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Jonathan Coulton Song Used By Glee Without Permission
FunPika writes "Jonathan Coulton, who is known for songs such as "Code Monkey", is claiming that his cover of "Baby Got Back" was used without permission on Glee, a television show aired by Fox Broadcasting Company. When the Glee version appeared on YouTube last week, Coulton suspected that it sounded similar to his cover, and several of his fans confirmed this by analyzing the two tracks. Despite Coulton contacting Fox, they continued with airing the episode and have placed the song on sale in iTunes."
What, did anyone think that copyright was intended to protect anyone except the rich and powerful?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
interesting to see how a joe average gets smacked down like a gnat with a buick on youtube, but then we see the exact opposite here? Or didn't they file a takedown notice?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/18/3891836/glee-uses-jonathan-coultons-cover-of-baby-got-back-without-permission
There's no protection for a cover. However, the Glee people weren't nice because they didn't credit him for his ultra-boring cover of a great song.
specifically, the license Jonathan Coulton uses, allows for noncommercial use. Anyone want to argue that this is non-commercial use?
His songs are pretty terrible so it makes sense that they would show up on a terrible show like Glee.
Ok, now it's copyright for the little guy, vs. a big corporation. Are we going to apply the same standards? Is there going to be a slap down? Are they going to...
Oh who am I kidding.
Remove their internet access after the first five violations. I assume there have already been thousands of them, so that should be no problem.
Internet isn't a right. Fox will have to manage as a company without it.
Jonathan Coulton, who is known for songs such as "Code Monkey",
And more importantly for Still Alive and Want You Gone.
The only thing he has to go on is whether or not they sampled from his song without permission.
I don't really see how the melody he wrote for the song is not covered though, that isn't a copy of the original song at all. A song is not solely composed of lyrics.
he did. watched Glee.
Its a non-story, guy asks to cover song , owner says yes, gets butthurt when someone else does the same but can monetise it
It's not about Fox making a cover of the same song. Nobody would have a problem with that because it's Mix-a-lot's right to allow Fox to do that. The issue is that Fox may have lifted Coulton's own cover of the song for the corporation's own wallet.
Code Monkey, seriously? You mean Still Alive, don't you!
Shit movie, and people still but the songs? My dog...well, actually I am forgetting people see idols too. I personally find Glee BORING and ridiculous. And the idea that Glee (and so many other shows) create that "perfection" can be obtained with study, training and effort is what also explains the sad state of affairs this society is atm.
...yet ASCAP and BMI frequently go after those who allow public domain music to be played claiming the arrangement was copyrighted by one of their members (and it's up to you to prove it wasn't)
Just more proof that copyright is only for the big guys.
Yes, he did a cover. However, he did a specific arrangement of the song that the show took as their own. From the opening chorus to the way the guitar is played, it's the same arrangement of Baby Got Back. I have a feeling that the music arranger for the show might be let go for getting credit where credit wasn't due.
I'm glad to see this is getting appropriately reviewed with 1 stars.
Sorry to reply to my reply, but an analogy to this would be if there could be trademarks on covers of songs, Glee would have stolen his trademark.
https://soundcloud.com/suudo/joco-vs-glee-baby-got-back
We aren't talking about someone doing a 'similar' cover, we are talking about Fox, by all appearances, using his Karaoke track verbatim against his license and singing over it. Hell, even the lyrics kept "Johnny C's in trouble" instead of the original lyrics. Analysis suggests they even had to work a bit to try to edit out a duck quack from his track, but still left some sign of that quack behind.
In fact, reports are that the show lifts a *lot* of differently done arrangements of well known songs done by obscure people without permission without a shred of apologetic tone or credit given.
But at least it is equal opportunity, a fair number of more well known musicians whose songs have been featured aren't exactly pleased to hear their works crop up in that show either.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Interestingly, Coulton made some changes to the lyrics of the song itself, and those changes were used in the show. For instance, the line "Johnny C is in trouble" is in the Glee "rendition."
Their may be a grammatical error, misspeling, or evn a typo in this post.
Got get em Johnathan!
They violated your rights, whats good for the rich is good for you.
Have a takedown order served on Apple!
A show with a reported 3.5 million dollar an episode budget can't even be arsed to let artists know their stuff is going to be used....
All of these people being stolen from would be content with so little as an off-screen credit through some blog post or something. If they wanted to be decent human beings, they would have thrown in an on-screen one liner mentioning the names of the people that are actually responsible for the arrangements, rather than trying to perpetuate the lie that the people behind that show have even an ounce of original musical talent.
All this stuff they could have done without spending so much as a dime...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
2 stars out of 789 votes, presumably JoCo's fans. FOX won't make much money from people searching by "best rating"...
Just more proof that copyright is only for the big guys.
As was and ever shall be. Look up the history of the concept. From the very beginning, it was invented to allow publishers to sue other publishers for releasing the same work. Never, in all its history, was it ever created to benefit artists.
The idea that copyright was invented for artists is one of the biggest of the Big Lies plaguing society, and it's a lie that's literally hundreds of years old.
So just noting they sound similar doesn't prove it wasn't reperformed.
And Coulton stops short of saying it wasn't reperformed, he says "he thinks he can hear a quack in there" and "maybe someone can find it for him".
There are hyper-accurate note-for-note covers out there for the purpose of avoiding copyright. Check Spotify. Prince even threatened to do it to his own songs because he didn't own the masters, just the creative copyright.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Well, I wonder if the spacetime continuum is unravelling -- I could swear I read exactly this story several days ago, including the topic OP.
This has happened several times in the past few weeks. I don't know what's going on. I DON'T KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The thing is that TV has MANDATORY licensing... So FOX doesn't technically have to "prepay" or ask to use any music they want. The INDIVIDUAL stations punch their cards and turn in X royalties per musical number for every Commercial and Show they air.... This avoids the "YouTube" problem, of infringing background music, everybody keeps bringing up.
He can probably get the song taken down from iTunes as that is a seperate distribution.
This recording predates YouTube, so it's not a "click bait" cover. There are two relevant copyrights attached to a song: the publishing rights, owned by the songwriter and the mechanical rights which are attached to the particular recording (which Sir Mix-a-lot does not own). Even a limited sample would require a mechanical license, but wholesale use of the tracks he released in his karaoke version goes well beyond a sample. If there's any doubt, they also used his uniquely modified version of the lyrics.
To argue that JC has no leg to stand on shows your own ignorance of the law.
This was a triumph.
You could at least have used the first post to point out that this is the artist who wrote and performed "Still Alive" from the video game Portal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6ljFaKRTrI
Not sure how this wasn't in TFS.
Glee is a show that already gets a lot of hate. It is waning in its popularity in the wake of many new and better shows. Fox is probably not excited about the idea of publicly admitting that one of their programs used material without permission. It could further damage Glee's already crumbling credibility. Fox's lawyers and writers probably have not heard of JoCo. He is well known on blogs and forums, but as far as the general public knows, he is "just another one of those Youtube singers." I think Fox is not afraid of him. They are confident they will win in court. If the "Acid Jazz Evening" case is any indicator, they will.
... will end well. What could possibly go wrong?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
This is, of course, just a minor scandal compared to those bastards breaking up Santana and Brittany, and turning Brittany straight!
Fuck you Glee! >:-(
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Funny that a show about talented underdogs used its muscle to rip off the little guy. JoCo could fight this, but would be crushed under the weight of the FOX legal system. It's like being bullied in high school all over again. Irony.
The version as aired on TV is available on YouTube. Interestingly, it adds a bit more backup vocals than the audio version, in particular drowning out any evidence of the duck quack, and has some cuts that, among other things, avoid the "Johnny C" line.
Has anyone bothered to ask Sir Mix-A-Lot and Def American whether Glee or Coulton have a license to publish a cover version of their song? Do some research, people.
The depravity, Rupert Murdoch, owner of media companies across the planet including Fox, doesn't have to worry about laws. As minister for propaganda in both the UK and USA, the law is whatever he wants it to be.
In the UK, he ran one of the widest private phone tapping operations in the history of the Human race, except he was really working hand-in-glove with the UK security services.
When Murdoch was looking to take out his competitors in the field of European Satellite TV services, he had criminal hackers in his Israel office break the encryption on rivals' authentication cards, and then had pirate cards mass produced and flooding into the market. Interestingly, a short while later, Murdoch was privately prosecuting American citizens who had purchased by mail order programmable smart card hardware (NOT pirate cards). He claimed the ONLY reason to own such equipment was to pirate his American satellite TV services.
Murdoch's newspapers exist only to spew anti-Muslim, pro-war propaganda of the vilest type, and to encourage ordinary people to cheer every government action that makes the lives of ordinary people worse.
Murdoch is certainly vastly more powerful than any American politician, and was THE key member of Tony Blair's team, when Blair was arranging the wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
Murdoch has only one major goal left before he dies- nuclear Armageddon in Iran, triggering a wider global war. Against this, what is stealing a song or two for his camp TV show?
So, Coulton's famous enough that we hear about it -- and also famous enough that someone who heard the recording recognized his work and told him.
What about their other arrangements? Are those ever original, or do they merely normally steal from people we haven't heard of?
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
They stole Greg Laswell's arrangement of "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" about a year ago.
http://www.pleasewelcomeyourjudges.com/2011/11/greg-laswell-not-glee-ful-about.html
I guess this is Glee and Fox showing us that not only is copyright violation acceptable, being plagiarized is something to be grateful for. And if they don't get raided and fined then I guess we could assume that prosecutors agree and feel it isn't criminal. I guess we'll have to see how it plays out.
Anyone may do a cover of any published musical work, for a standard fee to ASCAP or other publisher. Think of all the old songs collectively known as "standards" and performed by so many people over the years.
If it's his actual audio, that's a different story. And if it wasn't formally "published" according to the rules, that's yet another story. OTOH there are "audio environment" companies (one of which looks like misspelled "music") who do very close covers of popular numbers precisely so that they don't have to pay the royalties on the originals.
Perhaps because Coulton was noted on Slashdot long before he wrote songs for Valve.
Look, even though I think the song is shit, the cover is shit, the show is shit, and all the people that were involved in shitting all over each other just because they cant be bothered to acknowledge each others shitty efforts are shitty people, I still give shit about this shit because its all right for fox to rip people off when they have trucks of money already, but it's not all right the other way around? Just bullshit.
I hope that clears things up?
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Jonathan Coulton is a member of the geek community with honors. He's given to us often, and freely.
I hope someone with lawyer skills steps up to help pay back the debt. Let me know where I can donate.
How is this different from the Glee episodes themselves being available via BitTorrent seeds you can find on TPB?
There is (or was) a YouTube artist who called herself Venetian Princess who took recordings of songs and sang her own parody lyrics over the top of them. (For those keeping track, when Weird Al does a parody, he records his own version of the music, thereby avoiding this problem.) Unfortunately for her, that's infringement, of precisely the type Fox has committed. She got crushed like a bug. Her videos were yanked off of YouTube and the lawyers ate her face.
So.... we're waiting. We can expect every Glee episode to be yanked for alleged infringement now, right?
Right? ...
*crickets*
Some years ago I recall hearing an old Nick Drake song (like there's any other kind) on a Fox comedy and there was no mention of it in the credits. There are probably more instances of this happening. I haven't watched Glee since my daughters got tired of it. Do they normally mention in the credits the artists whose songs they use in the show? For a while there used to be short comments at the end of some programs saying that songs by a particular artist were used. But I haven't seen/heard that sort of thing lately.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
A déjà vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when they change something.
Not only did they steal his work, but they showcased it on glee - one of the shittiest garbage shows on television.
Big company thumps its chest about copyright violations - I don't care. Little guy wrings his hands about copyright violations - I don't care. Copyright is fucked up and I don't care if you're a big guy or a little guy, reform copyright so the public gets THEIR rights back and I might start caring again.
This is why copyright sucks, it's usually pretty hard to get a license to play something on air, and it costs a lot of money to get that work done. I'm guessing Glee needs a couple of full time employees plus lawyer time to do this. Sure Glee can spend this kind of money but it's really soul killing to do this for anyone who can't employ people todo this.
And yes that's why CC is nice, but CC isn't really the solution because it has such a small "market share".
He definitely wrote it, but I still believe it was sung by a woman....
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
You are correct, by Ellen McLain an opera singer and voice actress.
It's funny how you people are against other's copyright, except when it belongs to one of your own. Hypocrite much?!?
quit whining about copyright, fuck it's free advertising by the producer of glee. Without big fucking bucks your damn song ain't goin nowhere but some public access tv show. It's one song, one episode. Should the producer have sought permission absolutely, but lets get real folks, we're all human, good producers are going to produce art, and the best art is stolen art! Don't you want copyright more open for re-mixing? Imagine a directory full of mp3's that you saved for years, and half the crap you recorded off the air or streaming, no ID3 tags, no nothing unless you faithfully gave it a good filename in the first place. Now imagine that perfect background music, but you don't know who's it is... One solution I know personally is to only use 20 seconds of it. But there are other solutions like, roll the dice and take a chance the band doesn't give a fuck. After all the entire thing is Art, it's just Art inside of Art. Things you couldn't normally create, like in Supernatural that the cassettes tapes they play while in their driving down the road hunting dialogs.
This could be easily solved outside of courts, between the two parties. Unless someone really hates "glee" for some reason, I don't really give a crap about such tween/teen crap. Quit getting worked up.
Now you want to talk about fucking people and the system around, check out LOKI
http://foxnewsinsider.com/2013/01/25/23-year-old-squatter-moves-into-vacant-boca-raton-mansion-legally/
Most of the commenters here are quick to jump to the side of "it's just data so you should be able to use it however you want" whenever this happens to so dude with a youtube clip or whatever.
Now that it's "the man" doing the same thing to some tool that people on the internet love, legions of loyal defenders of copyright rise up and bleat about how important it is to protect his work.
"Fans of indie musician Jonathan Coulton were incensed last week when an alleged Glee version of “Baby Got Back” surfaced on the internet that seemed to shamelessly rip off Coulton’s distinctive arrangement of the 1992 Sir Mix-A-Lot song."
You're getting old, Slashdot.
So, who will go to prison for this. After all, don't do the crime if you can't do the time. I expect at minimum a 6 month plea bargain.
Jo Co's "Baby Got Back (In the style of Glee) Single"
https://itunes.apple.com/ie/album/baby-got-back-in-style-glee/id596893770
It's shitty to do this without so much as a tip of the hat to the guy whose arrangement they clearly lifted almost wholesale.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
OK so that's me replying to myself twice in a row -- bad form, I know.
But after the last post I remembered stuff I'd read about the development of the record industry in the states. Basically, in the old days there wasn't really any such thing as a "cover", because hardly anyone wrote their own stuff, and everyone was recording exactly the same thing anyway. But "derivative works" were recognised as separate works in law, and record labels started working that to their advantage. They would get their artists to change one or two notes and words and claim it was a new "derivative work". This didn't get them any more money at this stage, because they were still bound by the licensing agreement they recorded under.
The goal, rather, was to become the canonical "standard" that the public wanted to hear. Say your song came with the line "baby baby ooo-ah" and you changed it to "baby baby ooo-ee" -- no-one else could record the "ooo-ee" version without your permission. Now the cost to the recording artist doesn't change, so there was no incentive to people coming after to go to the "original" when then slightly modified version was available for the same amount of money and was likely to get more sales. However, suddenly the original author gets half of what he got before, all for two words and two notes that don't really constitute an artistic change to the song.
So they changed the law to kill the practice, by requiring you to get specific permission before creating a substantially different version: a derivative work.
A well-intentioned law, then, but nothing comes without consequences.
In reality, Coulton's license to cover the song is invalid: he clearly changed the song drastically, so it is a derivative work -- that whole tune is hardly an incidental change. But there's no way Mix-A-Lot is going to legally challenge him on it, because he's just gained a truckload of cash by licensing out Coulton's tune -- far more than he'd get for suing Coulton for breaking the conditions of his license.
So the system's broken, because it's allowing people to create these derivative works against the law. Perhaps Coulton should be suing the Harry Fox agency for selling him the wrong license...?
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
The in-game version was sung by Ellen McLain, but JoCo sang on the Portal Soundtrack. Here's one of his versions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxNmeMklFk8
Most of those (other than Youtube) probably aren't properly situated for the form of request defined in the DMCA safe harbor provisions to apply, because their relationship to the content isn't within the safe harbor in the first place -- they aren't sites that host user-submitted content, they are entities that have specifically purchased the identified content from its producers for distribution.
Of course, the content of a DMCA takedown notice isn't all that different from the content of a regular cease-and-desist; the difference is that complying with a DMCA takedown if you are properly situated to be within the safe harbor protects you from copyright liability from hosting the content prior to the notice, while if you are outside of the safe harbor complying with a C&D just prevents additional liability and may be enough to satisfy the copyright owner so that they don't bother to pursue a claim for your prior use of the content.
Assuming that the "On Demand" services were services that accept user-submitted content and thus could be within the safe harbor to start with, rather than organizations which actively contract to supply specific content, which puts them outside of the DMCA safe harbor and the protection of the notice/counternotice provisions entirely.
I'm pretty disgusted by the fact it's not the first time they've done it. The least they could do is credit in writing where the arrangements are coming from. I started this to help. Care to sign and pass on? https://www.change.org/petitions/fox-media-and-glee-stop-using-the-work-of-artists-without-crediting-them?utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=url_share&utm_campaign=url_share_after_sign
How funny. Slashdot... a site where you can read people defending the wholesale downloading of entire albums for free as "Free Speech" but let someone they love get ripped off and they cry bloody murder. Hippocrites
On Hulu's homepage the Glee advertisement actually says the Glee crew "Jonathan Coultan-izes 'Baby Got Back'". It probably won't matter much for Coulton (though I hope it does), but it's also not likely do help Fox's case here.
The community is already speaking loudly! Head over to YouTube and add your Thumbs Down vote. Let's get this thing up to 100k down votes. Maybe that will wake up FOX to the backlash they've created.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
I highly recommend to anyone who takes an interest in this to familiarize themselves with the U.S. government's copyright office's Circular #14 entitled "Copyright Registration for Derivative Works," which states: "A derivative work is a work based on or derived from one or more already existing works. Also known as a “new version,” a derivative work is copyrightable if it includes what copyright law calls an “original work of authorship.” Any work in which the editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications represent, as a whole, an original work of authorship is a derivative work or a new version. "A typical derivative work registered in the Copyright Office is a primarily new work but incorporates some previously published material. The previously published material makes the work a derivative work under copyright law. To be copyrightable, a derivative work must differ sufficiently from the original to be regarded as a new work or must contain a substantial amount of new material. Making minor changes or additions of little substance to a preexisting work will not qualify a work as a new version for copyright purposes. The new material must be original and copyrightable in itself. Titles, short phrases, and formatting are not copyrightable." http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ14.pdf
Sounds like "Leaving on a jet plane". Just sayin'.