8 ms·
Appeals Court Says It's Okay to Copyright an Entire Style of Music
- mnm1 9y agoOh please. The purpose of copyright law may once have been to protect the public domain, but it hasn't been that for decades, especially since it has constantly been expanded and focused only on protecting profits. The purpose of copyright law is to protect the profits of greedy companies. This court should know better. Do they not consider recent changes to the law? And how can law have a purpose other than what it actually achieves? No one could possibly read the minds of legislators or the founding fathers on this issue. The purpose of the law cannot be something it never achieves anymore. Of course, going by legal definitions of "reasonable" it's not surprising they reach such an unreasonable, illogical decision. And people wonder why lawyers and judges are so despised with this type of illogical thinking.
- parent5446 9y agoThe purpose of copyright law has never been to protect the public domain. Its explicit purpose, as even stated in the Constitution, is the protect the profits of the IP owners.
- gpm 9y agoThat is not the purpose, and is stated neither in the consitution nor law. The purpose, as stated in the constitution, is "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". This often means protecting the profits of the IP owners, but not always, for example see "copyright misuse".
- quickben 9y agoSo, when can I copyright talking/writing/singing in legalese and start charging others for infringing on it? :) I realize USA has a precedent based system, but how long do things like that usually hold over there; before another judge rules something more sane?
- kd5bjo 9y agoI am not a lawyer, and have only watched these things from the sidelines, but my understanding is this: As this was a circuit court decision, its precedent is only binding within that region of the country. The best chance of this being overturned within the court system is for a judge in a different circuit to create conflicting precedent there, which will make it more likely for the Supreme Court to take the case and unify the rulings. Alternatively, Congress can amend the law which will force the courts to base their decisions on the new text.
- quickben 9y agoThat actually sheds a lot of light in the process. Thank you for the explanation.
- jobigoud 9y agoFor those not familiar with the case, the two songs referred to are the following: Marvin Gaye - Got to give it up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp7Q1OAzITM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp7Q1OAzITM Robin Thicke - Blurred Lines ft. T.I., Pharrell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyDUC1LUXSU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyDUC1LUXSU
- lisper 9y agoWow. Those two songs are not even remotely similar. If this ruling stands no one will ever be able write another reggae song, nor even a new piece of classical music, without running afoul of someone's copyright.
- tmuir 9y agoI don't think its controversial in the slightest to say that they are highly similar songs. They have a similar beat. They both have a similar style of walking bass line. They both feature a male falsetto singer as the main melodic instrument. The both feature a decent amount of random banter in the background. The both feature the use of the chorus effect. This means that it is very fluidly changing back and forth between sounding like a single voice singing a single note, and multiple recordings of the same voice singing the same note, but with some minute and random time shifting, which is what actually gives the effect. I don't know much of either of the two artists catalogs to any comprehensive degree. But if a single artist had two songs with all of the same qualities listed above, there would be no disagreement at all that those qualities defined that particular artist's style. Thus, if we can argue that "style" is a consistent accumulation of specific musical qualities, at the expense of incorporating others, these two songs are by definition of a similar style.
- rhn_mk1 9y agoAs I understand, they refused to overturn the case mostly on procedural grounds. I find this somewhat reassuring.
- lisper 9y agoYeah, except they passed up on a golden opportunity to overturn it on Constitutional grounds. The Constitution says explicitly that the purpose of copyright is to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". I'm pretty sure that letting someone copyright a whole genre will have the exact opposite effect. The idea that copyright is there to help copyright owners make money seems to have gotten deeply ingrained in the nation's psyche. That idea really needs to be dislodged or we are headed for a world where no one can create anything without paying a ransom.
- pmoriarty 9y ago"The Constitution says explicitly that the purpose of copyright is to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts"." Unfortunately, those are just words, and they can be interpreted any way judges want. They could simply say that "Progress of Science and useful Arts depends on genres being copyrightable and copyright owners making money." Judges are great at coming up with arguments to justify their positions, no matter how specious such arguments are. It's just their opinion, but their opinion is the one that counts.
- baseten 9y agoIt's kind of ironic that Marvin is dead and his particular brand of art is no longer progressing. He is silent on the matter and his estate brought the suit. Ultimately anybody can bring a suit against anybody and this suit wouldn't even be a thing if that dumb blurred lines song wasn't a hit and there wasn't money to be made. That also being said that song is a straight ripoff of Got to give it up. Everybody who was a fan of Marvin knew it instantly, but if you wrote out the score on a page and compared, the two songs wouldn't match up. Also if you objectively compared the audio files you wouldn't find any samples of the former song in the latter either. I thought they found a clever way around the copyright using the former track as inspiration. perhaps borrowing heavily, but if this is the precedent we really are headed toward a world where nobody can create something without paying a ransom to another copyright holder.
- pjc50 9y agoRelevant blogpost on the original ruling: https://law.duke.edu/cspd/blurredlines/ https://law.duke.edu/cspd/blurredlines/
- prophesi 9y agoSo are music discovery services now a search engine for copyright violations?
- privacypoller 9y agoPied Piper has been used for that since Season 4, Episode 7!
- zeta0134 9y agoI don't know how I could constructively express my disappointment with this ruling, so instead I'll leave everyone with this lovely musical discussion of the ever popular "4 chord song", by Axis of Awesome. They make my point far better than I ever could. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I
- saurik 9y agoWhich is itself meta-interesting, as it is a "style of joke" done by others (and a far as I'm concerned, often better), such as Rob Paravonian. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM
- Dowwie 9y agoThis won't be the last of such a case. Have faith that reason will be restored.
- machinehermit 9y agoI copyright all music in 12 tet. I don't care if you make micro tonal music but otherwise..pay me.
- eat_veggies 9y agoReminds me of Spider Robinson's Melancholy Elephants. http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html
- sailfast 9y agoThat’s not what the appeals court says. The appeals court says that they can’t really overrule a jury decision of the lower court, and the lawyers in that case screwed up by not contesting the case on the right merits. This ruling has nothing to do with saying “it’s okay” and everything to do with the scope of potential judgments available to the appellate court. Not a lawyer, but this seems like it’s for the best in terms of the functioning of the law, and a similar trial would likely not reach the same verdict.
- rocqua 9y agoThe issue is that cases set precedent.
- sailfast 9y agoAll verdicts set precedents, yes. That said, precedent is not law, and in this case I don't know that this judgment deviates from previous precedent at all. It appears to have been ruled narrowly on the basis of what the court was allowed to consider in the matter and does not make a judgment on the merits of the song similarities as a matter of law.
- bambax 9y ago> This ruling has nothing to do with saying “it’s okay” and everything to do with the scope of potential judgments available to the appellate court. Yes, that seems to be what the majority is saying. But could you or someone explain more? What's the point of appealing a jury decision if it can't be overruled??
- alistairSH 9y agoThe jury can be overruled, but the facts of the case cannot be changed. New evidence cannot be introduced, new arguments are generally limited. Basically,the appeals courts in the US exist to remedy wrongs done by lower courts (failure to follow rules, bad interpretation of the law, etc). They do not rehear the case in its entirety. Appeals courts can word their decisions broadly or narrowly, in an attempt to control how much their decision can be applied to future cares.