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None of those are copyrightable elements.

Nor is the concept of "style", because it has no recognisable legal or musical definition.

Musical copyright exists primarily in lyrics and melody for the writing ("publishing") component, and in a specific reproducible recording for the mechanical distribution component (which can include the entire song, or a small sample).

Elements that cannot usually be copyrighted include: vocal stylings, bass lines, production and engineering tricks, chord sequences, rhythms, arrangement structures.

Sometimes, very rarely, any of these can be considered distinctive enough to be the primary element that defines a song. But that's a very tough case to argue, and most suits that try it fail spectacularly.

In fact a lot of pop is made by knowingly and deliberately copying elements from various source songs and mixing them up to create a new song.

So there is absolutely no practical way this ruling can stand. If it did, it would open the industry to a wave of law suits that would reduce it to chaos.

I agree, which is why I used the undeniable existence of similarities between these two songs to lay out the absurdity of the idea lisper was floating.

> a lot of pop is made by knowingly and deliberately copying elements from various source songs

One of the defining characteristics of "pop" music is the reuse of major structural elements like the primary harmonic progression (e.g. the infamous "4 chords"[1]). Listeners that do not have a lot of music theory knowledge and experience can still follow along with the "plot" of the song because it reuses simple structures they already know.

Appreciation of more complex harmonic structure and other unique features requires a lot more experience with complex types of music theory. As with all art/writing, knowing your intended audience is important. If the audience includes people without music experience/training, limiting the "vocabulary" top what they know is absolutely necessary.

For a very good explanation of this that includes examples, see this[2] video essay.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M33cRNx3ohI

In the case of Blurred Lines, wasn't Pharrell forced to admit that he was listening to the Marvin Gaye song, around the time of the recording of Blurred Lines?

That doesn't prove causation on it's own, but it does seem to blur the lines of such absolutist statements as those you have made.

> it does seem to blur the lines of such absolutist statements as those you have made.

I could not disagree more. Again, we're talking about copyright, and copyright covers a specific expression of an idea. The fact that Pharrell was listening to an earlier, similar work is irrelevant, because listening to an earlier work around the time you wrote a new work doesn't mean your work is the same as the earlier work, any more than eating pizza around the time you wrote a new work means your work is literally a pizza.

> That doesn't prove causation on it's own

I think you're using the wrong framework here; this isn't a reverse engineering case. We don't need to prove that the authors of "Blurred Lines" had been exposed to "Got To Give It Up"; it's so popular and influential we can just assume it. What needs to be proven is that "Blurred Lines" contains copywritable elements from "Got To Give It Up". And contrary to the majority opinion of the appeals court, it seems quite clear it doesn't.

It is ironic that you mention reverse engineering, because all of my arguments here are based in details of the most famous copyright infraction cases. The prevailing logic in this thread, whether correct or not, if that is even a quantifiable measure, is that copyright is exactly, precisely, without exception, "a specific expression of an idea", and by defining copyright so cleanly, they can similarly define what qualifies as infringement of copyright.

Where this idea meets stiff resistance is when it is contrasted with all of the precedent set by high profile infraction cases, such as George Harrison/The Chiffons, The Verve/The Rolling Stones, Ray Parker Jr./Huey Lewis.

Each of these, in its own way, demonstrates that there is always more context involved than people making simple absolutist statements would have you believe.

> bass lines

Queen would beg to differ.

> They have a similar beat.

So do thousands of other songs.

> They both have a similar style of walking bass line.

So do thousands of other songs.

> They both feature a male falsetto singer as the main melodic instrument.

No, that's not true. The lead vocal in GTGIU is falsetto throughout but BL isn't. It only has a few short falsetto phrases at the beginning. The rest is Robin Thicke's normal voice.

> The both feature a decent amount of random banter in the background.

No. The banter in BL is not random. It is very tightly orchestrated to fit in with the rest of the song, in stark contrast with GTGIU where the integration is much looser.

> The both feature the use of the chorus effect.

So do thousands of other songs.

So you hit three out of five. For any song you give me I can find you literally thousands of other songs that share three features with it.

The key fallacy you are promoting here is that pointing out instances of similarity is indistinguishable from arguing that this particular collection of similarities constitutes copyright infraction.

You first promoted this fallacy when you exclaimed "Wow. Those two songs are not even remotely similar." You then firmed up your misdirection by jumping to the conclusion that all music containing elements that can be construed as similar to elements of other songs will imminently become illegal under this interpretation.

Spotting this obvious farce, I decided to refute your fallacious argument in just the isolation of similarity, at which point you interpreted all of my points as my arguments as to why Blurred Lines violated copyrights.

I rest, assured that you will continue to promote this fallacy.

Copyright limits the right to copy a specific expression. Not a similar one, it has to be a specific one.

The very fact that the lyrics are completely different should absolutely disqualify this from even remotely touching copyright:

https://genius.com/Marvin-gaye-got-to-give-it-up-lyrics https://genius.com/Robin-thicke-blurred-lines-lyrics

That's not right — melodies are also subject to copyright, independent of the lyrics.

That's because the melody and the lyrics are recognized independently, each of them are still subject to the limits.

This hypothesis does not survive comparison with even the most well known copyright cases, such as George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord", which was found to infringe on The Chiffon's "He's so fine". Also, The Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony" is literally a case of sampling the symphonic performance of The Rolling Stones "The Last Time". Someone else had already stripped away the lyrics before The Verve infringed.

Just like most court cases where the losers frame a ruling against them the worst case scenario of a problem existing on a singular axis, there are extenuating circumstances in each of these that add far more complexity to an issue than the infringers want you to believe. In the case of sampling "The Last Time", there was an agreement in place where The Verve had gone through all of the proper channels to secure the rights to use samples. However, it was ruled they used too much of the sample, as the iconic string section playing the four root notes of the melody in the song is that sample. I don't have the actual agreement to reference, but suffice to say, the ruling took into consideration that the agreement described a far more limited use of the sample, instead of looping through the entire duration of the song, which is what happened.

Then, just to wave the whole complexity of it in your face as something that is impossible to nail down to any simple rules, there are the cases in the far opposite direction that seemingly should be infringing, but for whatever reason haven't found to be, or at least are specious enough given previous litigation by the offenders.

Neil Young sings in "Borrowed Tune": "I'm singing this borrowed tune, I took from the Rolling Stones. Alone in this empty room, too wasted too write my own"

Huey Lewis successfully argued that "I want a new drug" was infringed upon by the theme to "The Ghostbusters". I don't know the order of operations in regards to his suit, but Huey Lewis also released "Do You Believe in Love?", which is strikingly similar in musical nature, AND has nearly identical lyrics to Electric Light Orchestra's "Sweet Talking Woman":

ELO: "I was searching on a one way street, I was hoping for a chance to meet..."

HL&TN: " "I was walking down a one way street. Just a lookin' for someone to meet"

Most damningly, one would think, is that at various times in each song, there are three part harmonies that echo the verb of each stanza.

For any Godel Escher Bach fans out there, the application of copyright law seems to adhere to Godel's Incompleteness Theorem.

I don't know why people are downvoting you - the tracks are clearly quite similar, more so than the average pair of tracks sharing a genre. Of course that doesn't justify the ruling, but it seems quite obvious to me than one is at least inspired by the other? People "copy" elements of other tracks all the time, as homages and as rip offs, in good faith and in bad faith. To identify this pair as one of those examples should be uncontroversial, and shouldn't be construed as an endorsement of the ruling.

There are lots of big differences though, enough that I wouldn't call it a "rip off".

Because people prefer simple heuristics that allow them to make whatever claims of causation they want.

This concept has literally infected our general political discourse in the United States. Everything has been boiled down to SAT style analogies that essentially accumulate to the point where large groups of people have moved the goal posts of political discourse from "finding common ground" to "burning and salting each others ground as somewhere only an obvious fool would choose to stand"

Congratulations, you just described 99% of pop music.

99% of pop music is not sung in falsetto.

Cool!

Which steps should I take to patent an acoustic guitar?

I write software for a living, you'd probably be better off asking a patent attorney.

But as a software developer, I have developed a sense of exploring the arguments people use, to inspect their underlying mechanisms of convincing other people with those arguments.

Pleas to emotion, followed by extreme forecasts of the slippery slope, are usually the province of concern trolls and people who would generally just stop the conversation. People who truly experience those emotions, and accurately predict such a slippery slope don't resort to conflating all dissent with ignorance. They provide context that differentiates their arguments from concern trolling.