“I was sued for sounding like myself” | Hacker News Reader

“I was sued for sounding like myself”

readthink.com

81 pointsjon-wood49 comments

John Fogerty wasn't sued for sounding like himself, he was sued for plagiarizing a song he didn't own. Although Fogerty won and apparently eventually got his legal costs back.

"In the bizarre self-plagiarism case, Fantasy and its boss Saul Zaentz claimed that Fogerty's 1985 song Old Man Down the Road was merely his old Creedence song, Run Through the Jungle, with a new title. The label wouldn't have been able to bring the suit if Fogerty hadn't sold them the rights to his old material, something any aspiring pop star would be strenuously advised not to do in these more artist friendly days. Fogerty won the case, but then had to jump through further legal hoops to win back $1.35m dollars in costs." (http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2000/jul/11/artsfeatures3)

Let me use this to point out: I hate it when even these little fudges happen. "Unsuccessfully sued for self-plagiarism" becomes "sued for self-plagiarism" becomes "sued for sounding like himself" -- which actually means something quite different. And then that winds up the headline, people remember it and form opinions based on it. And now we've got some dumb new falsehood floating around whenever people talk about record companies and music publishing. "You can literally be sued for sounding like yourself! Media companies are monsters that want to destroy human life on earth!"

Gotta get those clicks, though. Click click click.

A lot of the outrage cottage industry runs on people not reading past the headline or first paragraph. If it's too outrageous to be true, it probably is.

Unless it involves Comcast.

There also seems to be a cottage industry of people telling others that they are wrong or stupid for being outraged.

The article presents the line "sued for sounding like myself," as a direct quote from Fogerty. I don't disagree with the gist of your point, but at least the author didn't produce this language out of whole cloth.

> Or as Fogerty put it while recalling the episode, "I was sued for sounding like myself."

TFA additionally has the appropriate quotation marks around the headline, but they were not carried over to the link here on HN for whatever reason.

You're welcome to rail against poetic license if you want, I guess, but at least blame the right person.

Those seven words are a quote, yes, but Erik Devaney uses that quote as evidence in a longer section about the absurdity of artists losing the right to write music using their own voice. Which is not at all what the Fogerty lawsuit was about. And it's not even what the rest of the article is about.

And using the word "sued" without indicating "unsuccessfully" is tantamount to lying, I think. He knows people will assume that means "successfully sued" and will feel outraged and -- hopefully -- post it to Twitter or Hacker News.

If I were sued and the expected costs of litigation were $1.35M, 'successfully' and 'unsuccessfully' would be purely academic -- I would never be able to afford to get to that point!

Hardly a comparison, unless your net worth is $70M+, like John Fogerty's.

> ...Devaney uses that quote as evidence in a longer section about the absurdity of artists losing the right to write music using their own voice

Devaney does not use the word "voice" even once in his article, so I have no idea what you're talking about.

Sorry, I should clarify:

"Artistic voice." Like, personal style and perspective on the universe. The thing that might lead distinct pieces of music from the same artist to kind of sound similar. "Man, that sure sounds like John Fogerty song."

Not literal singing voice.

I don't see what's so inaccuarate about the headline. He was sued because someone thought the new song sounded similar to his previous song. But the legal system concluded that it was not the same song. I'm having a hard time figuring out how you came to the conclusion that he was not sued for sounding like himself.

I mean... true. The title is a little click-baity perhaps (even though it is a direct quote), and this phenomenon of people reading a title/skimming an article and then spreading around inaccurate information is frustrating.

But, I actually found the author to be quite thorough in his explanations. The tone was a bit more conversational than some, and last paragraph was maybe a little sensational, but if you read the whole thing I don't think you come away thinking anything other than what you said: "John Fogerty [...] was sued for plagiarizing a song he didn't own."

It's just a little bizarre when you take one or two steps back from it, even though it may still be logical up close.

> John Fogerty wasn't sued for sounding like himself, he was sued for plagiarizing a song he didn't own.

Hmm. Seems to me like "sued for sounding like himself" is less misleading than "sued for plagiarizing a song he didn't own". The latter statement appears to imply that he stole someone else's work and then unduly passed it off as his own. The idea that someone might take credit for another's hard work is usually the source of any disgust directed towards acts of plagiarism. On the other hand "sued for sounding like himself" more accurately captures the nuance of this situation where the artist actually authored the original material but is then accused of writing a song that sounds similar to the original even though he doesn't legally own the rights to the original.

> And now we've got some dumb new falsehood floating around whenever people talk about record companies and music publishing. "You can literally be sued for sounding like yourself!

Well, I don't feel like that is a dumb falsehood or an unfair characterization, he was quite literally sued for writing a song that sounds similar to a different song that he also wrote; no, he didn't legally own the song, but in the context of criticism against the record industry, having a record label come after you because they think your new work sounds too similar to your old work that you sold off sounds like a quintessential example of why artists and their fans resent big labels.

I've heard the Michael Jackson/McCartney story before. I think that what bothers me about the whole thing is that if it were me that was friends with McCartney, I would have offered to make it right with a personal friend.(maybe sell/give up some of the rights so he can at least get a piece of his own songs) Instead, Jackson said something to the effect of "Its just business". That is a pretty shitty move IMO. However, it seems that McCartney isn't wholly innocent here either. Why not get the surviving members/yoko in on the bidding process and return the songs to the group that created them. It was just a big rent seeking exercise. I think this is also a case of inflated egos prevent common sense from ruling the day.

As for Fogerty, Saul Zaentz(the owner of fantasy records) was famously screwing over CCR and Fogerty as well as making poor decisions on their behalf. I would have been pretty upset if I were John Fogerty too. The record business seems to attract the shadiest of characters and young naive artists are easy pickings for these guys.

I read somewhere that Jackson tried several times to sell the catalog back to McCartney, but they couldn't work out a price. The Beatles catalog was just out of McCartney's league. McCartney wasn't new to the rights-management business, in fact, he taught it to Jackson, he just didn't have the capital.

> It was just a big rent seeking exercise.

I wouldn't necessarily conclude that. It's true, the Beatles catalog was a huge money-maker for Jackson, but Jackson's people were remarkable stewards. Managing rights is not just a matter of sitting back and collecting royalty checks. You have to manage things so that you stay in the public eye. One could say that the Beatles might not be quite as popular now without Jackson's management.

I dont know if snopes is the most reliable source, but according to that(http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/jackson.asp) Lennon/McCartney have always received 50% of the songs, so maybe the situation was as bad for sir Paul as he made it out to be. I also want to be clear that I don't think that Michael Jackson is the only bad actor in this whole saga, and it looks like you may be right that Paul and Michael did try(unsuccessfully) to work out a deal.(http://wzlx.cbslocal.com/2015/08/10/michael-jackson-beatles-...). Seems that it makes for great gossip more than anything, and maybe it is equivalent to a "rap beef"...

All I'm saying is that of all the people to pick to own the publishing rights to my songs, Michael Jackson isn't the worst choice. He was probably right when he said it was "just business". I mean, it's not as if McCartney was all that opposed to the practice of selling publishing rights, not only did he sell his own rights, but he also participated in the whole regime by buying other artist's rights.

I had a friend who created one of the early, best-selling games on mobile. Early into his success I was like, 'Your game is awesome. I see people playing it every day on the metro. That's crazy! But, if you're smart, you need to turn that game into something iconic. You need a 'character' that will lock those players into a cultural experience. Trust me: your game will eventually fade, but that 'character' will remain - and you'll literally make millions on the copyright for 100 years. And, you won't even have to do much to maintain it.'

But, instead of creating their own iconic characters, they opted to license other company's iconic characters. Now, years later, the game has much fewer sales (as expected). And, I'm not sure how much revenue they're making, but I'm guessing it's not much.

I'm not in the game development business. So, I don't know much. But, when I get a chance to talk to game developers, I try to stress the importance of the cultural experience. The game play will make or break a game, sure. But, if you have the copyright on that cultural experience - that will generate revenue for forever.

"In 1988, Fantasy Records, the company that owned the rights to Fogerty’s CCR classics, sued Fogerty for releasing a song that — get this — sounded too similar to one of Fogerty’s earlier CCR songs."

"Sounding like" in the title makes it seems he was sued for having the same voice (as himself) but is more like he wrote a song that was very similar to one that has already been written.

He would not have been able to sell his songs for as much if he can then just create a song that is nearly the same afterwards. Hardly as outrageous as the title implies.

The title is a quote from Fogerty, so I think it is appropriate. Additionally, I took the correct impression from "sounding like."

> This is the world of music publishing — a world where you can write a song, sell the rights to that song, then have to pay royalties to perform that song (which you wrote), and then potentially get sued if you write another song that sounds too similar to that first song you wrote.

This is the world of software development--a world where you can write some code for someone else who owns the copyright (such as your employer), and the have to license it to use it, and potentially get sued if you write and release nearly identical code.

Yes, exactly. The modern world of intellectual "property" (and there aren't quotes scary enough to put around the word) is fucking insane and kind of sad.

I followed through to a linked article from this one ( https://medium.com/@david_hewson/never-quote-a-rock-lyric-in... ), which left me confused.

IANAL, but I consider myself reasonably well-versed in common forms of copyright issues. I don't understand how quoting a single line of lyrics requires permission.

Is it just the (unfortunately) normal "They'll sue you and it's not worth the expensive of a defense" condition? Or was there a case that decided this? While I'm aware that a cultural reference isn't covered under fair use defense, I'd argue a cultural reference isn't a derivative product either.

Anyone have some data here?

Does anyone else read articles like this (and specifically the second section) and become overwhelmed by the sense that the "ownership" of an artistic work - especially a song - is rather like ownership of a star or something equally trivial?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlJ25pfzLTo

Ownership of an idea seems inherently unethical to me. I understand the government offering short term protection to reward innovators with a window to profit exclusively from their work, but this somehow snowballed into the concept of "intellectual property" that seems to only benefit the already powerful and successful.

No, I don't. Real work goes into creating an artistic work, and it totally makes sense to prevent someone from immediately copying that work. Otherwise any song that became popular would immediately be copied by someone else and sold for virtually nothing.

But while the concept of copyright makes sense, the current implementation is completely screwed up, particularly the length of them.

And I would call owning a star trivial; that's billions of tons of hydrogen, helium, and other elements, not to mention all that fusion power! There's some serious value there... :)

Artists tend to have mountain-sized egos. Few of the singers-songwriters admit even to themselves that songwriting is a craft, not fine art, and when they speak, it can be hard not to feel slightly bemused. When you look at nice songs the same way you would look at a well-made shoe, or a well-designed typeface, it is easy to appreciate them without feeling silly.

Do you also consider poetry a craft?

Therein lies the problem.

Poetry set to music seldom works, because it is too dense. When it is done, the music must be very plain, or only a short sections of the text are used, or the text is chopped up and spliced without regard to meaning of the words, or there is a lot of repetitions, or there is a lot of instrumental passages. Often more than one of the above.

Song lyrics (you can call it poetry that is meant to be sung) carry much less information, don't require careful attention of the listener, are mostly linear. But song lyrics require something that poetry does not -- they have to work: They must be vocalizable with ease. They must rhyme. There must be a leitmotif/chorus that is recognizable and catchy, et cetera. They must be popular, and make money.

Some singers-songwriters write both poetry and songs[1] (or a poem is adapted into a song[2], or vice versa) -- then you can easily see the difference between the two.

[1] Few of my favourites: Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave, Filip Topol

[2] The God Abandons Anthony, by C P Cavafy: http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=12&cat=1 -- and a song based on it, by L Cohen and S Robinson: http://songmeanings.com/songs/view/42869/

Good comment. You almost have me convinced.

But what is hip hop? Poetry or music?

Hip hop is mostly white folks listening to millionaires pretending to be gangsta, no?

For real, hip hop is a great example. Have you noticed how the denser parts are always spoken, and the sung parts are always repetitive and don't say all that much if anything at all?

Did you have hip hop in mind when you said that you feel ownership of a song is trivial, though?

Superb article, covers so much of the ins and outs of rights that it should be required reading for anybody considering starting a music-oriented line of business! IP law, with respect to music, is one of my favorite hobbies to stay current with as much as I can. Also, there are plenty of fascinating historical wrinkles and precedents that are entertaining in some sort.

+ Fogerty got sued for sounding like his trademark songwriting style (think AC/DC) - on the other hand, Tom Waits sued somebody else (and won) for trying to sound too much like him.

+ GoldiBlox tried to sue the Beastie Boys, claiming their derivative work for a song for a commercial (and not getting Sync Rights) would be protected under fair use - when the dust settled, the Beastie Boys took them to the cleaners and GoldiBlox was publicly shamed.

+ Recently a political ad used a re-worded version of "Times of Your Life" that mimics the Paul Anka original closely enough that the rights holder is suing them for unfair association and endorsement.

These are just a few off the top of my head. Most of the good cases - by good I mean really interesting - get settled out of court. "Blurred Lines" was one I'm not going to get into because I approve of the outcome and there's so many garbage arguments against the result that I simply don't have the patience anymore to bother with it.

Oh, and this really stood out to me:

>It’s estimated that the song “Yesterday” alone has brought in $30 million in royalties over the years.

Yeah, according to sources I've come across, it's the most covered song in the history of songs. That means anybody can go ahead and do a version - but they have to pay the Mechanical Rights. Gotta love it!

As an author and former journalist, I thought I was pretty well versed in the fair-use defense. I thought that any short quotation from a copyrighted work is protected under fair use, and I always assumed that a single line from a song would easily qualify as a short quotation.

But this article (and the article it links to, "Never quote a rock lyric in a book unless you're rich") suggest that you can be held legally liable for quoting even a single line from a song without permission.

That definitely seems to go against the spirit of fair use.

That challenge with Fair Use, and always has been, that it is not defined. Not to any legal standard, so every use where the rights holder and the user disagree over whether or not it was fair use, gets litigated. And unfortunately there isn't a lot of definition in the case law that helps.

A short length is just one of the criteria used for determining fair use. In general, it is necessary but not sufficient.

Length is irrelevant. What matters is context - specifically a vague and nebulous dividing line between public service vs for-profit - and distinctiveness.

People have been sued for using very short but recognisable samples. In extreme cases some artists have negotiated a slice of the publishing just for contributing a sample.

(One of my favourite extreme examples is the Prodigy's Firestarter from 1997, where an entire team of writers and producers negotiated a co-writing credit solely for the use of a very short sample of a woman yelling "Hey!")

More interesting is being sued for looking like someone else: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/advertising/2011-07-21-...

(Old Navy was sued not the actual person still interesting)

Everything in this article sounds totally fair and reasonable.

I doubt anyone cares, but Frédéric Motte is the original Moby (electronic music composer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Motte

Richard Melville Hall, the DJ mentioned in the article, hijacked Frédéric's name and reputation.

Maybe it was a win-win for both of them?

I don't think it is clear that Richard Melville Hall stole any name or reputation from the game composer. Hall has said that "Moby" was a nickname from being named after Herman Melville.

Additionally, they both appear to have been actively publishing in the early 90s. This seems more like an unhappy coincidence for Motte, but not a malicious act by Hall.

I was there. Motte was very popular in the Amiga/BBS days in the 80s, worldwide, long before Hall had his supposed Moby Dick idea. Maybe that really was his great-great-great-uncle? Maybe it just wasn't an original name for popular electronic musicians?

If he wasn't aware of the original Moby, that tells you he was just ignorant of the electronic music scene during the 90s, which is plausible because most Americans had not been exposed to electronic music yet.

Hall made his first release as Moby in 1990: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobility_%28song%29 . I can't tell when Motte put out what, but at least from his wikipedia page, he only started making songs and using "Moby" in 1988. I don't know how popular he got where, but it doesn't seem obvious that Hall got the name from Motte.

You have to look for the Amiga MODs. Nearly all electronic music was in MOD format back before MP3.

http://amp.dascene.net/detail.php?detail=modules&view=5024

"This is a compilation of some of my demoscene music made between 1989 and 1993 when I was still called Moby, before some other guy took my moniker :P. These tunes were released by some of the best demogroups ever : Sanity, Alcatraz, Quartex, Dreamdealers... All tracks were composed using Protracker on the Amiga." https://elmobo.bandcamp.com/album/amiga-days-remasters

The worldwide distribution was though BBS networks and the Internet. Just for reference, when these Amiga modules started circulating, the IBM PC was only capable of making "beeping" noises.

So he was making music as Moby for a year before Hall made his first release as Moby? I think what's happening is that people aren't responding to "Motte was first" so much as to the claim that Hall "hijacked Frédéric's name and reputation".

I'll let the historians figure it out. All I can tell you is that Moby had already established himself worldwide by 1989. I know this because I had one of the largest MOD music collections in Florida from 1987-1993 http://bbslist.textfiles.com/407/ and this stuff was way more popular in Europe, I wasn't even part of the demoscene, I was just an unknown ANSI artist. Moby (Motte) was one of the most prolific, talented guys making electronic music at that time. When I heard this one in 7th grade, I couldn't believe what I was hearing from my IBM PC/AT speaker https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKEmR6mWl1U the rain and thunder samples, it was unique and unprecedented. This track is from 1989 because I was still living in Coral Springs when I heard it and here is the Impact Inc pack http://arabuusimiehet.com/break/amiga/index.php?mode=group&g...

Come on. Moby was releasing published songs in 1990, which means he was signed to a label at least several months prior. This whole "89-93" thing is misleading and invents a conspiracy theory where there is none.

Not to mention, I had an Amiga those days. And used Protracker. That doesn't make Amiga MOD groups a required staple for anyone in electronic music in that 6-18 month window, and it's disingenuous to claim otherwise.

Edit: in fact, per http://www.instinctrecords.com/artists/moby :

"Born Richard Melville Hall, Moby received his nickname as a child; it derives from the fact that Herman Melville, the author of Moby Dick, is his great-great grand uncle. Moby was raised in Darien, CT, where he played in a hardcore punk band called the Vatican Commandos as a teenager. Later, he briefly sang with Flipper, while their singer was serving time in jail. He briefly attended college, before he moved to New York City, where he began DJing in dance clubs. During the late ’80s and 1990, he released a number of singles and EPs for the independent label Instinct."

I think the jury of reasonable men err on the side of coincidence, not coat-tail riding moniker-stealing.

Like I said in my other comment, I looked up the pack to refresh my memory and Motte was already dominating the BBS scene by 1989. By today's standards, "new" Moby is more widely known than the whole BBS/Demoscene combined. But I still think it's a weird coincidence.

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