Powerman5000 Takes To Facebook To Complain About Similar Sounding Final Fantasy Song, Fans Rebut Them

from the your-fans-would-know dept

I imagine, as a musician, it must be common to come across other music that sounds somewhat similar to one's own. I would think that not all genres of music are created equal in this respect. Jazz, for instance, while sharing common elements across the genre, seems to have enough instruments and space within the music for unique expression that perhaps similarities occur less often or are less severe than, say, industrial rock, which seems to have some more rigid common core elements. How much similarity is there in songs from Ramstein and Nine Inch Nails, for instance, or in songs from Nine Inch Nails and Powerman5000? Or in songs from Powerman5000 and Final Fantasy XIV...wait, what?

Fans of Powerman5000, a band that reached its popularity pinnacle years back with its hit song When Worlds Collide, may already be aware that the band took to its Facebook page to complain about a new boss battle song in Final Fantasy XIV.

Really? Got to say that the level of unimaginative theft that was used in creating this music for #finalfantasyXIV is...

Posted by Powerman5000 on Wednesday, February 24, 2016

The song that now appears in the game came via an update from Square Enix recently. That song, which you can see in the video above, is supposedly a "straight up rip off" of When Worlds Collide. See below if you're not familiar with the song.

Are they similar? Hell yes. But it seems to me that they're similar in the same way that When World's Collide is similar to any number of Nine Inch Nails songs. It's industrial rock of the same sort. In fact, I have a feeling that if the Final Fantasy song didn't include the throaty intro before the bridge, this probably never would have triggered a response. But what it most certainly is not is any kind of blatant note for note ripoff. It's not even really that close.

And, while I'm not a fan of the genre, the fans of Powerman5000 certainly are, and it seems a great many of them are trying to figure out what the hell the band is complaining about. Some snippets of comments left on their Facebook post:

"Sorry, but no. If you guys think that song is "a straight up ripoff" of your old 1999 song, then you've seriously got a slight case of some major brain damage from playing your own shitty music too loud. They sounds completely different."

"Soken (the composer) loves metal. And if anything PM5K, you should be happy that he took inspiration from your song. It's not a ripoff, but there's influence there, and as a result of this influence, your music has now reached an MMO playerbase."

This post is basically saying every industrial metal song is the same ever. I bet I can find at least 3 Static-X and Rammstein songs that sound like When Worlds Collide. I don't need to point out that Worlds Collide also sounds like something Nine Inch Nails would have performed years prior."

And that really is only a sampling; it goes on and on from there. And these are, again, people following Powerman5000's page. They are fans of the band and fans of the genre and in a perfect position to comment on the similarities of the songs, which most seem to indicate are, "meh, maybe the composer listened to you guys once or something, but it's not a rip off."

Public shaming is a useful tool, much more so in many circumstances than going the legal route. And, to be clear, I have not seen anything to indicate that the band is preparing to go the legal route here. But the public shaming thing only works if the public, or at least your fans, agree with your premise.

Filed Under: copies, exaggeration, fans, final fantasy, industrial music, music, powerman5000

Hypocritical Authors Guild Photocopies Author's Book While Claiming That Scanning Works Is Infringement

from the oops dept

A few weeks ago, we wrote about the big win for fair use, as the appeals court ruled against the Authors Guild and said that libraries scanning books in their collection to make a searchable index is fair use. Hilariously, the Authors Guild is in complete denial about this ruling, putting out a statement claiming it was "not a total victory for either side" and that the ruling was "narrow." Except, that's not true. Yes, the Court sent back a tiny part of the case, but if it wasn't a "complete" victory for libraries, book scanning and fair use, it was, at the very least a 95% victory.

Still, the eagle-eyed sleuths at 5 Useful Articles have spotted an absolutely hilarious exchange that happened during one of the depositions in the case. The deposition was of Peter Hirtle (full disclosure: I know Hirtle a bit, and he once invited me to speak at an event, though I was unable to go -- though until now I had no idea he was even a part of this case in any way). Hirtle, who has spent many years as an archivist and policy advisor for the Cornell University Library, also happens to be an author. At one point, the lawyers for the Authors Guild apparently brought in a bunch of copies of Mr. Hirtle's book. Photocopies. I think you can see where this is going. If you can't read that, well, I'm just going to have to transcript it out. Lawyers Goldman and Rosenthal represent the Authors Guild, while Potter and Roth represent the Hathitrust and Cornell respectively.

MR. ROTH: I see you've made multiple copies of Mr. Hirtle's book.
MR. GOLDMAN: Yes.
Mr. ROTH: That is in copyright and for sale in bookstores.
MR. GOLDMAN: Okay. Yes.
MR. POTTER: You don't think it raises any copyright concerns?
MR. ROSENTHAL: I don't think this is an appropriate question.
MR. GOLDMAN: No, I think it's also -- I'm not even going to engage in that.
MR. ROTH: Note our objection. These books could have been purchased. And given the subject matter of the lawsuit, it's quite ironic that you'd be using multiple copies of a book in copyright.
MR. GOLDMAN: It's published under a creative commons license. It's not attribution and noncommercial.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Why don't we just destroy the copy that we gave Mr. Hirtle's lawyer and to anybody else in the room who wants a copy other than the one we marked for the thing. If they really don't want to have copies for purposes of fairness in the deposition, then we'll just get rid of the extra copies. That's fine. You want us to take back Mr. Potter's copy and destroy it?
MR. ROTH: I'm not going to give you advice.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Okay. I'm going to take these -- let the record show I'm taking these extra copies and I'm going to put them in our shredder which is in the next room. Anybody who wants to come watch me do it, may be welcome to come do it. And no one has even looked at those. So there you go.
MR. POTTER: I guess if no one else looks at something, it's not infringement? That's an interesting theory.

That last line is the real zinger -- since a big part of the Authors Guild's argument in the lawsuit was that even if no one looks at the scanned works, it's still infringement merely because they made a copy. And, yes, the Creative Commons license around the book certainly suggests that the Authors Guild's lawyers did not, in fact, infringe on Hirtle's copyright, but it does show, yet again, how frequently it seems that copyright maximalists rush to easily copy something when it suits their needs.

I'm reminded, of course, of that time when the MPAA was caught making unauthorized copies of the film, This Film Is Not Yet Rated, which skewered the MPAA and its practices. The MPAA, in that case, insisted that it could make such copies "because it had implications for our employees." Yet, this was the same MPAA that insisted that "all forms of piracy are illegal and carry serious legal consequences." It also was going around at the time telling school children "if you haven't paid for it, you've stolen it." And its former boss, Jack Valenti, once (incorrectly) insisted that fair use doesn't exist.

There's something deeper here. People copy stuff all the time, because it's a natural and normal thing to do. People make copies because it's convenient and it serves a purpose -- and quite often they know that doing so causes no harm in those situations. This is an intrinsic understanding. It's so intrinsic that folks at the MPAA and Authors Guild do it without even realizing it. But it's part of what makes their hardline position so ridiculous.

Filed Under: book scanning, copies, copyright, creative commons, peter hirtle
Companies: authors guild, hathitrust

Pirated Buildings In China And The Rise Of Architectural Mashups

from the cut-and-paste dept

Although China is often glibly dismissed as little more than an imitator of others, yet another story about copying paradoxically shows it leading the way. That's because what's being cloned is an entire building complex that's still under construction:

The project being pirated is the Wangjing SOHO, a complex of three towers that resemble curved sails, sculpted in stone and etched with wave-like aluminum bands, that appear to swim across the surface of the Earth when viewed from the air.

Zhang Xin, the billionaire property developer who heads SOHO China and commissioned [the famous architect Zaha] Hadid to design the complex, lashed out against the pirates during the Galaxy opening: "Even as we build one of Zaha's projects, it is being replicated in Chongqing," a megacity near the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau. At this point in time, she added, the pirates of Chongqing are building faster than SOHO. The original is set for completion in 2014.

As the article in Der Spiegel quoted above notes, this isn't the first time that buildings have been copied by Chinese architects:

Last year, citizens of the Austrian hillside hamlet of Hallstatt were shocked when they inadvertently discovered Chinese architects had surreptitiously and extensively photographed their homes and were building a doppelgänger version of the UNESCO World Heritage site in southern China.

But here, as with the latest case, it's hard to see what the problem is. Nobody is mistaking these pirated versions for the originals: the use of photographs in the case of Hallstatt, and "digital files or renderings" in the case of the Wangjing SOHO, means that the results will only be approximate copies, lacking many key details that make the originals artistically notable. If anything, their existence will encourage visitors to seek out the real thing to find out what inspired this massive effort. After all, if somebody goes to the trouble of constructing copies of entire buildings in this way, they must think pretty highly of the original.

What's significant here is that this building piracy can be seen as part of a new trend -- the rise of a high-speed cut-and-paste approach to urban design based around architectural mashups:

Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, who designed Beijing's surreal, next-generation CCTV tower, has stated the super-speed expansion of Chinese cities is producing architects who use laptops to quickly cut and paste buildings into existence. Koolhaas, in the book "Mutations," calls these architects Photoshop designers: "Photoshop allows us to make collages of photographs -- (and) this is the essence of (China's) architectural and urban production…. Design today becomes as easy as Photoshop, even on the scale of a city."

Fortunately, the architect of the cloned Wangjing SOHO seems to agree:

Zaha Hadid said she has a philosophical stance on the replication of her designs: If future generations of these cloned buildings display innovative mutations, "that could be quite exciting."

Not only that: these pirate mutations will boost her already-considerable reputation in China yet further, and enrich her artistic legacy.

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Filed Under: architecture, buildings, china, copies, culture, hallstatt, zhang xin

Yes, Apple, You Have To Tell The UK Public That Samsung Didn't Copy You

from the silver-lining:-you're-still-cooler dept

While Apple won its big case (so far) against Samsung in the US, over in the UK it was the exact opposite, with the judge telling Apple that it needed to run advertisements saying that Samsung didn't copy Apple's products. The silver lining for Apple: part of the judge's reasoning was that Samsung's products just weren't "cool," while Apple's were. Either way, Apple fought back and argued that it shouldn't have to advertise that Samsung didn't copy Apple -- and, in fact, tried again to convince the court that, no, really, of course Samsung copied it.

It appears that strategy has failed, as the judges handling the appeal have refused to overturn the original ruling, saying that it was important that Apple clear up confusion that might occur among the public:

"The acknowledgment must come from the horse's mouth," they said. "Nothing short of that will be sure to do the job completely."

While I find the ruling amusing, I'm really not sure that it makes sense. I find Apple's attacks on Samsung silly and counterproductive, but forcing it to advertise that Samsung didn't copy Apple may go too far in compelling a company to say things.

Filed Under: advertising, copies, patents, uk
Companies: apple, samsung

CBS Drops Lawsuit Over Copycat Reality Show After The Market Effectively Kills The Show First

from the about-time dept

A couple months back, we discussed CBS's lawsuit against ABC, in which it claimed that the latter's Glass House reality show infringed upon the former's Big Brother copyright in an apparent reality check to anyone that still thought copyright covered specific expression rather than an idea. At the time, we noted that the complaint appeared to reference what is essentially the basis for every horrible reality show ever. Once the judge in the case refused to order an injunction against ABC, CBS then did what it probably should have done in the first place and released a rather funny mock press release announcing a series of new fictitious shows clearly "borrowed" from ABC's line up.

Sadly, the fun may be coming to a close, as The AV Club reports that CBS is dropping the suit:

CBS has dropped its lawsuit over ABC's Big Brother copycat, saying it was no longer interested in pursuing a case against a show no one is watching anyway. "The viewers have spoken and delivered the ultimate form of justice against The Glass House," CBS said in a statement, gloating over the low ratings for a series that likely would have escaped all viewer attention had CBS not made such a huge deal about it in the first place, and which certainly have less to do with "justice" than general apathy about watching another one of these things.

Yes, they managed to avert disaster of Streisand-ic proportions. One wonders if The Glass House's demise might have been even further along at this point had CBS never even brought about the lawsuit to begin with. Either way, the statement from CBS is as snarky as their faux press release, which I'd suggest is the better method for competing compared with suing for demonstrably common reality show tropes. On the other hand, CBS isn't dropping out of the "sue over nonsense" business completely:

Nevertheless, the network also added that it will continue to pursue separate arbitration with the ex-Big Brother producers who allegedly stole "trade secrets" for use on Glass House, such as the top-secret strategy of using cameras to capture the arguments of extroverted strangers forced to share a living space, rather than having pleasant, shy people live comfortably in their own homes and then rendering them in pastels. That was their idea.

Perhaps the next lawsuit we hear will involve ridiculously good-looking police forces solving crimes?

Filed Under: big brother, copies, glass house
Companies: abc, cbs

Universal Music Sued Because 62% Of A Bow Wow Video Is Actually A French Porn Star's Music Video

from the shouldn't-this-be-a-copyright-issue? dept

A French porn star, Celine Tran, more widely known as "Katsuni," is suing the rapper Bow Wow (real name: Shad Gregory Moss) and his label, Universal Music, for using clips from a video she did for a different music act in his own video. In the interest of understanding the details of the lawsuit, I watched both videos, which are embedded here. While there's no actual nudity, there's a fair bit of pole dancing in very little clothing, which -- depending on your workplace -- may be considered not safe for work. Consider yourself warned (or more interested, as the case may be). First up, the video Katsuni did with the French band, Electronic Conspiracy, for a song called "Conspiracy Strip Club." Next up, Bow Wow's video, for a song called "Drank in my Cup." From the original description, I had thought that the producer of the Bow Wow video had just found someone to perform the same dance moves, and perhaps it was a Beyonce-like situation over copying choreography. But, watching the two videos, it's pretty clear that whoever made Bow Wow's video just used the original footage in his video. As the legal filing makes clear, 62% of Bow Wow's video is actually footage from the other video. That's pretty damning.

But... this isn't a copyright claim.

And that's where this gets a bit more interesting from the legal perspective. Whoever holds the copyright on the original video may have a very legitimate copyright claim here. But that's not who's suing. It's Katsuni, who is the woman who performs in the video. But she doesn't hold the copyright -- so, instead, she's using a publicity rights claim. We've talked a lot about how popular publicity rights claims have become lately, and the concept is a bit of a mess, in part because it's based on state laws, and they're all different. This one relies on California's publicity rights law, and claims that Bow Wow is using her "likeness and image to promote BOW WOW's career and music."

It's interesting to see how she's basically using publicity rights as a poor man's copyright here (though, perhaps the copyright holder will sue as well). It gives us a hint of what may happen much more frequently thanks to the performer's rights treaty signed in Beijing a few months ago, giving performers like Katsuni extra special copyright-like rights in all of their performances. We haven't changed the law in the US yet to implement that, but in the short term, it looks like publicity rights claims may get the job done.

Either way, once again, we're seeing how a major label -- the same ones screaming about others copying their stuff -- seems to think that different rules apply when they copy the works of someone else. Universal Music is the largest record label on the planet and one of the most aggressive in enforcing its copyrights. But, apparently it has no problem copying someone else's video...

Filed Under: bow wow, celine tran, copies, copyright, katsuni, music videos, publicity rights
Companies: universal music

Pinterest Updates Terms Of Service... And People Are Still Overreacting

from the but-of-course dept

I have to admit that I'm still at a loss over people freaking out over Pinterest. It's pretty much a non-issue, but it refuses to go away. I think I've finally figured out what's going on, however. Some copyright extremists are using Pinterest to try to whip people into a frenzy about nothing, such that they can use that against other sites later as well -- and, once they got going, Pinterest became a "proxy" for all other internet services and (by extension) computing itself.

Last Friday, for example, Pinterest updated its terms of service to clarify the parts where some people were very confused and freaking out. While they certainly didn't go to the lengths that Tumblr went to to make its terms of service "human" readable, the updates do clarify things. The key change, for example, was removing the word "sell" from the list of things that you grant a license to Pinterest over, as the company notes it never intended to sell anyone's content. I can pretty much guarantee how this happened. The lawyers who drafted the terms pulled the boilerplate list of rights you grant, and "sell" is always on that list. As we noted in the Tumblr TOS post, it's really just to give the company legal protection in case it sells something that has a tidbit of something someone uploaded. It's not that hard to come up with a scenario where that might happen. But overly paranoid folks turned this into some nefarious plan by Pinterest to get people to violate copyrights so it could sell the results.

But, as mentioned above, this isn't calming down the maximlaist extremists. The folks over at the "Artists' Bill of Rights" (which is not what it sounds like -- it's a front for copyright extremists, paying almost no attention to how artists actually create) are still very upset about Pinterest's terms of service and are interpreting everything in the most nefarious of ways.

The philosophy of their site is still to encourage members to copy content from other people or organisations' websites to the Pinterest website, then place the entire legal responsibility on their members for such copying.

Why? Because the PInterest business model has to start making money at some point. How can it do this? By monetising the content belonging to other people copied to it's website, possibly via advertising or affilliate programs, or in some other way. It may not be monetising that content overtly at present, but it must do so at some stage because it is gobbling up a lot of investors money to keep it afloat. As soon as it starts monetising the content the cat will be out of the bag and legal actions will commence. They are still in a period of grace - but for how long?

Horror of horrors. Pinterest is a service provider who would like to make money at same point -- just as the copyright maximalist artists would like to make money. Why is it evil when a service provider does it, but not when an artist does it? And, the fact is that Pinterest doesn't make any money at all if it's not useful. So, as you can expect, the folks at the Artist Bill of Rights want to guarantee Pinterest is not at all useful. For example, they attack the fact that Pinterest is now pointing people to ChillingEffects claiming that it's a site that is all about "protect[ing] the economic interests of the tech business model". Say what?! A site that highlights how copyright law is abused to stifle free speech and creativity is about protecting free speech and creativity. Anyone aiming to protects artists' rights should celebrate Chilling Effects.

The other complaint? That Pinterest isn't "pro-active" in monitoring the site for infringement:

We will continue to complain that Pinterest are NOT being pro-active in ensuring that copyright infringements are minimised.

And it's that line that highlights the reality. The folks hating on Pinterest aren't really worried about the law. Pinterest already goes well above and beyond what the law says they have to do. What they're complaining about is that the world isn't the way they want it to be. They're complaining that the world doesn't magically block copying. In other words, they're luddites who can't fathom why a world in which computers actually work is a good thing, and prefer to go back to a past where there were no computers. Computers copy. It's what they do. Tons of services have popped up over the years to let people do useful stuff, but much of that stuff only works because computers make copies. Making collections of photos -- all with links back to the original content, which has already been shown to drive significant traffic -- seems like it should be a good thing. Unless you hate computers and the fact that they copy.

The anger here isn't about Pinterest. It's about computers. They'd have as much luck telling the tide which way to go.

Filed Under: bill of rights, business models, computers, copies, copyright, luddites, terms of service
Companies: pinterest

Since The RIAA & MPAA Say That A Copy Is Just As Valuable As The Original, Send Them A Copy Of Money

from the proving-a-point dept

As a bunch of folks have been pointing out, in response to the Paul Graham essay on property that we were just discussing, a guy by the name of Jake Gold set up SendThemYourMoney.com, which is a site encouraging you to send "money" to the RIAA/MPAA. But... by "money" he means "copies" of money, since the RIAA/MPAA's whole argument is based on the idea that a copy is no different than the original:

The Problem

The MPAA & RIAA claim that the internet is stealing billions of dollars worth of their property by sharing copies of files. They're willing to destroy the internet with things like SOPA & PIPA in an attempt to collect that money.

The Solution

Let's just pay them the money! They've made it very clear that they consider digital copies to be just as valuable as the original. That makes it a lot easier to pay them back in two ways: a. We can email them scanned images of dollar bills instead of bulky paper and b. We don't have to worry about the hassle of shipping huge quantities of cash.

Further instructions are on the site, including a copy of a dollar bill which I've also copied here (theft!).



Of course, there's a concern. We also hear from folks at the RIAA/MPAA and their supporters all the time about how all this copying "devalues" the content. So I'm a bit worried that Jake's little plan here is going to totally devalue US currency and drive the world into a massive recession. Clearly, that's the only possible result of this kind of plan (if we're using RIAA/MPAA logic).

Filed Under: copies, money
Companies: mpaa, riaa

It's Only A Miracle If You're Not In The Business Of Selling Loaves & Fishes

from the unauthorized-reproduction-of-food dept

Aaron DeOliveira was the first of a few of you to send over Kevin Carson's amusing re-imagining of a few Biblical stories if they were written in a world with similar laws to what we have today. Creating food and wine out of nothing? Infringement!

After reportedly feeding a crowd of five thousand with five loaves and two fishes, Jesus Christ of Nazareth was recently served with formal legal notice from industry trade associations, demanding that he cease and desist from what they charge is an illegal food-sharing operation under the terms of the Miracle Millennium Anti-Replication Act (MMAA).

Miracle-working rabbis like Mr. Christ, and their alleged property rights infringements, have been the center of controversy in recent years. They�re the subject of a public education campaign by the Foodstuffs Producers Association of Galilee and Judea. Loaves and fishes producers argue that unauthorized replication of food, since it deprives them of revenues to which they are entitled, amounts to stealing. Sympathetic rabbis in synagogues throughout Palestine are reading FPAGJ public service announcements, aimed at countering public perceptions that �everybody does it� and �it�s just a little thing,� to their flocks: �Don�t bakers and fishermen deserve to be paid?� Many Torah schools have adopted FPAGJ �anti-foodlifting� curricula.

There are some more such examples, including concerns about turning water into wine and healing people without a physician's license. Good stuff. Of course, as was pointed out in the comments to that post, others have come up with similar ideas, including this Nerfnow comic, in which a bread seller complains that "bread piracy will kill the bread industry."

The thing is, there is a flipside to all of this. Just as people talk about the ability to create new things out of nothing or through some sort of magic replication as being "a miracle," it does seem worth noting that the digital era, and the fact that we've turned a ton of goods from scarce goods into abundant goods, is something of a miracle for society. It's really still quite stunning to think that so many people don't recognize how abundance is a good thing for the economy. The only people it hurts are those who continue to rely on business models that believe the abundant good is still scarce. Everyone else is better off.

Filed Under: business, copies, jesus, markets, miracles