Eye of Tiger Composer Sues Gingrich To Stop Campaign From Using Song

First time accepted submitter Joe_Dragon writes "The composer of the Survivor hit Eye of the Tiger has sued Newt Gingrich to stop the Republican presidential candidate from using the Rocky III anthem at campaign events. The lawsuit was filed Monday in federal court in Chicago by Rude Music Inc., the Palatine-based music publishing company owned by Frank Sullivan, who, with Jim Peterik, composed the song and copyrighted it in 1982. The lawsuit states that as early as 2009, Gingrich has entered rallies and public events to the pulsing guitar riffs of the song. In a lengthy section of the five-page complaint, Rude's attorneys point out that Gingrich is well aware of copyright laws, noting he is listed as author or co-author of more than 40 published works and has earned between $500,000 to $1 million from Gingrich Productions, a company that sells his written work, documentaries and audio books. It also notes Gingrich's criticism of the 'Stop Online Piracy Act' during a recent debate in South Carolina, where Gingrich suggested the law was unnecessary because 'We have a patent office, we have copyright law. If a company finds it has genuinely been infringed upon, it has the right to sue.' The suit asks for an injunction to prevent Gingrich from using the song, as well as damages and attorneys' fees to be determined by the court."

Comments

My guess

[Krojack]

Deep down inside they are suing because they don't like Gingrich. Just my guess though.

Re:My guess

[Moryath]

Funny you never hear about Democrats being asked by a musician to stop using their music.

Actually, yes you do. Most famously, Sam Moore asked the Obama campaign not to use the song "Hold on, I'm coming" at rallies. There was threat of a lawsuit if the campaign didn't desist.

The larger part is that most of these songs have lyrics and intentions to protest against common GOP policies and political positions. Having the refrain ripped off to further GOP election chances is spitting on the artist and the meaning of the lyrics themselves.

I'm sure that if he were still alive, the sculptor who crafted the Statue of Liberty would be aghast at the racist GOP's stance towards immigrant latinos today, and Emma Lazarus would be likewise horrified at the racist anti-immigrant sentiment stirred up by people who regularly plaster the face of the Statue of Liberty on their campaign posters while ignoring the meaning of the poem sitting at her feet.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

You've got a point. People regularly turn a blind eye to illegal and immoral acts done by people we like or agree with. It's the reason so many people supported the misleading information about Iraq WMD's, or are threatening a 16 y/o girl for objecting to an illegal prayer in a public school.

That doesn't change the fact that Gingrich knowingly used the music illegally. If he happened use music from a supported, they would have likely just given him a free pass.

Don't try to minimize Gingrich's crime by suggesting the rights-holder has a vendetta. It's entirely irrelevant and intellectually dishonest.

Re:My guess

[spire3661]

Wanting to control our population numbers is NOT RACIST. Wanting to impose controls on how many bodies we let into the country is NOT RACIST. Dont you think as a sovereign nation, we have the right to say who can and cannot come here? We dont have a vast frontier anymore, we dont need nor want a flood of unskilled dregs added to our society. The poem at her feet is old, outdated and DOES NOT APPLY TO THE MODERN WORLD. I fucking hate people who think that if desired, the whole world could move to the US.

Re:My guess

[superdave80]

...GOP's stance towards illegal immigrant latinos today

I went ahead and fixed that for you.

Re:My guess

[Attila Dimedici]

Most people who strongly advocate against allowing illegals into the country and/or allowing them to become legal would be perfectly happy with laws that make it easier/cheaper for people to legally enter the country. What makes the problem worse is that the Mexican government actively encourages its citizens to illegally enter the U.S. as a pressure valve to release societal unrest over its policies that make advancement difiicult for many members of its society.
To summarize, most people who are calling for more stringent enforcement of immigration laws would be perfectly happy to accept increasing the quotas on the number of people allowed to enter the country legally. Interestingly, most of the opposition to expanding immigration quotas comes from within groups that favor lax enforcement of immigration laws (I have not done enough study of it to know if it is different subgroups that oppose expanded legal immigration vs those that favor lax enforcement of existing immigration laws or if it is that those groups want to keep the number of illegal immigrants high for other reasons. I suspect that it depends on the groups).

Re:My guess

[Belial6]

Just because your a racist doesn't mean everyone else is.

Re:My guess

[Rockoon]

I do agree that you should follow the legal process, but the cost can be prohibitive to many foreign nationals.

To quote Milton Friedman:

"I have always been amused by a kind of a paradox. Suppose you go around and ask people 'The united States as you know before 1914 had completely free immigration. Anybody could get on a boat and come to these shores and if he landed on Ellis Island he was an immigrant. Was that a good thing or a bad thing?'

You will find that hardly a soul who will say that it was a bad thing. Almost everybody will say it was a good thing. ‘But what about today? Do you think we should have free immigration?’ ‘Oh, no,’ they’ll say, ‘We couldn’t possibly have free immigration today. Why, that would flood us with immigrants from India, and God knows where. We’d be driven down to a bare subsistence level.’

What’s the difference? How can people be so inconsistent? Why is it that free immigration was a good thing before 1914 and free immigration is a bad thing today? Well, there is a sense in which that answer is right. There’s a sense in which free immigration, in the same sense as we had it before 1914 is not possible today. Why not?

Because it is one thing to have free immigration to jobs. It is another thing to have free immigration to welfare. And you cannot have both. If you have a welfare state, if you have a state in which every resident is promised a certain minimal level of income, or a minimum level of subsistence, regardless of whether he works or not, produces it or not. Then it really is an impossible thing.

If you have free immigration, in the way we had it before 1914, everybody benefited. The people who were here benefited. The people who came benefited. Because nobody would come unless he, or his family, thought he would do better here than he would elsewhere. And, the new immigrants provided additional resources, provided additional possibilities for the people already here. So everybody can mutually benefit.

But on the other hand, if you come under circumstances where each person is entitled to a pro-rate share of the pie, to take an extreme example, or even to a low level of the pie, than the effect of that situation is that free immigration, would mean a reduction of everybody to the same, uniform level. Of course, I’m exaggerating, it wouldn’t go quite that far, but it would go in that direction. And it is that perception, that leads people to adopt what at first seems like inconsistent values.

Look, for example, at the obvious, immediate, practical example of illegal Mexican immigration. Now, that Mexican immigration, over the border, is a good thing. It’s a good thing for the illegal immigrants. It’s a good thing for the United States. It’s a good thing for the citizens of the country. But, it’s only good so long as its illegal.

That’s an interesting paradox to think about. Make it legal and it’s no good. Why? Because as long as it’s illegal the people who come in do not qualify for welfare, they don’t qualify for social security, they don’t qualify for the other myriad of benefits that we pour out from our left pocket to our right pocket. So long as they don’t qualify they migrate to jobs. They take jobs that most residents of this country are unwilling to take. They provide employers with the kind of workers that they cannot get. They’re hard workers, they’re good workers, and they are clearly better off."

Genius. R.I.P.

Re:My guess

[GreyWolf3000]

I would say both arms of the Corporatist Party are pretty terrible. I don't think the word "capitalism" actually means anything anymore.

Re:My guess

[databaseadmin]

Exactly. 14years is enough recoup an investment. Beyond that, someone has achieved the owning of ideas and expression. That was never the goal.

if i may indulge myself

[circletimessquare]

<blatant partisan thinking>

the one good use of coyright law

</blatant partisan thinking>

Politics in a nutshell

[goldaryn]

So many times, it happens too fast
You trade your passion for glory

Re:Fair Use?

[morcego]

He's not generating profit from this.

EXCUSE ME ?!?!?!?!?!

Re:Fair Use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Odds are it's not fair use, but they probably paid license fees to the necessary collection agencies to use the song. This is just the "creator" disliking the way the song is used which, despite bad publicity, is generally not illegal.

Re:Dear republican candidates

[interkin3tic]

My thinking was "While these musicians are annoying you, maybe shorten the copyright on them so their grandchildren won't be profiting off of them. Tit for tat."

I don't get it...

[c]

Why wouldn't a political candidate double check to make sure that the composers/artists/etc responsible for music their using in their campaign is, at worst, neutral towards them?

Because, quite frankly, if I had total legal control over a piece of art that some dickwad I didn't like was appropriating for PR purposes, my first instinct would be to do my own counter-PR version and dump it on whichever public channels I could find.

For instance, a youtube video set to "Eye of the Tiger" which just shows a picture of Gingrinch on a punching bag being pummeled by various disadvantaged types with captions explaining their beefs against him and the Republican party might be an effective way to develop a negative association between him and the song.

Why in the world would a political campaign risk pissing someone off like that?

Re:Get a real job

[Kenja]

By the same logic, Gingrich should write his own song.

Legal update

[silas_moeckel]

So how long till political campaigns get a fair use exception written into law? They did it for the do not call list after all.

He was probably aghast at the Democrats' racism

[Quila]

At the time, the Democrats were the party of racism, trying to keep the blacks in their place. The Republicans were the party fighting racism, in large part originally founded on the abolitionist platform.

This whole supposed flip-flop on who's racist only happened with Nixon's Southern Strategy. Until then, the Democrats were the party of the KKK. Remember Robert Byrd saying you couldn't be in Democratic politics down South unless you were KKK?

That is easy. No anuerysm here.

[Brain-Fu]

Government officials should be held accountable to the laws they create and enforce. This is *ESPECIALLY* true when the law is a bad law that blocks people from doing things that are completely reasonable. That helps ensure that "they" feel the same pain as "us," which in turn furthers the cause of getting the bad laws corrected.

One law for them and another for us is a basic ingredient of tyranny.

Unskilled people in our borders

[TiggertheMad]

I do not see the point of allowing unskilled people into our borders. Why would we do that? For what purpose?

Oh, I don't know. Perhaps because they are people who, like you, and want to live in a free country where you have a chance to pursue your dreams. If you look at America's history, immigrants seem to be hard working and ambitious. Quite frankly, we could use more of that right now, and not just a bunch of stupid complacence idiots who think the most important thing to be focusing on is teaching creationism in schools.

By your logic, shouldn't we expel all the white people who are unskilled, and let in all the African, Hispanic, Asian, and Arabic people who are educated and skilled? Go see how that flies with the Republican party.

Unless you are of native American descent, you have no fucking right to complain about the immigrants anyway, seeing as how you are one...

Re:Unskilled people in our borders

[Nyder]

...
Unless you are of native American descent, you have no fucking right to complain about the immigrants anyway, seeing as how you are one...

I'm not an immigrant, i was born in the USA. No, i'm not a Native American, I'm about as white european mutt as you can get. But I'm not an immigrant.

Now if you want to bust out the past, then we all are fucking immigrants based on that they think man came from africa and moved around the world.

So, Native Americans aren't so native now, are they? Unless we are black and live in africa, we are all immigrants. Even the native americans.

But that has nothing to do with anything, does it? It's just a way of trying to say some people are better then others, when in reality, we are all the same.