$7.4 Million Blurred Lines Verdict Likely To Alter Music Business

HughPickens.com writes The Washington Post reports that the $7.4 million verdict that Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke copied Marvin Gaye's music to create their hit song "Blurred Lines" could ripple across the music industry, potentially changing how artists work and opening the door to new copyright claims. Howard King, lead attorney for Thicke and Williams, said in closing arguments that a verdict for the Gaye family would have a chilling effect on musicians trying to evoke an era or create an homage to the sound of earlier artists. Williams contended during the trial that he was only trying to mimic the "feel" of Gaye's late 1970s music but insisted he did not use elements of his idol's work. "Today's successful verdict, with the odds more than stacked against the Marvin Gaye estate, could redefine what copyright infringement means for recording artists," says Glen Rothstein, an intellectual property attorney. King says record labels are going to become more reluctant to release music that's similar to other works — an assertion disputed by Richard Busch, the lead attorney for the Gaye family. "While Mr. Williams' lawyer suggested in his closing argument that the world would come to an end, and music would cease to exist if they were found liable, I still see the sun shining," says Busch. "The music industry will go on."

Music copyright trials are rare, but allegations that a song copies another artist's work are common. Singers Sam Smith and Tom Petty recently reached an agreement that conferred songwriting credit to Petty on Smith's song, "Stay With Me," which resembled Petty's hit "I Won't Back Down." Other music copyright cases include Former Beatle George Harrison's 1970 solo song "My Sweet Lord" which had a melody heavy with echoes of "He's So Fine," the 1962 hit from The Chiffons. The copyright owner sued Harrison. A judge said that while the tunes were nearly identical, Harrison was guilty only of "subconscious plagiarism." Harrison would eventually pay out $587,000. Probably the most bizarre case of musical infringement was when John Fogerty was accused of stealing from John Fogerty. The Creedence Clearwater Revival frontman was sued for his 1985 solo song "The Old Man Down the Road" because his former label thought it sounded too much like the 1970 Fogerty-penned "Run Through the Jungle," a song it owned the rights to.

Comments

Re:Rock and Roll wouldn't EXIST without "stealing"

[QuasiSteve]

I've noticed a lot of uncreative rap musicians directly copying tunes from music from other countries and just adding boring rap lyrics and bass on top of that. Maybe they should get sued next.

Good luck with that - those original artists will have to register for copyright in the U.S. first, if they want to have any chance at preventing it:

On June 7, 2011, the case of Kernel Records Oy v. Mosley ended with the court deciding that Kernel Records had failed to register for copyright in the United States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

Of course even if they do:

In case that the artist decides to pursue the matter further, it's on him to go to America and confront them with the local use of law. It will require a considerable amount of faith and, of course, money

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

And that's in a case of pretty blatant copying colloquially known as sampling. Never mind if an artist copies 'the feel of' some existing track.

There's a few reasons why the Marvin Gaye estate won, and one of the main reasons is due to the 'estate' part. Guy himself has been dead for over 30 years.

Everything is derivative.

[Simulant]

More offensive to me than a jury's decision that Blurred Lines violated copyright law is that Marvin Gaye's children (or anyone, for that matter) feel entitled to income from a dead man's 40+ year old music. To hell with perpetual and transferable intellectual property rights.

Re:Weird Al....

[Comboman]

Weird Al is safe for two reasons:

1) He gets permission from every artist prior to doing a parody, despite the fact that he doesn't really need to because...

2) US Copyright law makes specific mention of parody as fair use. Some parody is subtle, but Al's is broad and obvious. I would like to see a lawyer try to argue his works are not parody.

Look and Feel case of the music industry

[Phreakiture]

Blues are especially hosed. The fact that someone can say the phrase "twelve-bar blues" and be immediately understood almost to the note, just demonstrates that this is the musical equivalent of a design pattern.

Even more hosed is anyone who dares to write a four-chord song. For those not familiar, Canon in D by Johann Pachelbel is the start of one such design pattern. Some songs that use it are: Forever Young by Alphaville, Let It Be by the Beatles, With or Without You by U2, Don't Stop Believin' by Journey, Barbie by Aqua, Down Under by Men At Work . . . the list goes on and on and on. If you want to see a better example than I can cite here in print, google for "Axis of Awesome Four Chord Song" and watch the videos that come back.

However, in all of those cases, along with the case of Ghostbusters copying I Want A New Drug and of Ice Ice Baby copying Under Pressure etc., there are actual notes copied.

This, on the other hand, is the "Look and Feel" case of the music industry.

Re:Rock and Roll wouldn't EXIST without "stealing"

[oh_my_080980980]

You mean Wagner. Tolkien ripped off Wagner's opera "The Ring of the Nibelung" which in turn was loosely based on characters from the Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied.

Re:It's all in the cow bell - only the beats are s

[bill_mcgonigle]

Exactly this. I have done percussion, and the cowbell (you're right there) is similar but the hi-hat work is not the same at all. So even the percussion line is not even identical.

When you're learning percussion, you drill books of STANDARD PERCUSSION LINES! The rhythms are *standardized*. This is worse than copyrighting QuickSort!

Jesus, next time just copyright chord progressions and have a government judge kill off music once and for all! Guess what? All blocks of code flying by on a screen on a movie *look the same* to a non-programmer. But they're clearly not to an expert, which is all that actually matters.

First they came for the syncopation, but I did not care for I was not a drummer.