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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?
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.
...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.
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
More important to you, maybe. Some of us were listening long before Portal came along.
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.
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.
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 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.
... 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.
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?
I thought the standard was for each copy 'made available.' So if you count each song as multiple infringements on BitTorrent, by that logic, shouldn't every single hypothetical viewer of Glee be counted as a separate infringement?
According to TVByTheNumbers, last night's Glee viewership was 6.75 million viewers, and the fine's almost certainly more than $1 per infringement, so... ;P
--Rachel
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.
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.
That would be $150 000 per infringement times 6 million viewers, but it might just be per track not per downloaded copy. That single mom had to pay ~$35 000 per track, and it mention that people settle at $3 500 per track.
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.
No, the Acidjazzed Evening case was not won in court -- it was settled out of court for an undisclosed some. So it tells us that Coulton would probably win in court, but the lawyers won't let it get that far. Fox will back down if he stands up. He probably won't get as much as he should, but he'll be a heck of a lot better off after it.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
It's funny how you people are against other's copyright, except when it belongs to one of your own. Hypocrite much?!?
That would be $150 000 per infringement times 6 million viewers, but it might just be per track not per downloaded copy. That single mom [msn.com] had to pay ~$35 000 per track, and it mention that people settle at $3 500 per track.
Idiot. The statutory damages that a copyright holder can ask for are up to $150,000 per protected work, no matter how many copies are made. If there are 6 million viewers, and someone thinks the damages exceed $150,000 then they can ask for _actual_ damages. When you ask for actual damages you have to actually _proof_ what money you lost.
The "single mom" was ordered to pay $35,000 per track, no matter how many copies of that track she provided to others. Whether it was 1 copy, 10 copies, or ten million copies. Each track is a "work". That's what "statutory" damages means; you don't have to prove actual damages.
Those people would have no trouble identifying who Jonathan Coulton is without any example of his work. Among people who don't know who JoCo is, Still Alive is by far the most likely song to ring a bell for them.
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.
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.
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 : )
Because 20 somethings today have less than no interest in someone who's older with a lab coat. The current culture has no respect or appreciation for science, engineering, technology (short of delivering a better pizza, hotter, faster), authority, logic, rationality or the limits of physical reality. One reason why young people keep pushing the envelope of what is humanly possible, because they can't tell CGI in the silly action adventure movies from physical reality any more, and they believe a person can experience 50 Gs, for a 100 feet and land standing like some kind of super hero. The emergency rooms are choked with young men Darwining themselves out of the population.
So its no surprise that movies no longer reflect any sane representation of a functional society because they are no longer being made by a functional society.
Oh, and JJ, when your done schmucking around with the Star Trek franchise, don't forget to do some stupid time thing and put Vulcan back for the next generation, and turn out the light when you leave. Damn kids...
Have they really no interest or are brainwashed into not having by movies and pop culture?