6 ms·

I don't know about high-profile melodic plagiarism specifically, but a lot of general plagiarism is absolutely intentional. So I wouldn't rule out the possibi

• rectang 5y ago
  It's possible in the abstract but that doesn't mean it's likely. In particular, it seems ludicrous that Ed Sheeran has adopted the stratagem of deliberately ripping people off and then creating false evidence to hide it.
• noirbot 5y ago
  Sure, but a lot of general plagiarism is done because of laziness or the high reward/low risk math of whatever context it's in. If I plagiarize some code as part of my job and don't say where I got it from, it's unlikely anyone will care, or even see it, let alone know where I got it from. Almost everything a major pop artist would put out has at least a shot at becoming a worldwide hit where a vast chunk of the population will hear it. To decide that you're going to plagiarize in that case, when you easily have a massive pool of songwriters and producers who could help you come up with something more original, AND to plagiarize a past #1 hit? You'd have to be pretty dumb. I'd almost believe it was intentional more easily if they were plagiarizing some band I'd never heard of, or from another genre/country. The Coldplay/Satriani suit was a little more believable to me in that way, since it would be easier to go "eh, who even listened to that other song. No one will notice."