Led Zeppelin 'Stairway To Heaven' Copyright Case Will Go To A Jury... Meaning Band Will Almost Certainly Lose
from the even-though-it-shouldn't dept
This isn't surprising, even if it is a bit disappointing. Led Zeppelin has long been accused of copying others songs, and there are actually a bunch of videos on YouTube detailing examples. Here's just one:More recently, the estate of Randy Wolfe (aka Randy California), who was the guitarist for the band Spirit and wrote the song Taurus, sued the band over the song "Stairway to Heaven," whose guitar line is obviously quite similar to Taurus. You can definitely hear the similarities, though the chord progression is pretty basic (and the two songs are not identical).
Of course, as we've noted in the past, tons of songs have similar chord progressions that can lead to similar sounding songs. It's why there are multiple comedy routines pointing this out:
Either way, judge Klausner thinks the songs have a similar "feel" and thus a jury should decide, quoting previous cases:
What remains is a subjective assessment of the ‘concept and feel’ of two works . . . a task no more suitable for a judge than for a jury.Thankfully, Klausner does reject comparisons between the performance style between the two songs, noting that that's different than the composition itself (the work that is actually covered by the copyright in question). But, again, that was also true in the Blurred Lines case and the jury more or less ignored it, because the songs sounded similar. So, again, there seems to be a good chance that Plant and Page will lose this case because a jury will think the two songs sound too similar. But sounding too similar isn't how copyright law is supposed to work.
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Filed Under: copyright, jimmy page, jury, led zeppelin, music, robert plant, similarities, spirit, stairway to heaven, taurus
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No inspiration allowed
With no ability to build off of what has come before and each new song-writer having to start from scratch culture will flourish, with countless new songs created, some of which might even be bearable to listen to.
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If you don't believe me? Look at the sheet music for the two songs.
"Sounds somewhat similar to an untrained ear" is NOT the basis for copyright.
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Modern times
Seems pretty safe to me since a judge will not in general have to revert to a jury to find that there are no recognizingly similar elements of significant musical creativity in two "songs" because there are no elements of significant musical creativity at all.
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Bach is public domain so why would it have any effect on copyright status of the other works?
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Three days later they would come back with "we can't decide if they copied more from 17th century music or ripped off those 18th century music pirates".
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However, if you do so, then the test for similarity (which is the criterion for patents but merely a piece of evidence for copying/copyright) becomes much harder to properly interpret: are there any new copyrightable elements that have been copied, or is it just the idea of scavenging on a particular Bach piece?
The latter is insufficient for justifying a copyright claim.
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Therefore, I would be incredibly surprised to find even that a single trained musician ended up on the jury for this case.
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The question is, is it a direct copy? If not then it is hard to prove it was stolen works.
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Take something like The Wizard of Oz. The book is in the public domain, but the movie is not. So to decide if a new work is copying the book or the movie, they might look at things the movie changed (like the color of the slippers) and see if those changed elements are in the new work.
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Re: No inspiration allowed
Kind regards,
Dewey, Bookham and Howe,
representing the Letter Industry Association of America.
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Hope Zepplin Loses
I really hope they lose, because maybe, just maybe there will be a snowballs chance in Hell Zepplin might say... shit... copyright has gotten out of hand.
But we all know the truth here (no chance)... go ahead Led... enjoy what is only a small slice of comeuppance. Sure the Devil gets his due but you get less, yet again, and you deserve less too!
Once Artists figure out what they have helped do to the industry, I might feel sorry for them! HA!
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Abolish Copyright
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But bad jury decisions make good appeal decisions, and those are the only ones that count.
One thing that is going to hurt the plaintiffs is that it has been 20 years. Statute of limitations on federal copyright claims is 3 years from the time the violation occurred. Meaning, at most, there would be three years of violation. And it might be more limited than that.
But it could also be held to be a waiver of the right to claim copyright infringement.
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During the lawsuit between my boss Jello Biafra & 3 other ex-Dead Kennedys, their lawyer made the claim that since JB can't read sheet music, it's impossible for him to have written any music for the band. (This was a way for the other 3 to claim writing credits for the music)
Now, ANY musician can tell you that reading sheet music is NOT required in order to write a song, from a member of a garage band to the highest level classical player.
However, they felt confident enough in the jury's experience or lack thereof to state this.
(I doubt it was a deciding factor in the case which JB ultimately lost, but who knows?)
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My Sweet Lord
I played in cover bands as a kid and have made a few attempts at writing. Every time I thought that I had something original I would realize that it was too close to a song I already knew. Music gets ingrained int your subconscious. Songs can pop into your head without even thinking about it.
What if someone could claim copyright every variation of circle of fifths chords and sued every artist that used them?
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Re: One thing that is going to hurt the plaintiffs is that it has been 20 years
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That's not what the Constitution says. The 7th amendment:
"In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved..."
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Re: Re: One thing that is going to hurt the plaintiffs is that it has been 20 years
If the band 'copied' the old version then you'd use the timing for that release to determine statue of limitations and whatnot. Unless Led Zeppelin is comprised of at least one Time Lord I'm pretty sure they couldn't have copied anything from the 'new, remastered version' when they wrote the song, which would make the link between the two songs tenuous at best.
(One thought comes to mind is that if they want to argue that the new release means it's a 'new' version, and therefore the statue of limitations doesn't apply, it would be funny for Led Zeppelin to argue that it was their song that inspired the other, rather than the other way around, given Led Zeppelin's song came 'first'.)
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man behind the curtain
Although song *ripoffs* might appear much worse today, it only seems that way because we now have a situation when Max Martin and his small posse of songwriter collegues write --or ghostwrite-- virtually all the "hit" songs recorded and performed by all the big-money acts.
Max Martin is unlikely to sue himself over copyright infringement.
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When the result of a law is "ghoulish money-grabs by lawyers to benefit people who have created nothing", it's safe to conclude the law is bad. I was kind of looking for a characterization of such law more sophisticated than just "bad", but no, that's about exactly right.
Yeah, it would be good if the members of Led Zep were to come down on the side of the angels regarding copyright law, but as we all know, it's all about the big IP aggregators getting richer, not the artists.
And even that "benefit" is secondary to the apparent primary goal of the law here, which is more litigation, because the lawyers on both sides "win".
Benefit to society, as was actually mentioned in the way long ago??? A very distant third or fourth consideration.
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It's just capitalism.
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Those damn thieving pirate kids in piano class!
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Similar feel
So much for the idea / expression dichotomy.
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Roots of Coincidence
Right there. There it is! Zep is in trouble! Subjective??? What the hell is he trying to do? Nothing good really comes out of a subjective point of view. It gets all twisted and distorted, and people are bringing in their personal crap and then you get all these people deciding someone or something else's fate.
Coincidence is very convincing. Why do you suppose there is so much religion...
I'm just saying.
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Couple of things:
1) I don't believe there's any such thing as brainwashing on the grounds that people have freedom to choose. That they tend to make decisions about what to believe and how to act based on appeals to emotion or to their personal prejudices simply means that some people are easier to manipulate than others because they're too damn lazy to think for themselves. This opinion has been borne out many times during arguments over those things I feel strongly about. Typically, the person I'm arguing with resorts to logical fallacies or "da feelz" when not changing the subject or moving the goalposts. We see this happen right here in the comments on TD.
2) As I keep on saying, Ancient Greek Cassandra-style*, if you use the words and phrases the legacy industries have framed their arguments with, you end up on the back foot desperately pushing back but not achieving very much. If you put them in the driver's seat, they will steer the damn car. This happens when you use their words.
The only way to win this game from where I sit is to educate the public on the Constitutional role of Copyright, patents, and trademarks, explain that the rights and privileges pertaining to them are not things you can erect a fence around and control as a territorial property right, and point out that anyone who tells them otherwise is a liar and a fraud. And we will need to frame our arguments using different words, more often and more widely or you'll still be writing posts like this a decade from now. I'm either right or I'm wrong. If I'm wrong, why do copyright terms keep ratcheting upwards? Terms won't be reduced to a sensible level till we've won the argument and we can't do that unless we're attacking the maximalists' position harder than they're attacking our reasonable position.
*No one pays attention to the point I'm making.
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I'm keeping this...
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