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Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Taylor Swift Lawsuit Dismissed: Judge Rules Lyrics Didn't Copy Poems
www.billboard.com: A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit claiming Taylor Swift stole lyrics for 15 of her songs from a self-published Florida poet, ruling the accuser was trying to claim ownership over basic ideas and “common words.”
4 comments:
Reigh Wilson
said...
I always think that stuff like this is super interesting around intellectual property and plagiarism when it comes to artistic processes and creations. I think it is super tricky and really murky when you start trying to define “origionality”. I am of the mind that nothing is truly original and everything, especially at this point and time and with art, is derivative inherently. I don’t think that that is a bad thing at all but it starts to become a tricky question when it enters legality and peoples personal feelings around it. I am glad that the judge dismissed the case as it did seem to be a bit of a ploy of more general ideas that people can't own but I am curious to see how this continues with more cases. This reminds me of how on project runway this season oen designer did this red stripe and then another design did a red stripe later and everyone thought plagiarism (even though the original designer didn’t see it that way).
I think copyright law is a very interesting facet of the entertainment industry. Copyright questions like this one play a large role in what art companies and artists can make. The concept of intellectual property is very weird, if you think about it. There are few things that are completely, totally original and have not been thought of before by someone on Earth. I just think this is a very strange concept that humanity invented at some point. In many cases, much of the art we create is drawn on concepts and conventions that have been embedded in our artistic culture for thousands of years. This raises questions about what you can lay claim to as your intellectual property. If two people write stories both using tropes first written by Shakespeare, can one sue the other for using their intellectual property? In the case of Taylor Swift, I do believe this poet’s poems have no resemblance to Swift’s songs and this claim was probably brought about just to try and win a case.
I feel like everyday I see an article about Taylor Swift being accused of copyright. I understand (as does she) how important it is to have the right to your art, however accusing an artist of plagiarism when there are only a few commonly used words feels ridiculous to me. As they stated, there is so much art in the world, that at some point, a lot of it is going to sound similar to at least one other piece. I feel like since Taylor Swift is probably one of the most talked about artists in the media, people are going to tend to target her for such accusations because they know that they will get press for it. I don't want to blame this particular artist for this because it is very possible that she truly believed she was plagiarized, but I feel like this happens a lot towards Swift in particular.
This article was really interesting because it shows how messy and random these music lawsuits can get. A judge dismissed a case claiming Taylor Swift stole lyrics for 15 of her songs from a poet in Florida because the words used were too common and there was no proof she even saw the poems. The examples they gave like tears yelling and running are such normal words that it makes sense the case didn’t go anywhere. It kind of shows how hard it is to prove that someone copied something in music or writing when so many emotions and ideas are shared by everyone. I get why people want to protect their work but at the same time you can’t really claim ownership over basic human feelings. Reading about stuff like this makes me think about how tough it must be to write songs that feel original but still connect with people in a real way.
4 comments:
I always think that stuff like this is super interesting around intellectual property and plagiarism when it comes to artistic processes and creations. I think it is super tricky and really murky when you start trying to define “origionality”. I am of the mind that nothing is truly original and everything, especially at this point and time and with art, is derivative inherently. I don’t think that that is a bad thing at all but it starts to become a tricky question when it enters legality and peoples personal feelings around it. I am glad that the judge dismissed the case as it did seem to be a bit of a ploy of more general ideas that people can't own but I am curious to see how this continues with more cases. This reminds me of how on project runway this season oen designer did this red stripe and then another design did a red stripe later and everyone thought plagiarism (even though the original designer didn’t see it that way).
I think copyright law is a very interesting facet of the entertainment industry. Copyright questions like this one play a large role in what art companies and artists can make. The concept of intellectual property is very weird, if you think about it. There are few things that are completely, totally original and have not been thought of before by someone on Earth. I just think this is a very strange concept that humanity invented at some point. In many cases, much of the art we create is drawn on concepts and conventions that have been embedded in our artistic culture for thousands of years. This raises questions about what you can lay claim to as your intellectual property. If two people write stories both using tropes first written by Shakespeare, can one sue the other for using their intellectual property? In the case of Taylor Swift, I do believe this poet’s poems have no resemblance to Swift’s songs and this claim was probably brought about just to try and win a case.
I feel like everyday I see an article about Taylor Swift being accused of copyright. I understand (as does she) how important it is to have the right to your art, however accusing an artist of plagiarism when there are only a few commonly used words feels ridiculous to me. As they stated, there is so much art in the world, that at some point, a lot of it is going to sound similar to at least one other piece. I feel like since Taylor Swift is probably one of the most talked about artists in the media, people are going to tend to target her for such accusations because they know that they will get press for it. I don't want to blame this particular artist for this because it is very possible that she truly believed she was plagiarized, but I feel like this happens a lot towards Swift in particular.
This article was really interesting because it shows how messy and random these music lawsuits can get. A judge dismissed a case claiming Taylor Swift stole lyrics for 15 of her songs from a poet in Florida because the words used were too common and there was no proof she even saw the poems. The examples they gave like tears yelling and running are such normal words that it makes sense the case didn’t go anywhere. It kind of shows how hard it is to prove that someone copied something in music or writing when so many emotions and ideas are shared by everyone. I get why people want to protect their work but at the same time you can’t really claim ownership over basic human feelings. Reading about stuff like this makes me think about how tough it must be to write songs that feel original but still connect with people in a real way.
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