Years Of Brainwashing The Public Into Thinking Everything Creative Must Be 'Owned' Has Led To This New Mess

from the culture-is-about-sharing dept

We have already written about the ridiculousness of a jury awarding over $7 million from Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke to the children of Marvin Gaye, because their song "Blurred Lines" sounds kinda (but not really) a bit like Gaye's "Got to Give it Up." The ruling is problematic on multiple levels, as many commentators are just now realizing. Copyright lawyer Fred von Lohmann pointed out that, technically, everyone who bought copies of "Blurred Lines" is now infringing as well -- and that could apply to many others too, including Weird Al who famously did a hilarious parody of "Blurred Lines" called "Word Crimes." Weird Al, somewhat famously, makes sure to get permission to do his parodies, even though he could probably just use fair use. But... if "Blurred Lines" is infringing, there's no fair use argument to be made and Weird Al doesn't have permission from the Gaye Estate.

In other words: what a massive mess.

But that's just getting down into the technicalities, which may not matter if the Gaye Estate doesn't push the issue -- but could certainly come up in future cases. Plenty of other folks have pointed out that no matter what you think of any of the parties involved, this ruling is bad for music, bad for musicians and bad for songwriters. And, yes, musicians are concerned:

Los Angeles composer and producer Gregory Butler said Tuesday afternoon that his friends and colleagues in the industry were stunned by the verdict.

"You've made it illegal to reference previous material," said Butler, also a managing director at music startup WholeWorldBand. "I'm never going to come up with something so radically different that it doesn't contain references to something else."

Joe Escalante, an early member of the Vandals punk rock band and an entertainment law attorney, said he was concerned that the jury's decision had been driven by emotion rather than what's protected under copyright law.

"This may put a smile on the Gaye family's face, but it's a dark day for creativity, and in the end, this will be a net loss for music fans," he said. "Good news for lawyers and the bitter everywhere."

And that just hints at how it's bad for culture as well.

"Culture" itself is based on the very idea of common ideas that are shared. Common ideas are the core of every cultural movement. You share a "feel" because you want to identify yourself with a particular culture. Music in a genre has similarities for a reason. People identify with it for a reason. Locking up "the feel" of music decimates that nature of culture. We lose the "shared" part of "shared culture." And you would think that those who are often at the forefront of pushing the shared culture on everyone -- the major record labels -- would recognize this. And yet, they're partly responsible for this mess. Because they're the ones who have been pushing this myth for years that every single scrap of cultural output must be "owned" and doing anything they don't like to build off of it must be "infringing."

To be fair, this case is going to be appealed, and others have made perfectly reasonable arguments for how it's somewhat unique, in part based on the fact that Robin Thicke was an incredibly unsympathetic player in all of this -- admitting to lying and being inconsistent with his statements -- a fact that the Gaye's lawyer gleefully exploited. There is also the simple fact that this is a jury ruling and has no direct precedent-setting ability. That comes from appeals court rulings (and Supreme Court rulings), so we need to wait for any real precedent from this case. Of course, there have been some similar cases in the past, and the results often show the same sort of confusion about copyright, which is troubling.

And, it all seems to come back to this weird concept that people believe in this myth of "ownership" over cultural touchstones. The very things that should be shared: the "feel" of music, the "groove," the cultural sharing point that everyone builds off of. In discussing this case on Twitter, and talking about the horrible implications of the ruling, I noticed more than a few people on Twitter brush off all the concerns with a simple kind of "dude, they copied Gaye, so good ruling." Amazingly, one songwriter insisted that the ruling was correct and when I looked at his personal webpage it was all about how his music was "inspired" by other famous bands. Watch out, because now those bands could come after you.

This case has strayed far from actual copyright law into a made up fantasy land of copyright law -- one where people are punishing Thicke because they don't like him or the way he acted. They're also punishing both Williams and Thicke because of this amorphous idea that they must have "ripped off" Gaye because the songs feel the same. Even the press is confusing this. You see idiotic headlines, like this one from Vulture, which claims the lawsuit was about plagiarism. Except plagiarism isn't illegal. Copyright infringement is -- and plagiarism and copyright infringement are not the same thing. And even if this were "plagiarism" the question is plagiarism of what? Musicologists who have compared the two songs note that they're actually really, really different. The only thing that's the same is "the feel" of the songs. And "feel" is not something covered copyright.

But people know that plagiarism is "wrong" so they look at what Williams and Thicke did here -- copying the "feel" -- and they insist that it must be "wrong," even if copyright is only supposed to cover the specific expression written down in the sheet music for Gaye's song. The actual notes in "Blurred Lines" don't match that sheet music at all. But rather than sticking to the letter of the law, or even bothering to understand that copyright only covers specific expression, we keep getting this message pushed on us, by the RIAA, the MPAA and others, that every bit of culture must be "owned." And you can't do anything without a license. And people have heard that refrain so many times, that it infects their psyche.

As Kal Raustiala and Christopher Sprigman note in their own writeup about the ruling, the incredible thing is just how wrong it is on copyright. Yes, there may be some elements that were copied, but those are not the elements covered by copyright:

In short, what the “Blurred Lines” team copied is either not original or not relevant.

So when they see a situation here, where a less-than-likable character has made a song that was inspired by another, they assume that something must be wrong with it, and even if the law doesn't actually apply, dammit, they're just going to say that it does. It's the inevitable result of constantly pushing for a society where every bit of culture is owned under lock and key and the idea of sharing, remixing, reusing is deemed subversive, rather than the way that culture happens.

Whether or not this case really does have a long-term or wider-term impact may not really matter that much. But the results here are indicative of something bigger: and it's a dangerous view that undermines the very nature of culture itself.

Filed Under: blurred lines, copyright, culture, marvin gaye, ownership, pharrell williams, robin thicke

Jury Says Robin Thicke And Pharrell Infringed... Even If They Didn't Mean To: Told To Pay $7.3 Million

from the time-for-the-appeal dept

This isn't a huge surprise, even as it's ridiculously problematic, but the jury in the "Blurred Lines" copyright case has ruled that Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams infringed on Marvin Gaye's song, and thus now owe $7.54 million. I had guessed that this is how the jury would rule solely because it was possible to play Blurred Lines lyrics over the Gaye composition and have it sound like it would fit -- and it seemed unlikely that the jury would understand enough about the specifics of copyright to not think that magically made it infringing. Of course, the fact is there are tons of songs that you could play over tons of other songs. That's why there are even multiple different comedy routines making this point.

The jury seems to understand that Thicke and Williams didn't do this on purpose -- even though there was a claim made that they said they wanted a song with "the feel" of a Marvin Gaye song. In fact, they said it wasn't willful infringement. That means that, according to this jury, merely being inspired by a genre and making a song with the same sort of "feel" is infringing. That's not how copyright law is supposed to work at all. One hopes that Thicke and Williams appeal and the appeals court slaps down this ridiculousness. Either way, this accidental infringement is worth a pretty penny, according to the jury:

Ultimately, a jury comprised of five women and three men heard dueling opinions regarding "Blurred Lines" and decided to order Thicke and Williams to pay $4 million in copyright damages plus profits attributable to infringement, which for Thicke was determined to be $1.8 million and $1.6 million.

That's less than the $25 million that the Gaye Estate was seeking, but still. That's crazy. It's likely that Thicke and Williams will appeal, and one hopes that they'll go through with it, rather than settle just to end things. This is a horrific copyright ruling that suggests that songs that merely have a similar feel may be infringing. It's a really dangerous precedent that completely undermines basic copyright law. In the meantime, the Gaye estate is asking for a permanent injunction on the sale of the song, which is just a negotiating tactic to pressure Thicke/Williams into settling...

Filed Under: blurred lines, copyright, marvin gaye, pharrell williams, robin thicke

As Blurred Lines Trial Starts, Take A Listen To The Special 'Copyright Only' Remix That Jurors Will Hear

from the everybody-get-midi dept

A few weeks ago, we noted how the copyright case over whether or not Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke violated the copyright of Marvin Gaye with their song "Blurred Lines" was getting interesting, as it started to explore the somewhat blurry lines between what's actually covered by a copyright and what's not. Under the 1909 Act, under which Marvin Gaye's "Got to Give it Up" was recorded, only the specific sheet music is covered by the copyright, not the sound recording itself. And that represented a problem, since the Gaye Estate's attorneys wanted to play the original song, which has a number of similarities to Blurred Lines. But many of those similarities -- including the bass line and the party atmosphere in the background -- are not actually a part of the copyright covered composition. Thus, the judge told the Gaye family to figure out some way to create a recording that only included the copyright covered parts.

The EFF's Parker Higgins predicted that such a recording "likely sounds like the MIDI version that auto-played on a Geocities home page, or a rendition by the animatronic band at Chuck E. Cheese." Well, the enterprising folks over at Ratter got their hands on the recording so that you can take a listen too: It would seem that Parker's prediction was not that far off. The Gaye Estate is also presenting a remixed version of that MIDI-ized version with Pharrell and Thicke's lyrics put on top: From there, they certainly sound quite different. And, it's important to note (again) that sounding like something doesn't mean that it's infringing on that thing. If that were the case, we wouldn't have much in the way of culture, since so much of it is built off of the works of others. It will be interesting to see how a jury sees this, as I could see a confused jury thinking that merely because the lyrics fit over Gaye's song that somehow makes it infringing. Hopefully they can see through that, however.

The trial is currently going on and jury selection is certainly interesting, as they're asking people what kind of music they listen to and what they think of the famous video for "Blurred Lines" that included a bunch of naked models....

Filed Under: blurred lines, copyright, marvin gaye, pharrell williams, robin thicke

Blurred Lines Copyright Lawsuit Gets Funky As Judge Delves Into The Blurred Lines Of What's Really Copyrighted

from the talking-about-these...-blurred-lines dept

A year and a half ago, we wrote about the fact that the estate of Marvin Gaye had been threatening Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams over their hit song "Blurred Lines" -- leading Williams and Thicke to file for a declaratory judgment that the song didn't infringe. As we noted at the time, even though Blurred Lines clearly has a similar "feel" to Gaye's "Got to Give it Up," having a similar "feel" is not infringement. There's the whole "idea/expression" dichotomy. The copyright is on the specific expression and not the general idea of the song. As the original filing noted, Gaye's heirs appeared to be "claiming ownership of an entire genre, as opposed to a specific work."

That case has been going on for a while now with a lot of back and forth -- including a wacky deposition last year in which Thicke admits to being too high to really have had much to do with the writing of the song. However, last week, the case shifted into high gear with an interesting set of rulings that highlight the somewhat... er... "blurred lines" between what is, and what is not, covered by the copyright in question.

The key issue: the heirs of Marvin Gaye own the copyright on the composition, but not on the sound recording. This came out back in October, when Williams and Thicke failed to win on summary judgment. However, in that ruling, the judge, John Kronstadt, realized that the family really only held the copyright on the composition that was a part of the sheet music, and not the recording itself (which includes a number of other elements) because, under the 1909 Copyright Act (which was in force when they registered the work), they did not take the proper steps to protect the full recording.

Because of this, things really started to get funky for them. First, the judge told the Gaye Estate that it could not play the recording of "Got to Give it Up," because the recording has elements that are not protected by the copyright on the composition -- and thus it would be unfair for the jury to hear the full sound recording, as they would be unable to separate out the copyright-covered composition elements with the non-copyright covered additions to the sound recording. Given that this is already about how much the songs "feel" similar, you can see why the Gaye Estate was rather apoplectic about this. Part of the excluded part, by the way, is the sound of Gaye's voice -- which the judge ruled was not covered by the copyright. Instead, Pharrell and Williams' lawyers suggested that the Gaye Estate could, instead, just have a musician come into court and play the song from the sheet music that was registered.

A couple of days later, the judge put out another ruling [pdf] after further considering the matter and changed that original ruling somewhat. In what appears to be an attempt to split the baby, he argued that while it would be wrong to let the Gaye family play the full recording... they could, instead, create a new version of the old sound recording that strips out the unprotected bits:

Therefore, although the Gaye sound recordings may embody the copyrighted compositions at issue, they also contain additional material. Consequently, there is a measurable risk that their wholesale admission into evidence would unfairly prejudice Plaintiffs.... In performing their intrinsic analysis of the songs, jurors would be required to filter out such elements as percussion, party sounds and backup vocals that could well influence their responses to the songs as “ordinary reasonable person[s],” and it could be difficult for them to mentally separate what is and is not protectable in this capacity.... Further, there would be little probative value in asking them to perform this challenging task. Thus, even if it were determined that Plaintiffs copied any unprotected elements embodied in the recordings, this would not tend to make it more or less probable that they copied protected elements of the compositions at issue.

There is merit, however, to Defendants’ contention that it could be difficult for them to present their evidence of intrinsic similarity if the sound recordings are inadmissible in their entirety.... As the ordinary person presumably cannot sight-read music and determine its sound, the sheet music alone is inadequate for purposes of this test....

Plaintiffs have proposed that the musicologists can “play[] on a keyboard at trial the elements of the sheet music deposit copies for the Gaye compositions that are claimed to be similar to Plaintiffs’ two songs.” ... Although this method may be helpful for focusing the jury’s attention on particular elements, if this were the only evidence presented as to the intrinsic qualities of the Gaye compositions, the jury may not have the opportunity to consider elements of the compositions that are properly within the scope of the subject matter protected by Defendants’ copyrights.

The copyright deposits are not comprised of notes alone. They contain lyrics to be sung to melodies, as well as certain other elements. The “total concept and feel” of a piano tune without words may differ from that of a vocal melody. For these reasons, relevant portions of the Gaye sound recordings that substantially reflect the subject matter of the copyright deposit sheets could have probative value with regard to the intrinsic characteristics of the works. To avoid prejudice to Plaintiffs, these recordings would need to be edited to remove all unprotected elements such as percussion and backup vocals. In addition, the length of such edited recordings would be considered in evaluating whether they were tailored to the allegedly protected content asserted by Defendants. Any potential prejudice to Plaintiffs caused by the airing of Gaye’s voice, which is not protected, is something that could perhaps be addressed by a limiting instruction.

Pursuant to this Order, Defendants may seek the admission of a sound recording. However, it will be necessary for Defendants to edit the versions of the recordings that were previously proffered. A new version must conform to the terms of this Order. It must be one that satisfies the Court that it strikes an appropriate balance between presenting a recording that contains what is reflected on the deposit copy, without including potentially prejudicial sounds that are not protected.

The judge also noted that, due to earlier moves in the case by the Gaye Estate (including submitting a mashup that has Gaye's vocals over Blurred Lines, that the legal team of the Estate "possess the technical capabilities to isolate protected from unprotected elements of the recordings of their compositions" so they need to get to work on that.

This seems like exactly the right legal ruling. The judge properly noted that only part of the song is actually covered by copyright, and it would be hellishly unfair to use the elements of the song that are not covered by copyright (including Gaye's voice) to prejudice the jury. He's really trying to make sure that the trial turns on the parts that are actually covered by copyright. But, of course, the Gaye Estate hates that, because it does seem like, if anything was copied, it may actually have been the unprotected parts of Gaye's song -- which, in being unprotected are totally free to be copied.

In response, the family is looking to appeal the ruling, as they're not at all happy with this turn of events, arguing that it's crazy and unprecedented. To read their filing [pdf] on the matter, you might think that the ruling to only play the protected parts would bring down all of Western civilization.

The Court’s ruling would have a devastating impact on the rights of owners of pre-1978 musical compositions by allowing wholesale copying of compositional elements not found in pre-registration published versions of the works or within the deposit copies themselves. For example, under this Court’s ruling, a clever infringer would be able to compare sheet music or deposit copy lead sheets of the works of the Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Elvis Presley, and, of course, Marvin Gaye, with the composition as embodied in the recordings of those icons, and take with impunity all compositional elements not found within the sheet music or deposit copies. It would create a situation where the compositions in the recordings are derivative works incapable of copyright protection because, as pre-1978 works, the recordings could not be submitted as the musical compositions. That is not and cannot be the law.

Actually, that could be and is the law. You only get to exclude uses on the things actually covered by copyright.

And, in response to the Gaye Estate, the lawyers for Williams and Thicke have hit back as well pointing out that the judge got it right, and the Gaye Estate is trying to effectively claim copyright over uncopyrighted content. Their opposition [pdf] is a good read as well:

Marvin Gaye never owned a copyright in “Got to Give It Up.” His publisher, Jobete, owned the copyright. The copyright notice at the bottom of each deposit copy states: “© [year] Jobete Music Company, Inc.” The copyright only descended to his heirs after his death because the renewal rights vested in his heirs as a matter of law when Marvin Gaye died. It was never Marvin Gaye’s song.

Whatever Marvin Gaye allegedly did in the recording studio to create other musical elements, and for which there is no evidence, anyway, has no bearing on the scope of any copyright under the 1909 Act, and certainly not on Jobete’s copyright.

The 1909 Act is what it is. There is nothing unfair or unjust about it. There is no reason for the Court to change its rulings because Defendants do not like them, think they are unfair, or make hyperbolic claims about the supposed impact on the music industry. The simple fact is that, prior to 1978 (and after), compositions for popular music were considered to be the melody, harmony, and lyrics—i.e., the song. No songwriter considered a hi-hat part, vocal “woo,” falsetto vocal style, omission of a guitar, keyboard part, or other element of a sound recording of the song to be the song itself. And if they did, they included that element in the written composition they published with notice—just as Jobete did hear with a “bass intro” in “Got to Give It Up.” Defendants now are facing a jury trial and wish that they owned something other than the published composition that is nothing like “Blurred Lines.” Their desire to distract and mislead the jury is not basis for reconsideration.

As for the massive wave of infringement the Gaye Estate lawyers predict? Williams and Thicke's lawyers point out -- as we did above -- that this doesn't make any sense at all. The law only protects the stuff covered by copyright:

Defendants’ dire warnings about the demise of the United States copyright law as a result of this Court’s pretrial rulings are greatly exaggerated. Defendants argue that if pre-1978 copyrights are limited to the published compositions that were copyrighted, then anyone can copy composition al material in any pre-1978 sound recordings that was not copyrighted. Defendants are absolutely correct. That is how copyright works.

Later, they remind the court and the Gaye Estate that, indeed, since under the 1909 Act -- until 1972 -- sound recordings weren't subject to copyright at all, the Gaye Estate seems to be trying to rewrite history.

Indeed, sound recordings themselves were not subject to copyright under the 1909 Act prior to 1972. Elvis Presley’s famous sound recordings from the 1950s and 1960s are not subject to statutory copyright. There is nothing unfair or wrong about that. Congress provided the protection it provided.

As the lawyers point out, this didn't mean that you couldn't protect songs under copyright, it's just that you had to do it right:

Defendants argue that the Court’s ruling “would create a situation where the compositions in the recordings are derivative works incapable of copyright protection because, as pre-1978 recordings, the recordings could not be submitted as the musical compositions.” ... This assertion is flat out wrong. Compositions in the sound recordings could always be fully protected—all that was required was to publish sheet music with notice affixed that embodied all the compositional elements in which copyright was claimed. Any vocal or instrumental part can be notated. Lead sheets were common because songwriters generally did not consider the performance elements (drums, bass, etc.) to be the composition: the “song” was the melody, harmony, and lyrics. Defendants’ “notion that common use of lead sheets somehow precluded a composer in the 1970s from submitting a score indicating all instrumental or vocal elements in which the composter claimed a copyright is without foundation.”

In short, the Gaye Estate wants to go back in time and pretend that under the 1909 Act they have a copyright on the sound recording, even though the law is clear that they don't. And they're flipping out, because it's pretty clear that the key to their case is in the unprotected parts of the recording. But if that's what Williams and Thicke copied, that's perfectly fine, because that part is in the public domain where everyone is allowed to copy it.

There is an unfortunate habit of many legacy copyright supporters to pretend that copyright gives them a lot more than it really does. And, all too often, judges fall for it. But not everything gets covered by copyright, and it's good to see a case where the judge is making it clear which parts are protectable and which are not.

Filed Under: blurred lines, composition, copyright, marvin gaye, pharrell williams, robin thicke, sound recording

Dangerous Ruling In Germany Makes Domain Registrar Liable For Copyright Infringement On Website It Registered

from the any-means-necessary dept

We already find the concept of "secondary liability" when it comes to copyright troubling enough. It's worrisome when a third party who had no direct involvement in the actual infringement can be blamed for it. Yet, in the legacy entertainment industry's insane infatuation with stopping all infringement, they keep going further up the chain, past secondary liability into tertiary or possibly even quaternary liability -- blaming those further and further removed from the actual infringement. That includes going after companies like ad providers and search engines -- but also, apparently, it includes going after registrars. We've seen some of this recently in various attempts to target registrars, but a ruling in Germany is hugely troubling, finding a registrar guilty because a site registered through that registrar was apparently used by someone to infringe.

Let's be clear just how far this is removed from the actual infringement. The infringement, if it actually existed, was between two or more individuals, who shared a torrent of Robin Thicke's album Blurred Lines. Once removed from that was the torrent site H33T, which did not actually engage in any infringement, but hosted the torrent (which, again, is not the actually infringing file). Another layer removed from that would be H33T's web host. And then we go one more layer up, and we finally get to Key-Systems, the registrar, which was ordered by a court to stop the infringement all those many layers down. And, of course, as the registrar, its only option was to yank the DNS entry, which it did, shutting down the entire site, even if everything else on the site was legal.

It's no secret that Germany seems to be much more open to ridiculous secondary liability claims, leading to some bizarre and dangerous rulings that will stifle innovation. And this seems to fit right in with those in the past. Key-Systems' lawyer agreed, telling TorrentFreak that the ruling "made no legal sense" and had "dire consequences for the kind of services German registrars can provide."

Universal Music, which brought the lawsuit, defended the outcome with some bizarre logic in a comment to TorrentFreak as well. First, a lawyer for Universal claimed that since H33T was a domain reseller, that tied the two companies together, but that makes no sense, especially since the issue of the torrent is totally unrelated to reselling domain names. Just because the companies have a relationship, doesn't make one liable for the others' totally unrelated actions. But then there's this absolutely insane logic:

Bruess says at this point it became “quite clear” that as “the only party involved who could stop the infringement”, Key-Systems needed to take action. That involved Key-Systems effectively disabling the whole domain, but Bruess says that was not his company’s request. They had only one requirement – to disable access to a single URL.

“In essence, Rasch Legal had not asked Key-Systems to close down h33t.com, but to stop one single torrent from being communicated to the public through h33t and h33t’s tracker,” he explains.

But, let's take that ridiculous logic one step further. Say, for example, that the registrar was unable to stop this particular torrent from being shared? Do we move one step up the ladder? They could, say, go to VeriSign, and demand they take down the entire .com database, right? Because that would be "the only party who could stop the infringement" at that point, right? And, even though they just wanted that single torrent taken down, if the only way VeriSign can do it is to nuke most of the internet, well, that's perfectly reasonable, right?

Filed Under: blurred lines, copyright, germany, secondary liability, torrent

A Tale Of Two Hit Songs Inspired By Past Hits... And The Very Different Way In Which Copyright Holders Reacted

from the one-good,-one-bad dept

There were two very interesting stories last week concerning hit songs allegedly "inspired" by hits from previous decades, but the stories are quite different. First up, was the news that Robin Thicke (along with Pharrell Williams and Clifford Harris Jr.), whose song Blurred Lines appears to be the undisputed hit of the summer this year (with some controversy over the content), had filed for a declaratory judgment against Marvin Gaye's family and Bridgeport Music, after those two claimed that Blurred Lines infringes on Marvin Gaye's Got to Give it Up and Funkadelic's Sexy Ways. You can listen to them below:



Frankly, I can hear the similarities between Blurred Lines and Got to Give it Up (that bass line is pretty damn similar), but, as the filing for declaratory judgment notes, having a similar "feel" or "sound" is not copyright infringement (hello idea/expression dichotomy). As they note, Gaye's heirs appear to be "claiming ownership of an entire genre, as opposed to a specific work."

As for the Funkadelic song, I don't hear it at all. But... this is Bridgeport, we're dealing with here, the company that George Clinton continues to claim forged documents to gain control over his copyrights, and which is without a doubt the single most aggressive of the sample trolls out there, going after anyone who uses even the tiniest snippet of some of the copyrights it controls (even if they were obtained by dubious means). Bridgeport has gone after musicians even when they distorted tiny snippets of music so much that the average listener couldn't recognize the original. So perhaps it claims something similar is happening here.

Either way, the threats came in and Thicke, Williams and Harris decided to strike first with a declaratory judgment. Good for them, but shame on Bridgeport and Marvin Gaye's heirs. Especially with Marvin Gaye, while the songs may have a similar feel, they're different songs. They're both enjoyable in their own ways, and the success of one doesn't take away from the other. In fact, it seems likely that the massive success of Blurred Lines is driving more interest in Got to Give it Up and other Marvin Gaye songs.

However, compare that dispute to another, very similar, dispute. It appears that there was some controversy over the fact that the band One Direction's latest song, entitled Best Song Ever (I'd put a joke here, but it sorta speaks for itself), is conspicuously similar to The Who's classic song Baba O'Riley. Again, to the comparisons:

Again, here, the similarities are pretty obvious and unmistakable. However, unlike Bridgeport or Marvin Gaye, The Who's Pete Townshend has said that he loves the fact that others are inspired by his works and has no issue with it at all. He was specifically asked if he was going to take legal action against One Direction, and pointed out that so much great music involves copying and building on the works of others:

No! I like the single. I like One Direction. The chords I used and the chords they used are the same three chords we've all been using in basic pop music since Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran and Chuck Berry made it clear that fancy chords don't mean great music – not always. I'm still writing songs that sound like Baba O'Riley – or I'm trying to!. It's a part of my life and a part of pop's lineage. One Direction are in my business, with a million fans, and I'm happy to think they may have been influenced a little bit by The Who. I'm just relieved they're all not wearing boiler suits and Doc Martens, or Union Jack jackets. The funniest thing is that in Canada this year I met with Randy Bachman once the leader of GUESS WHO who told me that he not only copied Baba O Riley for their hit You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet, but he even called his band after us. Why would I not be happy about this kind of tribute?

What a fantastic response in almost every way. And what a stark contrast to the heirs of Marvin Gaye and so many other copyright holders who seem to freak out when others are inspired by their works. Now, if we could just get Townshend to stop blaming Apple for the problems of the recording industry...

Filed Under: best song ever, blurred lines, copyright, culture, inspiration, marvin gaye, music, one dimension, pete townshend, pharell williams, robin thicke, the who
Companies: bridgeport