Led Zeppelin did not steal 'Stairway' riff, jurors say | Hacker News Reader

Led Zeppelin did not steal 'Stairway' riff, jurors say

reuters.com

40 pointsapo48 comments

Discussions of this sort are always seem to lack nuance. There are countless dimensions to music, including things like rhythm, tempo, time signature, pitch, melody, harmony, instrumentation, timbre, sound design, and production. Any of these traits could be copied, but people only seem to complain with melody. Also, for each of these dimensions, something could be copied at differing degrees of fidelity, from an exact copy, to slight modifications, to just hints of the original. And in fact, that's true of every piece of music in existence - at least one of these dimensions has been copied to some degree from a pre-existing song. With our recent omnipotent control of sound through digital techniques, music can and does cross the spectrum across pretty much every dimension possible, and thus drawing a line at where something is "copied" is pretty damn arbitrary.

This guy does a great job going through similarities and differences (without commentary on the plagiarism):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCEg9gMJakU

NPR did an interesting story on this and the effect it'd have on future music cases.[1]

What could really be argued (if they were found guilty) was that you can sue people for infringing on the "feel" of your song. That's a real scary future when so many songs "feel" similarly!

One could imagine how it'd put even more power in the hands of the big labels to sue smaller upcoming artists for stealing their sound. Happy this went the other way!

[1] http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2016/04/22/stairway-to-heaven...

> infringing on the "feel" of your song

(Popular) Country music would cease to exist.

"Truck ... girl ... warm beer ... boots ... mud ... tractor" (computer-altered guitar riff)

As a long time country music fan, I find this current generation of "bro-country" to be grating at best and downright insulting and degrading at worst. But I can't tell if it's just because I'm older or the music is legitimately simplistic and terrible.

It's probably a bit of both, but definitely the latter is true. I'm only 23 and I greatly miss good old country music like that of Johnny Cash.

Musical tastes have gotten simpler in general.

There remain the musicians who push the envelope, but they just aren't as popular. Its fine: the typical audience just doesn't have the ear to appreciate certain riffs. Simplicity breeds familiarity which breeds comfort.

With that said, I still hear great songs on occasion, you just don't really hear it from Top 40s radio stations anymore.

EDIT: I don't mean to say that modern music is bad. Its just simple. The vast vast majority of 2010s Music is I-V-vi-IV turnaround with one additional chord in there to make things a little bit different.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%E2%80%93V%E2%80%93vi%E2%80%9...

In the 80s and 90s, a bit of musical experimentation was done. In the 2000s and 2010, electronica is definitely pushing the envelope but your typical top 40 songs are sticking to the basics.

And yes, I-V-vi-IV is interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY8SwIvxj8o

Its so interesting that everybody is doing it. I mean, its not "brain-dead" simple, but any person trained in music theory can hear the ridiculous amount of similarity between these riffs.

But taking the pattern that literally every other country song has used and throwing just slightly different lyrics on top of it isn't original.

Throw in the cheatin' ex-wife, loyal hound, and Jesus and I think we have a gold record!

This soundcloud clip is mentioned in the comments -- it's in Dutch, but they sing (in English) over the chord progression to show how common it is.

https://soundcloud.com/martijn-b/gewoon-een-mineur-accoord-m...

I'm not going to comment on this case directly, but there is no doubt that Led Zep borrowed heavily from other artists/songs in many of their songs; arguably a lot more than most bands of their stature.

Yes, there are influences and its sometimes difficult to say who copied what or what came first. But in their case, its happened again and again and again.

Case in point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye2N_2ce3QE. There many more examples from Led Zeps music like this.

Massive Led Zep fan here, btw.

The truth is that musicians have been doing this for centuries. It used to be seen as a complement. There are a tremendous number of dimensions which can be copied/have influenced derived from them in any piece of music, and honestly the world benefits from this proliferation of musical ideas. If the artist had made something as good as what Led Zeppelin did, they would have profited from it, even if Led Zeppelin was able to profit from it as well. Intellectual Property rights in music hardly makes any more sense than Intellectual Property rights in software (and I think neither make sense).

> there many more examples from Led Zeps music like this.

Yep, there's no disputing they have a lot of form for this sort of thing.

Ironically copied from http://www.warr.org/zep.html#Thieves :

    "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" - A folk song by Anne Bredon, this was originally credited as "traditional, arranged by Jimmy Page," then "words and music by Jimmy Page," and then, following legal action, "Bredon/Page/Plant."

    "Black Mountain Side" - uncredited version of a traditional folk tune previously recorded by Bert Jansch.

    "Bring It On Home" - the first section is an uncredited cover of the Willie Dixon tune (as performed by the imposter Sonny Boy Williamson).

    "Communication Breakdown" - apparently derived from Eddie Cochran's "Nervous Breakdown."

    "Custard Pie" - uncredited cover of Bukka White's "Shake 'Em On Down," with lyrics from Sleepy John Estes's "Drop Down Daddy."

    "Dazed And Confused" - uncredited cover of the Jake Holmes song (see The Above Ground Sound Of Jake Holmes).

    "Hats Off To (Roy) Harper" - uncredited version of Bukka White's "Shake 'Em On Down."

    "How Many More Times" - Part one is an uncredited cover of the Howlin' Wolf song (available on numerous compilations). Part two is an uncredited cover of Albert King's "The Hunter."

    "In My Time Of Dying" - uncredited cover of the traditional song (as heard on Bob Dylan's debut).

    "The Lemon Song" - uncredited cover of Howlin' Wolf's "Killing Floor" - Wolf's publisher sued Zeppelin in the early 70s and settled out of court.

    "Moby Dick" - written and first recorded by Sleepy John Estes under the title "The Girl I Love," and later covered by Bobby Parker.

    "Nobody's Fault But Mine" - uncredited cover of the Blind Willie Johnson blues.

    "Since I've Been Lovin' You" - lyrics are the same as Moby Grape's "Never," though the music isn't similar.

    "Stairway To Heaven" - the main guitar line is apparently from "Taurus" by Spirit.

    "White Summer" - uncredited cover of Davey Graham's "She Moved Through The Fair."

    "Whole Lotta Love" - lyrics are from the Willie Dixon blues "You Need Love."

I've listened to both songs, and while there is a distinct similarity between Taurus and parts of Stairway to Heaven, they are not the parts that made the song memorable. Which is why one listen to Taurus is enough for a lifetime.

Not surprising, since Randy Wolfe apparently thought it was different enough and the suit only went forward after he passed away.

Well he did apparently feel they'd ripped him off, although he didn't take legal action over it.

That's not what I remember hearing on...NPR I think it was? He just thought there was no way he could ever go up against a massive band like Led Zeppelin and win. As far as I remember from the segment, he died wishing they had at least given him credit for the riff.

I always figured Davey Graham is the one that should have complained about Jimmy Page. See here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWeejHJxGjs at around 20 seconds. That riff is a straight copy. But even that is probably not a reasonable basis for a copyright suit.

I don't know what you are listening to, but even the riff is not the same. It takes more than three notes to be a plagiarism.

They're listening to the intro, which has a lot more similarity to the intro of Stairway than three notes. I've no idea if Jimmy Page plagiarised it or even heard it, but it is very similar. Same key, same arpeggiated chords, very similar bit where it transitions from the arpeggios to strummed chords.

If I heard that intro and didn't know about Davy Graham I'd think someone was doing a jazzed-up version of Stairway.

Relevant Stairway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pPvNqOb6RA

Relevant Taurus: https://youtu.be/xd8AVbwB_6E?t=44s

If you listen to taurus not having heard stairway recently it might be vaguely reminiscent. If you hear them side by side it is obvious they are different, which the jury could easily hear.

Weren't we talking about Davey Graham?

I'm a dumbass. I really didn't know what he was listening to -- I had just gotten through listening to the songs in the lawsuit. However, the same applies to Davey Graham. I don't hear anything in the posted video that is even three notes close.

The chromatic descending bass starting on　the tonic of a minor chord is a cliche that appears all over the place, and is a staple in the blues.

Triumph: "Young enough to Cry": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em8OqpGjUPI

George Harrison: "Something": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9lgfa0Nh3c&t=26 (0:26)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lament_bass

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnibus_progression

"The jury was not legally allowed to hear the original recordings of "Stairway to Heaven" and "Taurus" in determining their verdict."

This is good. I don't think a jury could accurately identify that one song is "copied" from another just through hearing the songs. They could only identify similarity and then confuse themselves conflating similarity with copying.

There are other means to demonstrate copying that are less prone to errors in human pattern-detection.

How do you mean? If I write a song that happens to have the same words, melody and chords as All About That Bass, should it be assumed I wrote it myself unless somebody catches me red-handed transcribing the original?

During the trial, they did bring in a pianist (defense) and guitarist (plaintiff) to compare and contrast the two songs. With a test like that, if you copied lyrics, melody, and chord progressions from another song, it'd become obvious.

That test only works because it conflates similarity with copying.

50% similarity: likely not copying. 90% similarity would be much more arguable, and you'd have to rely on other evidence to make a decision. With 100% similarity (as in the scenario you originally outlined), it's extraordinarily unlikely that you didn't copy the original song.

Even if % similarity and % copied don't have a direct mapping, there's going to be a correlation between them. It's the correlation that's important, not some mistaken idea that "similar = copied".

You and I seem to agree that at some point similarity is good evidence of copying.

I was just interested to know what the "other means to demonstrate copying that are less prone to errors in human pattern-detection" are, that were proposed as an alternative above.

> Page and Plant, who have attended court ...

Aha! This was nothing but a ploy to goad a Zep reunion.

Forty three years after Stairway and they can still sue over it? I am so glad that LZ won but still this is just annoying. I can see a suit over copyright infringement being filed if someone copied the Taurus rift today and made real money, but to be able to sue over events forty plus years ago? Simply because the target has money?

It's because the guy died, the people managing the estate are the ones going after LZ now.

And now one wonders who gets to sue the lawyers for bringing this stupid lawsuit in the first place. Pretty much every IP lawyer I've talked to thought the case had no merit, so at the end of the day the estate is that much poorer after paying this legal firm to pursue a case that was (in the folks I've polled) unwinnable. Seems like a case of the law firm trying to get more money out of the estate and denying it to the heirs.

Presumably the heirs brought the case, so it's only fitting that it should come out of their pockets.

You can sue over basically anything published since 1923, unless it's been deliberately placed in the public domain.

Edit: Actually scratch that "deliberately", for a 1923 work I think you'd have to have added a copyright notice and subsequently renewed the copyright to keep it out of the public domain.

Is it ok for me to steal all the code for your last project, as long as I don't make money?

What if I was Google and you didn't have the resources to fight a case against a giant right now?

This is more like, I think I'll sue you 40 years later because your code is very close to mine in one method.

The forty years and the fact the original writer is dead are good arguments. I'm not so sure about:

> Simply because the target has money?

To be honest I think they probably borrowed the intro from Spirit (they toured together and musical / lyrical borrowing was standard operating practice for Zep), but it was a very minor part of what made the song successful. However the fact the song has apparently made over half a billion dollars in royalties does rather amplify the significance of that minor borrowing.

This thing talks about Led Zep (~1m35s) among other things and is great: https://vimeo.com/14912890

All the Everything is a Remix stuff is great, if you've not seen it.

Another article at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11963695.

Good. I'm listening to the "Spirit" on Youtube right now, and "Stairway" is similar in the sense that it has some of the same chords in a progression (which happens all the time because there are only so many ways to pleasingly combine chords), and the notes are arpeggiated.

They're alike enough that you could probably make a mashup with just those few chords and it'd sound nice, but the entire rest of the songs are utterly different.

> They're alike enough that you could probably make a mashup with just those few chords and it'd sound nice, but the entire rest of the songs are utterly different.

To amplify your point:

You can mash up "Hot In Here" by Nelly and "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees and that sounds good. (In that: Even if it isn't your taste in music, it works in some objective sense. It sounds like what that kind of music is supposed to sound like. Can you tell I don't know anything about music theory?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekwod6Py1RI

Anyway, my point is that on a basic, mechanical level, all music is derivative. That's part of what a 'genre' is. That's part of what a 'musical tradition' is, why Mozart sounds different from Chinese Opera.

Infringement has to be based on something more.

Why didn't the statute of limitations on civil copyright infringement apply here? It seems like the law says you have three years after discovering infringement to sue.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/507

They remastered and rereleased it.

The claim is for future infringement, not past infringement.

They said the lawsuit was for $500 MM!

According to Wikipedia the song's past royalties are estimated at over $550 million in total, but the lawsuit was for a share of future profits.

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