$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"

[Penguinisto]

I find that I increasingly listen to music from the very fringes - at one end of the scale, it is stuff like renaissance lute music, Chinese classics, Arabic classics etc, and at the other end, it is weird, new, alternative music that I can't put a name to.

Same here... I've wandered into genres that would be considered fringe in the US (e.g. Neue Deutsche Härte), and have taken on an appreciation for positively ancient stuff (e.g. Classical), as well as a band list that few human beings could recognize the entirety of.

Put it this way - once in a great while something I like *might* show up as background music in a car commercial or suchlike, but that's about it. For example, the latest is a car commercial with The Glitch Mob's song "Fortune Days". Their self-label, Glass Air Records, is not on the membership listings (mind you, this is pretty much a bible of labels to avoid...)

I'm also blessed with friends that have the same weird habit, and constantly introduce me to stuff that would never appear on a Top 40 list of any kind. I even have a CD of songs I'd ripped into mp3 that a rather brilliant kid (a former student of mine) in Utah produced - with nothing more than his spare time and a computer. I've since copied it all over creation with his explicit permission and blessing. To top that off, I live near a town which has a hella brilliant music community (Portland, OR), that produces quite a bit of good stuff w/o an RIAA imprimatur (that may happen to the band later, but until then...)

But, I have the RIAA and their overly-developed sense of entitlement for all that. Years ago, when I realized that they were doing their level best to literally 'own' music for entirety, I sought out stuff that wasn't under their control... some of what I have still is to an extent (though mostly under their EU counterparts, or was later acquired by them), but the majority of it is definitely not.

While I doubt that my own individual efforts will fiscally bankrupt what is a creatively and morally bankrupt cartel, I still find it liberating, as so folks who are turned on to the stuff I play.