Ed Sheeran on creative cost of lawsuit: ‘Now I just film everything’ | Hacker News Reader

Ed Sheeran on creative cost of lawsuit: ‘Now I just film everything’

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132 pointshhs170 comments

Ed Sheeran’s filming of his creative process for legal purposes hints at a world where it doesn’t matter if you can improvise a great melody in the moment out of nothing—if they happen to overhear you playing it, any plagiarist with a camera can record a convincing sequence of iterations leading up to your brilliant riff and successfully sue you into oblivion.

I wish for a world where musicians make music because they like it more so than to profit; a world where improvising on someone else’s musical idea is considered homage, not theft. (That said, I imagine many bands whose music I like were in fact inspired by fame and riches of rockstars before them.)

The problem as I see it, when you get that famous, you look like a piggy bank to some people. Say you were walking down the street and tripped over someones foot, most likely you apologize and move on. But if Ed was walking down the street and tripped over the wrong persons foot, that person would quickly turn it into "I'm suing", "you hurt my foot", "I will need therapy", "I think I need to go the hospital". Now none of those things may be true but they are all in service of one goal: "I just had an interaction with someone super famous and super rich, let me see how much I can extract from them for my own gain".

That's because the US (and many other 'westernized' locales) have this shitty ideology where the individual matters more than other individuals or the collective.

It's why the US has so many scammers and fraudsters.

Edit: this is from my perspective living in the US. I'm not saying that the US has more scammers than other places, just a ton due to this western ideology. My comment about the ideology includes places such as Europe and possibly even China now

Both ideologies have their pros and cons. Take a look at Shanghai right now to see the downsides of when the collective matters more than the individual.

The ideology in China has become arguably 'westernized'

I agree with US has so many scammers and fraudsters part.

But don't agree with the reason. There are tons of scammers and fraudsters in Japan too. Look at those new religions, elderly scammers, the copyright situation in Japan is not any better. It doesn't matter whether the society is collective or individualistic.

I have lived and visited urban areas all over. The only place I was repeatedly robbed was in the Netherlands. I don’t really buy that there are more scammers in the US than anyplace else.

I take it you mean Amsterdam.

Haarlem.

>have this shitty ideology where the individual matters more than ... the collective

You do realize that the 20th century gave us very good reason to feel this way right?

The collective is not the same thing as an all-powerful state.

Two things:

1) An all powerful state is the logical conclusion of anyone who believes the collective is more important than the individual.

2) There were many benevolent all powerful states during the 20th century, but every single powerful state that believed in collectivism turned into a murdering hell hole filled with poverty and suffering where the poorest people risked their lives to flee to countries that believed the individual is more important than the collective.

>1) An all powerful state is the logical conclusion of anyone who believes the collective is more important than the individual.

That is an absolutely massive assumption not based in reality. Its possible to care about the system as a whole without thinking that there needs to be a centralized authority.

Indeed, caring for the society more than the individual and all-powerful governments are at best orthogonal, at worst inversely correlated.

Take Hong Kong for example. Citizens are mindful and care about the collective a lot, while having individual business to take care of. In daily life they are conscious about following the rules not because they are forced to but because if they didn’t the dense city would come to standstill within minutes. HK was never under a communist dictatorship.

Similar with Japan and Korea, which are not dictatorships and thus the case for an all-powerful government is very tough to make (a government that is democratically elected to enforce the will of the people is hardly an all-powerful government—it’s the people who are all-powerful in that scenario).

Meanwhile, over in the mainland China you get selfish drivers speeding through red lights, giant interchanges full of cars at standstill (presumably, due to such behavior), organized scam mafia employing trafficked children to “sell flowers” on subway stations, etc.

I’d argue that all-powerful government is in fact the supreme (but hidden) example of individualism where power-hungry individuals on top do everything to ensure they reign forever and cannot be replaced, everybody else be damned; and the rest of the country (whether consciously realizing it or not) follows the example set by their leaders.

A factor that might correlate with societies being less individualistic is ethnical homogeneity. I hope there are examples to the contrary, though.

You really think US has so many scammers and fraudsters? You obviously have no idea how rotten outwardly-civilized societies such as South Korea are. The scale of investment frauds and various other scamming operations taking place there are a constant plague, and the regulators are comically unprepared to deal with it time after time. South Korea is also a notoriously group minded society built on Confucius ideals and a strong sense of nationalism / ethnocentrism. I've no idea how you arrived at your theory, but it just sounds incredibly adsurd to me.

Whataboutism is poor form

How has South Korea changed in terms of culture and ideology over the last 100-200 years? Most places are adapting 'westernized' ideas because they appear profitable economically

My post is not whataboutism. It's pointing out the absolute dearth of evidence linking higher scamming rates to societies that value individualism.

A more proper name for this would be a "counter example", and it's something you should absolutely expect as a response when you put forth statements online.

Your "counter example" does nothing to address the westernization of business and corporate operations in SK

I see where the disconnect is. I have a hard time placing your bar for being considered "westernized". Can you cite me the names of some nations that you regard as falling below the threshold?

That's a good question. Many nations have been taking up these ideologies. Many indigenous communities on the other hand would likely qualify as 'nonwesternized' but in terms of entire nations? Possibly Saudi Arabia?

Once one asserts that the plural precedes the singluar, fresh vistas of tyranny open to whoever is in control.

And we experience tyranny of the individual at the expense of everyone else currently. This is why businesses destroy the environment, to save individuals money (corporations are individuals as well in this context). This is just one example and not all-inclusive

Balance is what's needed, not extremism

Strong concur. Questions:

1) Which is the greater danger: the group, or the individual? (In the long run, clearly the former.)

2) What is the difference between a public sector group and a private sector group?

3) How is the balance maintained?

1: I don't know if either are a greater danger necessarily. Numerous laws or regulations that are overall harmful could be enacted on the behalf if individuals the same as the group although one could assume that the group has greater power in their numbers. But on the same hand, there are a same number if individuals so that seems difficult to judge to me

2: the more I think about this, the less I know how to answer

3: Currently in the US, the balance seems to be derived through voting and lobbying but large groups seem to have more power in that case, although it could be said that many of these groups aren't working for the greater good (what I refer to as the society or collective) but instead serve individual or private interests of a few

It seems that we need more robust mechanisms to ensure balance in society from my perspective

You’re acting like the equivalent of patent trolls were trying to shake him down. But that’s not the case: it was other singer-songwriters. And if it really is a coincidence it’s quite the coincidence: https://youtu.be/8OrT52ZToUk

(Ignore the title of that video and just listen/watch the content).

Now there are obviously many common chord progressions in pop music, but that is a bit different than a much longer melody. Enough so that the courts agreed. You also have to wonder if the success of that melody was already imprinted on his subconscious.

What I don’t know is if him having original thought versus attempting to copy matters. If I publish a poem, and then you try to publish the same words even if you didn’t intend it to be a copy, then you’re still committing a copyright violation regardless of intent.

> What I don’t know is if him having original thought versus attempting to copy matters. If I publish a poem, and then you try to publish the same words even if you didn’t intend it to be a copy, then you’re still committing a copyright violation regardless of intent.

That's the case for, e.g., patents, but it is explicitly not how copyright works. Clean-room reproductions are valid defenses.

I'm unsure "clean-room defense" can apply to a melody from a top 10 song.

The court just has to weigh all the evidence. A lot of people have heard top-10 songs, so it would be hard to prove true independence. At an extreme though, if you could prove that somebody was perfectly isolated (e.g., if they had video evidence of not being exposed since that top-10 song was produced), a clean-room implementation from that individual would satisfy copyright law (mostly, give or take the as-of-yet mostly legally untouched minefield of deep-fakes). The only real question is where courts would draw a line between that kind of conclusive evidence and some random Joe pinky-swearing they produced the latest Taylor Swift hit in their garage and that it's accidentally kind of similar.

> Clean-room reproductions are valid defenses

No such defense exists. If you tried making your own Mickey Mouse cartoon, Disney would pursue a copyright infringement case against you and would almost certainly prevail. (There are some fair-use defenses permitted like parody, but mere “clean room reproduction” is not one of them.)

(IAAL but this is not legal advice. Consult a licensed attorney if you want legal advice - most definitely NOT HN.)

Which isn't to say that clean-room isn't a valid defense, but rather that it's unlikely that somebody would (or could) independently produce something very similar to Mickey Mouse -- especially since nearly everyone had seen Mickey Mouse, so such an implementation would probably be tainted. If you can prove that you independently created that idea then it's still a valid _copyright_ defense (not a lawyer, yada yada).

There's a lot of necessary legal analysis missing here, and independent creation of an idea plays no part in it. Copyright protects creative expressions (i.e., artistic works), not mere ideas.

I think what you’re trying to say is that independent creation would be a basis to deny a prima facie copyright infringement claim: there is no infringement because no copy has occurred. But that’s a different thing than an affirmative defense. A defense is something you raise after admitting the truth of the claim: you’re basically saying, “yes, I did it, but I’m justified because XYZ.”

> And if it really is a coincidence it’s quite the coincidence: > https://youtu.be/8OrT52ZToUk

Obviously these things are subjective, but I heard no resemblance at all. in that video. Until the second song played I had no idea what it was going to be, even though it was a hit when I was young and I know it well.

It's in a different key or something, and has different instrumentation, so it sounds different, despite the basic melody.

So we have a suit over two things that sound different because they sound similar? Hmm.

If you watch the video you'll see the two song samples in the latter half are in the same key and instrument.

That seems really far fetched. The original versions sound nothing alike to me. They don't have the same vibe at all either and don't give the same emotion.

The two passages are not, in my opinion, similar enough to insinuate copyright infringement. The only similarities are the general melodic contour and some (not all) of the chords. Even though the overall shape of the melodies is similar, they do have many differences, to the point where I would not say it is 'copied'. The chord progression under them is different, but most clearly the groove and delivery are not at all alike between the two pieces. Even though both Shape of You and No Scrubs are hit songs, I had never noticed the similarity until this. If this standard was enough to find copyright infringement, you could nail every third song on the charts somehow.

I’m a musician, composer, and occasional songwriter. I agree with this. I’d testify in court that this is not plagiarism or infringement in my opinion. Unfortunately people are suggestible. Tell them the melodies are the same, then play them, and people hear them as more similar than they are. It reminds me of that illusion where you play muttered speech with a caption and people “hear” the words in the caption.

Major respect to Elvis Costello going this route [0] in the recent Olivia Rodrigo media frenzies. "It’s how rock and roll works. You take the broken pieces of another thrill and make a brand new toy. That’s what I did."

[0]: https://twitter.com/ElvisCostello/status/1409567943520931847

I wish for a world where programmers code because they like it more so than to profit.

I don't make my money from copyright

This happens a lot already. Probably the best program code was written without compensation. There’s also that infamous OS that started as a hobby project and reportedly runs 70% of public servers on the Internet these days.

People who contribute to OSS have jobs to support themselves, but they also program outside of work, they enjoy doing it and they give away the results of their work for free. It’s puzzling but it turns out above certain point people don’t really care about making more and more money and start being motivated by purpose and desire to do something good.

Unlike music, there’re no money-hungry middlemen between those who enjoy writing software and those who want to run it.

So open source software?

Folks have to pay the rent somehow. Careers of passion are ripe for exploitation and burnout. Look at (American) teachers and game developers. That's not the model I want everyone to follow.

I believe it’s similar in music-related jobs. There’re always opportunities to earn money doing work for hire (scoring, mastering, arranging, performing), but they tend to not pay too well.

I wish for a world where carpenters hammer nails because they like it more so than to profit

For every happy coder, there's always a bunch of greedy managers and lawyers who control their output.

AFAICT you're living in that world. Just take a look at github. As of 2 years ago there were 128 million repos

https://towardsdatascience.com/githubs-path-to-128m-public-r...

And maybe it's just me but AFAIK the vast majority of repos are personal projects done for fun, not for profit. Even if that number is inflated because of forks I'd just wager the majority of original repos are projects for fun, not profit

> I wish for a world where musicians make music because they like it more so than to profit

You could say this about any profession. Doesn’t seem compatible with capitalism though.

Star Trek economy could be a solution here.

For this we would need replicators and massive energy sources. Federation economy works because all basic needs can be met with technology. Even then, there are races that use money and some items are rare. For instance, not everyone has access to a star ship-- so that has value as a commodity. Another example is latinum which can't be replicated.

The basic needs of everyone on earth can already be met with today’s technology and resources. We would however need a rational and equitable allocation, which is impossible with production motivated by profit.

Perhaps some hyperbole there. Profit is feedback. It all depends on how the profit is calculated. 'How many people benefit' would be a productive profit-motive.

You’re describing production motivated by need.

It is compatible − capitalism doesn't require you to profit more than you want.

True about profit. But it does require you to perhaps charge more than you want.

If you want your music to be available to a global audience, you need some funding or revenue to promote yourself and to travel to share your music live. Because the record labels and travel industry might not be willing to give away their services for free.

It actually doesn't require you to charge more than you want.

It only requires you to charge IF you want to do something that requires you to (global popularity). Having music globally "available" has no cost, I suspect you are referring to globally popular music. And I think it makes sense for that cost to be beared by the artist since they are the one benefitting and desiring it anyway; no point in asking other people (record labels / travel industry) to do that service for free.

It's not capitalism as much as human nature. People respond to incentives, be it social, monetary, or threat. Social only gets you so far, monetary is much better than force, and also produces better results

The majority of musicians likely play music because they like to and not because it’s profitable. It usually isn’t.

But most musicians don't do it on demand night after night for consumers.

I don’t see why that matters

I was getting at the fact that most musicians are not professionals.

it is fine to wish I wish for a world where musicians make music because they like it, and as you added, many do make music just for fun.

However, the musicians that that sing and dace on command even when they don't feel like it are a different category.

I think it is weird to expect someone to work when and where the customer wants, but also do it for fun and not for money

But who expects that?

Fans who go to shows, and most who listen to live music. People don't go to a venue and hope someone they like shows up. They want want to know beforehand, and are willing to pay the artist to show up even if they wouldn't want to otherwise.

Not sure if it matters. Soon, the creative process will be replaced by some algorithm by OpenAI, anyway, and you just type "catchy song in the style of Ed Sheeran".

I wish for a world where people who would deny others the opportunity to profit from their creations are themselves denied. Let programmers sell t-shirts.

Open-source software aside—if I publish a paid app, and later someone else borrows my idea and publishes a differently-branded paid app that does the same thing, and it becomes popular enough for me to notice, can I sue them? IANAL but pretty sure it’s a loud “not unless you have a patent that they violated”.

In music business, if person A publishes a song, and person B borrows that idea[0] and publishes a song that uses it or even alludes to it, and that song becomes popular, there’s a clear lawsuit against B. It’s like there’s an implicit patent of sorts on every melody. Isn’t it at least somewhat mind-boggling?

[0] Bonus points if person B actually wrote the song independently and/or earlier than person A, but wasn’t running cameras to film the process.

> Open-source software aside—if I publish a paid app, and later someone else borrows my idea and publishes a differently-branded paid app that does the same thing.

This isn’t analogous to the Ed Sheeran situation though. The analogy to the Ed Sheeran situation wouldn’t be someone copying software wholesale (obviously wrong) but another Twitter client using the ‘pull down to refresh timeline’ mechanism on an iOS app.

Twitter was granted a patent on "pull down to refresh". Patent law is a different areas of intellectual property law from copyright.

The songwriting case is a copyright case. The analogy for Twitter would be copying source code, but not with full fidelity. If it's not "obviously wrong" that's because it's not verbatim; it's up to the court to decide whether there is enough similarity between the two for infringement to have occurred.

> IANAL but pretty sure it’s a loud “not unless you have a patent that they violated”.

If they have violated patents, trademarks, or copyright, you can sue them for that. For example, if they reused your copy, or if they reused your proprietary source code.

But you've constructed your argument around the "differently-branded" idea, suggesting that there is no copyright case. The analogue in music would be a different song. You can't sue Rihanna over Umbrella for ripping off Stairway To Heaven, because they are different.

And yet, you don't argue with that copyright lawsuits over software apps should be outlawed.

You won't deny programmers the right to sue, the way you would deny that right to musicians. Programmers are allowed to be first class citizens in your world, while musicians are relegated to second class.

> It’s like there’s an implicit patent of sorts on every melody.

That's incorrect. This is the realm of copyright. Patent laws are not relevant.

I mean if you write an app that walks and talks like my app, without stealing my source, it is fair game and I can do nothing. Unless I explicitly patented some specific aspects that you also implemented, or you stole my branding, or I can prove you stole my source code, you did not violate a single thing.

Music business, meanwhile, behaves as if everything was patented by default.

You keep saying "patented" and it keeps being wrong. This is the realm of copyright.

And yeah, if nobody violated any copyrights, patents, or trademarks of yours, you can't sue them.

The analogy in music is: if nobody violated any copyright, patents, or trademarks of yours, you can't sue them.

In other words, there is no difference. The fundamentals are exactly the same.

Yet you're trying to equate a situation where you explicitly spell out that no infringements of any kind occurred, with a situation where copyright infringment is alleged to have occurred.

Exactly. The situation is the same fundamentally, yet copyright gone wild makes music business behave like software business would if everything was patented all the time.

If you literally clone HN or LinkedIn (but call them something else), no one can sue you without having to prove you violated a patent or stole the source. No copyright violation occurred despite two identical products.

If you compose a harmonic progression that bears semblance to one in a song by a famous pop star, you can and will be sued. You are guilty of violating copyright because your music sounds similar. Even if you call your song something else and the lyrics, the arrangement, the instruments used, everything is different. Even if no one can prove you stole any intellectual property. Etc.

And the icing on the cake, now apparently even if you were first and they were inspired by your melody they still win if you did not bother to record your creative process while they faked a convincing recording of how they “came up” with your tune “on their own”.

> If you compose a harmonic progression that bears semblance to one in a song by a famous pop star, you can and will be sued. You are guilty of violating copyright because your music sounds similar.

You are only liable for copyright infringement if a court decides there is sufficient similarity.

Similarity of harmonic progression on its own is highly unlikely to be enough to persuade a court unless that harmonic progression is highly distinctive — there will probably need to be other contributing characteristics in order to persuade the court.

This test is exactly the same as with copyright infringement for the written word. In both situations, a court must make a judgment call, and persuading a court that infringement has occurred is nowhere near as trivial as you are suggesting.

It is hypocrisy to deny musicians the right to defend their intellectual property that others in different industries enjoy, on the bogus basis that infringement is different for music.

Lawsuits we’re talking about involve incredibly common harmonic and melodic progressions[0], but that’s besides the point.

Key aspects of software—the way it looks and works—aren’t auto-copyrighted (right?), even if they are quite original and unique. Many common UI (timeline, photo grid, etc.) or API patterns arise because they spring to multiple minds because they simply make sense in given moment in given shared context; just like that arbitrary melodic progressions spring to mind as you play, and yes who’s there to say it didn’t spring to someone else’s mind before.

As someone both into music and software production, I personally will continue finding the notion of harmonic progressions or melodies as automatically copyrighted (or even copyrightable) as weird. There’s just so much more than that to any song or music piece, and making a field of creative passion a legal minefield doesn’t seem conducive to its thriving.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Fh_fc80KMs (this was apparently settled out of court)

> any plagiarist with a camera can record a convincing sequence of iterations leading up to your brilliant riff and successfully sue you into oblivion.

Except

1) The lawsuit failed.

2) It's not enough to show prior art. Ignorance of the other creation is a defense against copyright infringement.

3) Iterations are irrelevant.

> it doesn’t matter if you can improvise a great melody in the moment out of nothing

No one can. All great musicians are inspired by earlier performances.

> I wish for a world where musicians make music because they like it more so than to profit

Wish granted: that's the world you live in.

The vast majority of musicians don't profit from their art. Ed Sheehan was sued in part because he's part of the tiny, tiny percentage of musicians who do profit from their art.

The problem described here is so niche among musicians as to be irrelevant to most of them. It's only a problem for those at the very, very top of the musical earning scale.

I'd wager that less than a thousandth of a percent of the musicians on earth have to realistically worry about this.

Copyright prohibits copying. It doesn’t cover independent creation. Recording the creative process helps to show the songs we’re created independently.

It would be nice to see courts make that judgment affirmatively.

This is an incorrect oversimplification of copyright’s protections. Copyright is a bundle of exclusive rights, among them, the creation of derivative works.

(IAAL but this is not legal advice. Please consult a licensed attorney if you need legal advice, NOT HN.)

A derivative work is a work based on another work. If you can, indeed, prove independent creation-- you should be clear of copyright.

But even recording your development can't prove independent creation, after all you could have heard the other work off camera and merely be faking it.

> I wish for a world where musicians make music because they like it more so than to profit

Plenty of people still do this. Probably more than ever before. Megastars like Ed Sheeran are outliers.

Infamous interview with Gene Simmons where he says the made a rock band, KISS, to get rich and get laid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNxuL-uIaTo

I don't see how filming proves that you didn't steal a melody. You could've memorized it off camera and just pretended you invented it on the spot.

> I don't see how filming proves that you didn't steal a melody.

What you think of as "proof" and what serves as "proof" in court are wildly different things, because court cases are largely decided on subjective merits. ie You aren't likely to be part of the jury, so hypothetical situations are simply that.

I can imagine observing a live narrative that looks improvised and creative. At that point, I'm not sure what other material difference there needs to be for me. This kind of decision isn't a life-or-death situation, so the bar is lower than absolute certainty.

> court cases are largely decided on subjective merits

Would add that civil cases are tried on a preponderance of evidence standard, not beyond reasonable doubt.

Yes. Right now these cases are essentially coin flips -- will this specific judge think that these two songs sound similar enough that there's a >50% likelihood that the defendants had heard the plaintiff's work? Which is why in the long term the only solution for lawsuits like this is to change the law so that mere melodic/rhythmic similarity is not sufficient to file suit.

The best the video could do is support the defense around conscious intent. It’s not proof of that as you say because it could be a ruse (although a ruse may have discoverable evidence that makes doing it a really risky immoral gambit). It wouldn’t do anything to claims of subconscious intent (or even an honest mistake that still has liability under copyright) although the potential damages and settlement may be smaller in that case.

What would copyright infringement look like?

Composerily[1] on YouTube is well known for recreating popular songs (example [2]) or making songs in the style of a particular artist (example [3]). Unfortunately the full version of the recreations generally can't be included on YouTube because it would trigger the copyright infringement algorithm. Sometimes Composerily changes the song just enough to avoid the algorithm detecting the similarities, and sometimes Compersily will just provide short samples of the recreation. Through these videos you do get a better sense of how Western pop music is composed and why the choice of a chord progression isn't going to be deemed copyright infringement on its own.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8Ujq8PBm0MWraaXd8MsIAQ

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTdmLoXled4

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5a4lntstgI&t=326

Intellectual property law is so fucked.

Once the artsy thing you did is out there, it is no longer yours. Period.

Do you feel the same way about a novel machine? Once the mechanism is out in the world, it is no longer yours?

Yes.

If you can't protect the trade secret with secrecy, then it doesn't deserve to be secret. Legal protections have shown, time and time again, that they fuck over inventors, creatives, and artists, in favor of encumbents seeking to consolidate power.

The current environment strangles remix culture nearly to death. To say nothing of greedy artists claiming ownership of a concept of notes. I thought you couldn't copyright an idea?

There is a reason patents are limited, and that public display of an invention pre-patent can be prior art. The reality is that once ideas are out in the world the creator is no longer in control (which is why we have to create systems of control via laws).

“He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lites his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.” --Thomas Jefferson

This is a philosophical argument depending in your stance regarding ideas being something that can be owned or not. Machines or music doesn't really make any difference.

Right. I remember a lawsuit from one of my favourite guitar players (Joe Satriani) vs Coldplay because of some part of the melody of a song... I thought that was so stupid. Both are great artists and composers. What if someone took a piece of your song and used it to inspire something new? That's called progress...

Plus, theres like only so much you can do with western music, and pop music in particular loves to lean on the same motifs over and over and over again. There is and will be compositional overlap. That anyone thinks they own anything in that space is absurd.

For folks suggesting that this won't prove you didn't plagiarize a melody somewhere else then "invent" it on video:

Melodies are often revised. Capturing the evolution of a melody may show that the final version emerged from an earlier version which bears less resemblance to the source alleged to have been copied.

If in fact the melody was plagiarized, then the video evidence might actually document an earlier version where the resemblance was closer. But I expect that Sheeran believes he is not plagiarizing and thus doesn't fear this possibility.

More likely, there is only an accidental resemblance between melodies that had no shared origin. In such a case, presenting the creative history would help in a court case.

If the plagiarism was intentional, it would be trivial for the artist to simply not document the portions of the process which would reveal it. He could work out his version from the original whistling to himself in the shower, then go to the studio and start playing other random melodies that he morphs over the course of a few hours into his intended version.

Of course, "proof" is beyond the point in these sort of civil trials, but even taken as merely persuasive evidence, I'm not very impressed.

> If the plagiarism was intentional

I doubt that any of the high-profile melodic plagiarism cases has ever arisen from some moustache-twirling evil musician deliberately ripping off a melody. That's suicidal, and not guaranteed to produce a hit anyway. They all start with someone plagiarizing subconsciously.

If in fact the (unintential) plagiarism was real and the video record reinforced that, there would be incentive to withold the video evidence. But manufacturing evidence is extremely dangerous. It's like trying to spoof a journal from years ago — all it takes is one slip-up and you're doomed.

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 possibility for any particular sort of plagarism.

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.

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."

Preserving musical history seems like a nice side effect? If they make a documentary, they'll have more footage.

Ed Sheeran is not the Beetles. That he's making this footage out of fear of litigation should bother you

> That he's making this footage out of fear of litigation should bother you

I don't see how it protects him at all from litigation. But why would that bother me. Scientists use dated journals with unremovable pages to achieve a similar effect. Why would it bother me that he wants to document his process as legal protection?

> Ed Sheeran is not the Beetles.

I don't know what you mean by "not the Beetles"? The latest documentaries were about Queen, Elton John, and I think the Ramones. There hasn't been a Beetles movie since when?

Peter Jackson just released a new Beatles documentary last year in Disney Plus. That's a major director covering a major band on a major streaming platform. It was big news.

https://www.indiewire.com/2021/11/the-beatles-get-back-revie...

There hasn't been a Beetles movie since when?

Peter Jackson documentary last year!

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles:_Get_Back

Yesterday movie 2 years ago

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Yesterday_(2019_film)

We can't get rid of them - they're so infused in the culture you haven't even noticed!

Making videos is a lot easier than it used to be so it doesn't seem like an unreasonable professional obligation to document your work in this way.

Imagine how people would react here if they were forced to film themselves every time they program something at work.

He's far more financially successful than they were at the same point of their careers. If that's the cost of doing business, it doesn't even begin to move the needle.

Ed Sheeran has been actively producing music for twice as long as the Beatles though. I'm not sure Ed Sheeran was as popular as the Beatles at 8 years in…

Popularity has nothing to do with it. There's far more marketing opportunities and the money for concerts is insane comparatively to back when they were relevant, even considering inflation.

Wouldn’t be Hacker News without a pedantic comment, so here you go. It’s actually spelled “Beatles.”

I suppose he’s neither one.

I feel like it would be possible to write software to tell artists if a song is in danger of copyright infringement of other registered songs. Either by analyzing the raw audio like Shazam does or by feeding the software the transcribed notes on sheet music or something similar.

But I guess here the issue was more about whether or not the infringement was intentional.

> I feel like it would be possible to write software to tell artists if a song is in danger of copyright infringement of other registered songs.

I'm trying to decide if you (as a joke) plagiarized this idea from the popular TV show Silicon Valley.

Edit: https://youtu.be/sj9hesuQV6s?t=49

Oh no haha I haven't seen that episode (or forgot about it). That would have been a clever joke though.

Probably forgot as it’s the first episode.

It's hard to imagine creative people gathered around a computer waiting for it to judge their newest creation as sufficiently original or not. I imagine the scene would make a great intro for a dystopian sci-fi novel.

How does filming “song writing sessions” help here? A songwriter could be grocery shopping and hear a tune they like and copy it. I don’t understand how filming just sessions will protect anyone.

I think the key is the progression. If you see how a melody is formed, then it’s more likely to be organic. If you are just copying something, there is less of a progression as when you’re video recording, it’s already almost “done”.

That doesn't answer the question. You could be out buying groceries, hear a good tune, and then pretend you invented it in steps when you get back to your studio.

Just like we pretend we figured out the tortoise/hare algorithm for finding loops in linked lists at interviews.

Maybe if you were a mid-19th Century German composer it worked something like that. But that's just not how most songwriting works.

E.g., according to Mark Ronson:

1. Amy Winehouse casually spoke the following sentence in a conversation with Mark Ronson: "They tried to make me go to Rehab but I said, 'No, no, no.'"

2. Mark Ronson said, "That could be a song."

3. They went to the studio where Amy Winehouse played a 12-bar blues chord progression on the guitar and sang those lyrics (using a simple pentatonic scale).

4. Mark suggested to speed it up and do a throwback Motown-era arrangement.

5. Done.

Unless they recorded their entire conversation, all you'd get is Winehouse sitting down with a guitar and singing the entire hook of the song.

If anything, anxiety-fueled "song formation" recordings will just cause songwriters to waste time going in the wrong direction. That is, they'll take their ready-to-go phrases or sub-phrases of music and sing fragments into the mic, in an order that seems as if they are constructing what they already have formed in their ear.

Edit: clarification

It discourages the ones suing because they'll be less sure they'll win.

This all only matters for people trying to ‘compose’ trivial melodies and make them into hits. Who are these people - everyone in pop industry.

But only few, like Max Martin, know how to devise a simple, yet original melody… and perhaps there are only that many of these riffs.

“Original” is a bit of a sham. There is a vanishingly small chance that any newly created work would actually be unique and new to the world. At the very least, all the usable chord progressions and listenable rhythms for pop have been discovered already.

This is really an absurd oversimplification.

Almost every great melody is "trivial".

And almost no original melody is actually original.

When I was young I couldn't understand why Vanilla Ice couldn't use Bowie's bass sequence from Under Pressure. Those are different songs!

As long as you do not go full Pierre Menard songwriters should be able to "steal" from each other.

I miss the late 80s where sampling was supreme - Paul's Boutique, the KLF, pretty much all early house and techno songs heavily sampling from each other.

I do wonder if there is any type of underground scene where this type of experimentation is still happening. Obviously it is near impossible in AI policed venues such as Youtube.

> There’s the George Harrison point where he said he’s scared to touch the piano because he might be touching someone else’s note.

Here's how wonderfully copyright incentivises creativity.

And those guys are pros. Imagine what new people might feel.

Utterly unrelated, but it’s fascinating how the word film has gone from “putting something on celluloid film” to “recording audiovisual data”, just like tar has gone from “tape archive” to “archive of file(s)” and car/cdr have gone from “address part of the register” and “decrement part of the register”, to first part of the cons pair and last part of the cons pair. As technology develops, words lose their meaning as mnemonics of technological underpinnings and become signifiers of the functionality of a technology.

I really passionately hate the “there’s only 12 notes” argument. There’s “only” 26 letters in the alphabet but you don’t see people arguing that your bound to write identical poems to others by random chance

There are obviously more to it than that with music. But I just feel like whoever tries to argue “few notes”=“random copying is common” just don’t understand just how big the space of possible combinations of a few common building blocks is.

I mean there are only so many notes, the combination must have been all covered by now, right? So some overlap between songs is to be expected I assume.

I think that depends a lot on what your definition of "close" is. If you have notes and lengths, you can generate a fairly big space just from that. I'm no music expert but you could ask whether transposing the notes up and down the scale counts as a new "thing", along with any number of other ways of generating a new tune from an existing one.

Every 8-note, 12-beat melody combo is in CC0: https://mashable.com/article/music-melody-algorithm-midi-cop...

Thought experiment: say to the songwriters accusing Ed Sheeran: we are going to use software to evaluate all the songs you wrote against all other songs in existence. If we find at least one overlap, of any of your songs with any other song in existence that was released before, of the same or longer length as claimed plagiarism, you are getting sued.

I wonder if this would change their attitude to the problem.

So now instead of paying for getting sued you also are going to have to pay people $200+ hour to go through hundreds of hours of video and transcribe the contents for a court to show that you didn't steal a song, and in the end they will use the exact same method to determine if you did or didn't than evaluate the evidence that you thought would somehow be beneficial.

Can someone explain the similarities between Shape of You, No Diggity, Feeling Good, and No Scrubs?

I am apparently literally tone deaf in some sense lol

Apparently he was taken to court in March 2022 for a song that was released in 2017. Anyone else think this is very quick result from the justice system? Or did he have this hanging over his head for years before it actually went to court?

Per Wikipedia [1], legal proceedings started in 2018, and the actual court hearing stage happened over the past month. It's not clear how much of that time was waiting for whatever reason, versus ongoing back-and-forth motions and such.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_of_You#Copyright_trial

Plus COVID killed the legal system for 2 years. I just went to court on a case yesterday and the judge brought up the docket and we realized the last time we filed anything was 2019.

Not sure if this is the final result. With tens of millions as the prospective payout, an appeal is always on the horizon

The parts in question also admittedly sound quite similar.

At some point for professionals the cost of continual recording is relatively low.

However; once you have a policy of doing it gaps in the recording could come back to bite you.

Shape of You is amazing. Sheeran virtue signals about how he prefers to pick up women in bars (not clubs, heaven forfend), the whole song is about how he objectifies his partner, and the music video has him hitting on a woman at the gym while she’s alone and no one is watching.

The only way it could possibly be more unpleasant is if he worked in a stanza about how he has mastered the art of picking his nose and eating it while in a moving vehicle.

How is this person so popular? Is it because he eats with his hands and with his mouth open while on a date.

> he prefers to pick up women in bars (not clubs, heaven forfend), the whole song is about how he objectifies his partner, and the music video has him hitting on a woman at the gym

Where are you supposed to pick up women? Is there a special club you have to join?

Falling in love outside of this club of yours is disgusting?

You can pick a CC0 melody from this list:

> The goal: to copyright every single combo in order to give it to the public so musicians and artists can use melodies without worrying about copyright issues down the line.

> The algorithm created by the two programmer-musicians can put together every single 8-note, 12-beat melody combo.

https://mashable.com/article/music-melody-algorithm-midi-cop...

That's not going to hold up in court. They cannot claim a copyright to exhaustive computer generated corpus. Even if they could, it doesn't make sense. You don't get to ignore every books copyright just because you read a dictionary.

This isn’t reading the dictionary, it’s similar to generating new unique sentences and claiming copyright on that. Right?

It's creating 12 long sequences from 12 notes. That sounds far closer to a dictionary than anything else.

> They cannot claim a copyright to exhaustive computer generated corpus.

And why not? For example, a UK law specifically mentions "computer-generated" work:

> If the work is computer-generated, copyright expires fifty years after the work is made.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright,_Designs_and_Patents...

Is there any law you based the word "cannot" on?

Is there a limitation on the extent of such copyright claims a person can make? Even though physically one couldn't write it on paper during one's lifetime?

In the US, you cannot claim copyright on any work devoid of any creative intent. A phone book is not copyrightable, but the specific fonts and organization can make a given phone book copyrightable. Organized trivia isn't copyrightable, but the expression is. There's no expression with an extensive corpus.

It also wouldn't matter. The existence of the corpus doesn't change the copyrightability of other works. You'd still have to convince a jury it was more likely you were inspired by the corpus than the hit song whose melody is identical.

Relevant: https://youtu.be/sfXn_ecH5Rw

Live by the sword, die by the sword. You can't make a living off of a strong copyright system and not expect there to be zero downsides.

Yeah, I did think that a few successful court cases amounted to not much more than a bit of wealth redistribution. I'm hardly shedding tears for Mr Sheeran.

"Live by the blurry bureaucratic tornado, die by the BBT"

How Kafkaesque.

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

Most recording artists don't make their living off of a strong copyright system. The RIAA(/MPAA) cartels - who are the ones behind the strong copyright system - ensure that they get the bulk of the proceeds from recordings, and their distribution, and the protections provided by the copyright system. A lot of this comes from having subsidiaries that allow for music industry equivalents of "Hollywood accounting" to funnel the bulk of profits away from the people who actually make the works. Artists mostly make money from live performances and direct merch sales, which don't depend all that much on copyright.

There are maybe one or two unicorns (like Sheeran) who are so successful that they do make buckets of money - but they too serve the industry's ends. They can be pointed at to convince all the new artists trying to break into the biz that the contracts they're getting aren't really that bad, as they too could become the next Ed Sheeran if they try hard enough.

The system we have is not one designed by the artists in the music industry.

That statement is just blatantly illogical. It's like saying, "if you cook using heat, you can expect to burn yourself sometimes."

If you make a living under a strong copyright system, you should expect to be perfectly fine as long as you don't copy someone.

Sure, there can be weird exceptions, and as in any complex system, we should adjust the system over time to account for them, rather than immediately throwing out the whole system. For example, when a plane crashes, we don't rush to abolish the FAA, or to ban aviation.

Have you never burned yourself cooking? I'm confused at your counterexample.

I haven't burned myself in any significant way (i.e. seriously), but apologies for an admittedly imperfect example.

Here is a better example: "Live by cooking, expect to die by getting burned." That's the kind of argument OP is making and it's unsound.

There's a giant difference between randomly hitting on the same melody as an existing massive hit AND then re-using that melody as the first hook in your own song. And Scrubs by TLC is a massive cross-generational hit that Sheeran can't claim not to know without making himself look like a tourist in the pop world.

Sheeran's lifting was so blatant I assumed he was intentionally quoting it. Doing that is fine - and it happens regularly, especially in rap and R&B - and is even encouraged when there is overlap in the publishing rights holders (label, publishing company) with the original writer. But royalties should and do follow. So I'm just baffled that he still thinks he is being taken advantage of here.

Fwiw, a much less fair copyright infringement case was the Tom Petty vs Sam Smith case around "Won't Back Down" and "Stay with Me." The musical similarity there was much smaller and there are likely scores of gospel songs that use a similar melody.

It is worth noting that some melodies have a sort of institutional quality -- you can hear them so much they fade into the background of everything, and you become sort of blind to the fact that you "stole" them, and for it to be only blindingly obvious once pointed out.

It's actually bizarrely possible he lifted it without realising, and even that other people approved it without realising. Because the tiniest shift of context can make people blind to the obvious.

When I was learning to play a new (to me) instrument -- an unusual fretless acoustic instrument -- I worked through a little arrangement of a very, very well known pop song, to teach myself a bunch of chords, progression moves and techniques. I slowed it down, changed its rhythm slightly. But to me it was utterly recognisable.

I played a recording to several people who knew pop really well and nobody spotted it. Even though I gave the arrangement a name that was a clear pun on the original title.

Once I pointed it out, everyone spotted it. Because it's obvious. But only if you're looking for it.

The reason it wasn't easy to spot is the shift in context. Because without crucial elements of context, it's actually only a chord sequence. (Though I really did leave a _lot_ of it in)

"Down Under" (1981) and "Kookaburra" (1932) is another good example of that. I can't say that I would ever have noticed the riff without someone pointing it out. And "Kookaburra" is a song that I first heard in grade school, so I'd argue that it has that institutional quality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kookaburra_(song)#Copyright_st...

It's an extreme example but you might enjoy this website, which is one of the low-key-greatest things on the web:

http://www.folias.nl/

A lot of the lawsuits that come up will I think end up resolving in this way -- pointing out that there are borderline-ancestral components to melodies and it's possible to come up with things that sound similar despite conscious effort not to.

"Sheeran's lifting was so blatant I assumed he was intentionally quoting it."

This BBC article features a side-by-side comparison of the songs. People can made their own mind whether they think it amounts to plagiarism. (Scroll down the middle of the page to the video in the article)

Ed Sheeran: Copyright case was about honesty, not money: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-61026308

I don't think the claim of plagiarism holds at all. Also, it was Sheeran who brought the case to court to clear his name of the accusation (not the other party).

Musicians and composers have always been influenced by other music artists. This is particularly true for orchestral music (classical works or soundtracks).

Here's a 1941 film soundtrack - listen to the first minute. I'm guessing at least 95% of HN readers will guess which other film soundtrack was probably influenced by this. Inspiration, coincidence or plagiarism?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf47W9rXzRM

I think that would actually be a good field for machine learning: To separate sound-alikes from copycats.

It always bothers me that these claims are often about a simple melody, while arrangements or rhythm patterns seem to be fair game - if I would use the drum patterns of "Smells like teen spirit" in my song I don't think Grohl could claim anything. But if I would go "Coding in my Pyjamas" with the melody of "Living on a Prayer" I'd have Bon Jovi's lawyers in my mailbox in a heartbeat.

But that being said, I think the copyright overall should be a lot more relaxed with a lot more leeway for creatives because the status quo is just ridiculous.

The recent trend in copyright rulings for music amount to a kind of enclosure of a traditional commons, which should be regarded as a bigger issue than it is. There are entire genres of music based on the adaptation and elaboration of existing melodies. This is an ancient practice, and copyright law has historically fit into gaps in that practice (for instance, covering modern innovations like printed sheet music and recordings), rather than totally overriding it.

The law should err on the side of permitting copying. There's enough IP in lyrics, complete arrangements, recordings, etc. (where copying can be clearly demonstrated) to protect the interests of artists.

So make it legal to re-arrange a song with no profit-sharing?

It would be better than the status quo, but I get your point. I think there's a way to set an objective standard that protects extended compositions (film scores, etc.) while not also making jazz illegal.

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