They are not similar enough. I'd say that sure, there was clearly some inspiration, as with all art. Sometimes there is more sometimes there is less, sometimes the inspiration is obvious.
This lawsuit definitely does set a dangerous and unfortunate precedent. Can't say I'm surprised about it. :(
Worked for years in music biz -- saw numerous cases of this level of "copying" -- the groove, a similar bass line etc -- this was never, ever enough to sue much less win.
The standard in my mind for actual musical theft is George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" vs Spector's "He's So Fine" -- a clear rip-off, chords, melody, both verse and chorus. But Lines vs Gaye, it's just not enough.
People _hate_ the song. Since it came out feminists have attacked it as a "date-rape anthem"[0] and Robin Thicke has become the poster boy for everything wrong with world.
It would be a pretty big coincidence if this copyright case and the level of hate the song has received have nothing to do with each other. The feminists I know are giddy about this.
[0] - I heard that, looked up the lyrics and immediately dismissed it.
You could at least explain why you're downvoting? Is it
* Suggesting this is a fishy case of copyright infringement?
* Pointing out a powerful political group has been attacking the song since it came out?
* Disagreeing with their half-baked critique of the song?
* Or maybe because I noticed that they're now celebrating the verdict?
Probably because it's speculation with no tangible proof behind it, and not even a plausible mechanism for the connection. Is the judge a militant feminist or something? How would these two things even relate to each other?
Now we need tangible proof? Now somebody speculating on the internet is unacceptable?
When Robin Thicke was attacked for penning a "date-rape anthem" were you the voice of reason in that conversation encouraging people to actually look up the lyrics and act like adults?
Related, do you think the public perception of 2 Live Crew had nothing to do with them losing their case and having to go all the way to the Supreme Court[0]? Justice isn't blind, the law generally doesn't favor pariahs and social outcasts. All it would take to turn the jury against Thicke would be one or two jurors who halfway through the trial remembered it's "that date-rapey song". I don't think that's very far-fetched.
I have no idea what the judge's personal politics are beyond knowing that Obama appointed him which means he probably leans left. Overall it's been a pretty weird case[1].
Another good case why inheritance should simply not exist beyond some practical level.
You die, your live's work should become public domain, meaning, no one can use it and pervert it or change it or use it for profit, but it should not be controllable or some "estate", i.e., your parasitic children and dependents, start suing to extract even more undeserved, unearned, and unwarranted wealth.
This is an overly extreme opinion. We are not simply born in isolation - totally separate beings from one another. It's in our nature to perpetuate society as we see fit and that is not only through actions as we live but also through your progeny - whether they're students or children.
Perhaps you wish to see the world become less dependent on fossil fuels and you've spent your life building a business and cultural following in green tech. You've shared your opinions on why it's so important with students, twitter followers, employees, as well as your children. Why is it not your prerogative to give those you trust the ability to continue your work?
Obviously there are people who don't leave behind progressive and innovative marks on the world, but perhaps they just want the world to be a little bit less dumb and they believe their children are moving the world in that direction (which I think most parents believe of their children). Why can't them give them every advantage they wish to?
Not all children are parasitic and their wealth isn't unearned. It was earned by their parents and rather than shuffling it into a fund for the "public good" they can choose to leave it to their children. The public (including you and I) are just as undeserving of Marvin Gaye's wealth and intellectual property as his children.
On the other hand, these songs don't sound that similar to me and this lawsuit is bullshit.
You are simply stuck in the current mindframe of thinking. It's not your fault or anything, especially considering that the whole notion of inheritance is rather deeply ingrained in many societies' culture, especially in contemporary America, where we fawn over aristocrats and dream about game of thrones.
Although I don't have the details fleshed out, the effect would be that in spite of what you may believe, the outcome is that the incentive to perform and improve and build would be wildly stronger than currently the incentive structure allows for. What if none of your success was taxed, i.e., taken away from you until your work was successful and you then were responsible to pay back society for all the social, intangible aspects that assisted in your success. You still get to enjoy the fruits of your labor, but you also cannot simply externalize costs and risks, while also not paying your investors ... society at large.
There is something inherently supremacist, hypocritical, manipulative, heinous, and rather racist about inheritance that simply perpetuates the evils of the past and undercuts an even remotely equal chance at life, more often than not simply determined based on race. But please also don't simply focus on the race aspect, because there is a larger issue at hand, that everyone, no matter their race should have the same or very similar advantages or opportunities in life not just the wealthy who happened to win the genetic lottery get to inherit all the cheat codes to life and those who lost the genetic lottery get to inherit all the pitfalls, traps, pain, suffering, and disadvantages.
It is one aspect that is absolutely required for humanity to evolve to the next stage if it wishes to progress beyond the current rather primal state we are still in. There is simply no other way than thinking bigger than the selfishness of giving your genetic mashup an unearned advantage over others of the human race. But like I said, it's only one of several things that have to change for humanity to evolve into the next level. No matter whether all other requirements are met, without that step, we will never evolve past the state we are currently in.
Agreed. Also, it's important to provide incentive for people to work hard and make good financial decisions even after they are set up for life.
If, once you had your retirement set, you could only pass a small percentage of your income on to your friends and family (IANAL... and charities?), then why keep working? What about the people making valuable contributions to society: inventors, doctors, entrepreneurs, etc? Doesn't society have an interest in encouraging them to work past having $X million in their bank accounts?
Inheritance is a separate issue. The US Constitution set forth a reasonable copyright time limit. Disney and Sonny Bono turned it into a ridiculous dynasty.
But that's a very simple chord progression with common vocal hits, whereas this case seems to hinge on a very distinctive bass line and percussive style.
The situation surrounding "Blurred Lines" gives me a feeling of crushing sadness. It seems, to me, that the legacy of perpetual copyright (and the death of the public domain, as a result) will be a future in which the creation of new art is discouraged for fear of attracting the litigious attention of the zombie estates of dead artists or the corporate "owners" of the rights of prior works.
Creation of legitimate new art through the "proper" channels, as opposed to back-alley off-the-radar art where artists get compensated by the goodwill of an audience.
As we've seen with the growth of media content on the web, creators gonna create. Whether compensation for one's creation is something shared among many creators fairly in the light of day or consolidated in the hands of a few (while the rest scrape at charity) is really the question that this sort of legal decision raises.
It's not so much lack of compensation that seems chilling to me, as it is the prospect of the work of my creative expression being snuffed-out. Granted, I've never had any major creative ambitions (certainly nothing I tried to seek compensation from), but these types of verdicts come up in my mind whenever I think about personal creative expression. Were I compelled more strongly to create art perhaps I'd be less concerned, but my thoughts turn first toward personal liability when I think about sharing any of the photos or music that I've created with others.
Interesting. The basic percussive, vocal and guitar riffs are clearly based off the original, though the modern version is more polished and better packaged. The lyrics are definitely different between the two, changing the meaning and full structure of the song.
I'm not sure this justifies a copyright infringement, particularly in the era of remixes. If we can legally use actual samples of another song to build your own, why is a re-imagining which builds upon and modifies the original illegal?
From my understanding none of those things were used in the comparison nor any samples actually used. It was that the new song "sounds like" the old song is the criticism. Which could be expanded to mean the person who created a genre of music owns it.
If a musician can be sued for being inspired by another, then dark times are ahead for all musicians.
"What was your inspiration for this song?"
"No comment."
It's worth remembering that nobody knows the original composer of the "Superman" theme. While John Williams is credited with arranging the cinematic version, his arrangement was based on the television show theme. That theme was purchased sans-crédit from a French artist via a system intentionally architected to leverage the at-the-time gaps in international law to minimize Hollywood's cost burden for music scores.
To maintain this protection, they intentionally did not track the pedigree of the theme. This is a loss for history.
That's my concern as well. You can trace inspirations back throughout history. Paintings, music, writing - all benefit from previous works.
What happens in the print world when a the idea of a "revenge fantasy" becomes copyrightable? When the use of certain chord progressions can cost you the revenue from a particular song? When a movie containing "triumph in the face of adversity through superhuman powers" can't be done because someone else did it first?
We don't seem to have listened to the same vocals. Gaye is singing in a falsetto. So, with significantly different pitch, different melody, different lyrics, different vocal 'hooks'... I just don't see how the vocals are clearly based off the original.
Given that remixing potentially falls under the "transformative" portion of fair use copyright exemptions, this doesn't seem like it's set in stone, legally.
Of course, I imagine that most artists work out contracts with the copyright owners and simply pay the royalties simply because it's less expensive than a protracted copyright lawsuit. This doesn't make it a legal standard, however.
The US and many other countries have laws establishing the idea of a "compulsory license", which is (legally) required any time you cover someone else's song: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_license
The real travesty of the blurred lines case is that data science was not used, from what I gather, at any point. At a minimum, the two tracks could have been compared as to quantifiable similarity using any number of methods. EchoNest, and other recommendation approaches, convolutional neural nets, etc.
The lack of computational methods to abstract and describe the material on either side is particularly bizarre considering the judge's decision to preclude original song material from being played by the Gaye family. I'm convinced that science, rather than expert insider testimony that culminated in a courtroom live-performance jam, could have prevailed.
Let's step back a little. The story is clearly written to trigger outrage -- really, meant to trigger your precise response. So, let's spend a google seeing if there are elements of this story that were left out due to not fitting the narrative (note: this isn't to say the decision wasn't stupid, or that you are wrong in any factual sense).
Okay, so first that that pops up is that the children of Marvin Gaye were the ones being sued. It's also revealed that Williams describes the issue in such a way that makes it sound like he wrote Blurred Lines in an hour while this Marvin Gaye song was playing in the room (just to be clear, for a typical length pop song, writing it in an hour is _remarkably, exceptionally fast_).
Now, surely this is enough to have us step back and be slightly more circumspect about this -- whatever the facts are, they are neither simple nor provided in the article. Honestly, I'd wait for a legal analysis. Lawyers are not so exceedingly stupid as to think feelings are copyrightable, and neither is the judge who issued the fines.
> (just to be clear, for a typical length pop song, writing it in an hour is _remarkably, exceptionally fast_).
I think you'd find that the vast majority of pop hits are written fairly quickly. Yes producing, recording, finishing a pop song, adding everything that makes a pop song.. pop... can take a long time. But the actual writing is literally just
1. Get an idea
2. put it into the standard pop song structure
Especially for someone like Pharrell who has probably written a hundred songs or so.
It's by no means _remarkably, exceptionally fast_.
Edit:
Look at the way Notch writes code. Yes okay, we could call it remarkably fast. But he does it consistently. It's not a surprise when he finishes a game during a game jam.
Just as I do not find it surprising that one of the most accomplished songwriters of his generation writes a song in an hour
Okay, at some point this counts as improvised. We're talking about lyrics, percussion, bass guitar and other instruments (at least in the case of Blurred Lines, where the writing of the lyrics and instrumental tracks were what was in question). Assuming you have only two hands/ears with which to write/play with the sound of, that's writing at nearly 1/2 the speed it is performed (and could be considered near-live writing if you aren't da Vinci'ing it).
Yeah, I'm a lawyer and the law is clear when it says what are the copyrightable things. A song that "reminds" of another isn't enough to be considered as a copy. If that were true, than we wouldn't have western movies or movies where a hero kills the villain to rescue an innocent girl. So, yeah, this is stupid.
You seem to be leaving out the original lawsuit was filed for a declaration of non-infringement since there were inquiries as to why they didn't pay up to license the previous song. If they felt they didn't infringe then I see nothing wrong with such a preemptive lawsuit to avoid lots of legal paperwork arguing back-and-forth, which only helps the lawyers involved. Such an inquiry would most likely lead to a lawsuit anyway. Might as well roll the dice and go straight to court to get it settled. They simply lost. There's no reason to think nefarious reasons for the first lawsuit not being filed by the children.
Plus, unless you've worked with the person, I'm not sure you have a place in suggesting how long it takes them to accomplish a task.
Finally, there are stupid outcomes to legal cases all the time. Logic and justice do not always prevail in a court of law.
Thank you! Oh if you could only package that in an app. For every article I see, I get a notation "Story elements left out that didn't fit the narrative".
These songs are very extremely similar. There is a fine line between being influenced and covering(or sampling) music. I think this song crosses that line. People get sued all the time for sampling without clearing the sample. To essentially copy distinct percussion and rhythms and keyboard rhythm and melody would definitely fall under infringement in my eyes since as any producers would tell you those elements drive the entire song. Even how the song starts with open percussion elements is the same. Its almost like the Mcdonalds vs Mcdowells absurd argument and just a clever way to steal ideas without paying tribute to the individuals who originated and copyrighted those ideas.
There is a really big difference between taking "inspiration" from an artist's style or a certain song's sound versus sitting down, listening to a song, and writing one in the same tempo that hits the same cues just by fiddling with the scale a little bit. Pharell is totally trying to argue a different point than what the lawsuit was about, and he's goat roping as many other things in as he can to try and save face. It's absolutely laughable for him to say "This is about protecting the intellectual rights of people who have ideas" when he just lost a lawsuit based on taking something from another artist.
Look, I'm all for revising the copyright laws on the books, cleaning up some of the issues regarding sampling, and eventually modernizing the commercial avenue by which musicians and other artists like cinema professionals make their money. Genuinely, I want to see things change for the better, not constantly be lobbied and pushed the wrong direction by monied interests (Disney) or legacy inheritors of material. The system is messed up, and I get that, which is why I've avoided the "traditional" system and held on to my rights through Copyright or Creative Commons for years and years and years and have no plans to change that.
Pharrell had his chance ON THE STAND to make his case, and the jury didn't buy it. The jury didn't listen to the recordings and render a verdict about the "sound" or "inspiration" of the tune. The jury listened to the notes being played based on the sheet music, and ruled that it was a ripoff. Why? Because it was a ripoff. Pharrell got busted and now he's doing damage control PR.
Besides, the music industry has ALWAYS been tied up with lawsuits...which is why people use caution when clearing samples (ex: Lemon Jelly), negotiating songwriting credits before/after the fact (ex: Sam Smtih), or defending sync rights when somebody is clearly trying to abuse the system (ex: GoldiBlox vs. Beastie Boys).
Oh, and don't forget the most typical lawsuits in the music business: artists suing the big labels for screwing them out of money:
Not that many who sympathise with Pharrell will give this the time of day, but I do think the Gaye family's public statement is a very coherent explanation and should be held up for comparison purposes:
Think of a song as something that can be distilled down to a formula. That formula is the 'essence' of the song -- the "groove" for lack of a better term.
Williams' song basically adapted 'the groove'. If I was on that jury I would have probably voted the same way. Inspiration is one thing but adaptation is another.
They are not similar enough. I'd say that sure, there was clearly some inspiration, as with all art. Sometimes there is more sometimes there is less, sometimes the inspiration is obvious.
This lawsuit definitely does set a dangerous and unfortunate precedent. Can't say I'm surprised about it. :(