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” was pretty darn close to The Chiffons’ “He’s So Fine,” or that Led Zeppelin lifted riffs and lyrics from Willie Dixon.
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Music copyright is so very hard to navigate as an artist. Crediting the people who helped create a song is important, but where does helping end and inspired by start? Should songs that sound similar or even have similar structures really credit all songwriters for both songs? Music has infinite possibilities but it does have finite building blocks to make those possibilities from. There are only so many chords and progression of chords that one can take. There will inevitably be some crossover. But it usually is never intentional. An artist will create a song but they cannot tell if it is similar to others without searching and cross referencing every song in existence. I find that the rulings in many of the copyright cases discussed in this article to be hard. I understand that artists want credit for their songs and material, but that doesn't mean that every song that has a particular chord structure was influenced by their work. Especially with artists who have passed, how does one know what their intention was? I find that these rulings and accusations all have to do with money and little else.
According to me, music copyright is a very hard thing to understand and implement because it deals with the question of where to credit someone versus where to delineate the help from one's own work.
I have seen a lot of music creation videos where the songwriter talks about the journey of the song, the situations or people that inspired them to write the song, the help of several specialized personnel in enhancing the song. In all of these, given that help has been taken, it makes sense to credit these people. But what if, the help that a particular personnel gave would have not have been useful if collaboration if collaboration with the songwriter did not take place? Would the song writer be equally credited for the job or would only the specific person be credited?
It is questions like these that make music copyright infringement a difficult thing to understand, and work with.
It’s difficult for me to believe that most music copyright rulings are not for the benefit of money but rather for the integrity of the musician’s art. I understand that artists must get paid for what they create. It is them who put the time and effort into writing, arranging, or performing the song - and they should receive benefits from it. What always confuses me are the lawsuits that come up after an artist has passed away or lawsuits that come up from songs that have both been out for some substantial amount of time. The article mentions one such instance brought on by the estate of Randy Wolfe after his passing. I was very confused because - again - to echo something the writer of the article mentioned: if Wolfe didn’t want to bring up a lawsuit when he was alive, what is this lawsuit going to benefit him as a passed on person?
Music copyright has always been a complicated issue. Although the principle behind it is pretty simple (don’t steal other people’s work), there are so many grey areas. When can you not credit someone? How do you credit your inspiration? This article reminds me of the copyright fights that I ‘ve heard over the years. I remember Ariana Grande signed off 90% of her rights to her song 7 rings because she “reinterpreted” My Favourite Things from Sound of Music (my friend told me about it because she was so angry).
After reading this article, I’m left wondering how copyright lawsuits are ruled. How do people decide when a piece of music has copied other music. It sounds like a lot of songs don’t even sound similar to normal people - so how do they judge? I am kind of upset that a company sued a high school for using their sings during a fundraiser. I get it, they should’ve asked for permission and the high school is technically “making money” off of the performance of your songs. But the school did it for educational purposes and the money benefits students.
The hypocrisy and confusion surrounding copyright laws as they have evolved over the years is a topic I became a lot more interested in when I took Scott Sandage’s class, The Roots of Rock and Roll last spring. I had always believed in the importance of copyright, especially knowing the history of how people of color had been exploited without laws in place to protect them, but something that I learned from that class is how much we borrow from each other. While I still believe that we need to be careful to protect the art of POC as it is often repurposed and popularized by white people, collaboration and inspiration is the foundation of art, and we should not try to change that. It is nearly impossible to trace back far enough to ensure that you are crediting the correct source. I am glad that copyright law is beginning to be more aware of that.
It must be very interesting for lawyers to argue in front of a judge about music when that’s something that is probably not commonly known about to an advanced degree in the law field. I guess it’s possible that the players hire a lawyer that has a background in music. Making money off music is so much more challenging now with services like spotify and pandora where artists make a fraction of a cent for each play. A switch happened in the industry where the tour was a way to promote the money-making CD, but now the money is in the tour and the streaming is more an advertisement to see them live. I’m curious why it was that a few of the example songs in the article were described as not being similar, but yet there was still a lawsuit. The other interesting thing was the final story about the holding company suing a school. The judicial system is certainly set up in a way that gives the upper hand to people who have large amounts of cash, and even if they don’t win the lawsuit, they can hold up the other side in the court system for years and make them have to pay exorbitant legal fees to the point where the underdog might just give up and settle.
Personally, I find cases like this extremely frustrating. I agree with the article that ever since the case with Robin Thicke, there always seems to be a lawsuit over a “similar” sound and it is usually the bigger artist coming for the little ones, since they have the power. It is a difficult case to dissect though. Where does one draw the line for how much the original sound is changed counting as fair use? Was it done on purpose or just a coincidence? If the song is a blatant rip off, sure, a lawsuit for their art makes sense. But suing over the smallest detail just to make more cash feels greedy. The fact that so many large coo[orations are behind these lawsuits does not help its case. Hearing these companies try to take advantage of school fundraising just to make a few bucks is ridiculous and cruel. It’s good the school won and that these cases are starting to change, but it is upsetting to see there are so many people in the world who think like this.
Copyright is such a slippery slope, which is why it is so confusing seemingly to everyone, even the judges in these cases. I always wonder about the legality of artists sampling music, which is something I wish this article talked about. Rappers do it all the time: Kanye sampling Michael Jackson’s “PYT”, Eminem sampling The Zombies’ “Time of the Season”. The list goes on. I am curious about the legalities of sampling, which is much larger than one song sounding similar to another. I also find it interesting that they brought a high school into all of this. It makes me wonder if there were any times growing up when I have performed something that has gone against copyright laws, and I did not even know it. Just because of one non-profit concert, they were brought into several different court hearings. I wonder if cases like that one are abundant, and I wonder if they typically have the same outcome.
Copyright law is so complicated and so frustrating that it’s nice to hear that it may be returning more to the realm of common sense in terms of the music industry. The reason it exists in the first place is to ensure that people who have genuinely created something new can be the ones who receive credit and money for it, and that is certainly a good thing. What we’re running into, though, specifically in creative copyright, is that there’s really only so many notes and chords in the world and unintentional similarity is bound to happen in some ways. The lawsuits that spring from this tend to be about money rather than legitimately protecting one artist’s creative property, particularly in cases where the artist is deceased, or cases like the high school one mentioned in the article. Obviously the high school is not claiming that they have written these songs, so it’s more about who is profiting from them rather than protecting integrity. I’m glad that the courts sided with the school in this case, and hopefully the article is correct in its assumption that this represents a step forward in the business of music copyright law.
I just really think music copyright is so interesting. I had not heard about the “Blurred Lines” Copyright infringement. This was because the songs had a similar vibe?!?! I do not understand how someone could possibly win in court saying that a song was too similar to theirs in vibe and therefore violated the copyright. I am sure the situation was more complicated than that but still I just don’t understand. I think it is interesting what this article said about how pop songs now credit every single person who was in the room when the song was written and credit people whose songs might have influenced this song. My question about that though is if all of these people are credited as writing the song, do they all get royalties for the song? And Does everyone they credit know that they are doing that or can they just say my song kind of sounds like this other song, let’s just say that person wrote it too?
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