The Blurred Lines Copyright Verdict Is Bad News for Music | Hacker News Reader

The Blurred Lines Copyright Verdict Is Bad News for Music

eff.org

24 pointstbirdz12 comments

"Musicians will have to think twice before creating any new songs that evoke the feel of the music that inspired them in their youth."

That wasn't the issue of the case and the EFF is being shitty by pretending that it is - the "recording" is what evokes the feel / vibe, but the case was about the composition. There's a big, big difference. That's why, in the courtroom, the jury was NOT allowed to listen to the recordings back-to-back. They were only allowed to listen to the SHEET MUSIC played on a piano.

So, what they concluded is that the music was infringing - not that "Oh dear it sounds too funky!" or "Gee we better rule against the Gaye family to make sure nobody ever sounds like Jimi Hendrix again." If imitating a style was actual copyright infringement I could rattle off a list so long that your eyes would roll into the back of your head - but that ain't what the case was about, and the EFF's take on it is pure shill bullshit.

You want a decent discussion of the case? Go read over at Complete Music Update. Chris was surprised at the verdict, but at least tracked the case properly:

http://www.completemusicupdate.com/article/gaye-family-win-b...

This is a good step. Things have to get bad enough to force any improvements. When monied interests feel the pain of overzealous copyright laws, only then will we see improvements.

You have too much faith in the "things have to get better before they get worse" myth. The major record labels, which hold the rights to most music from the last few decades, will simply agree not to sue each other. It's in their best interests. But surely they will sue the pants off independent artists who pose a threat.

In a way it is almost funny that such an agressive industry hasn't stepped upped their game. Why not introduce patents on instrumentation or sound design?

Just imagine how much money one could have made if you could patent "a kick drum triggering the side chain compressor on a saw-wave bassine"

Oh please, the intro to "Blurred Lines" went way, way beyond simply referencing "Got to Give it Up." I would have been disappointed if the ruling HADN'T gone the way it did.

Sam Smith was enough of a gentleman to admit his mistake and come to friendly financial terms with Tom Petty. It's too bad Alan Thicke couldn't do the same...he deserves the ruling.

The intro is not even close. These are two very different songs with very different baselines.

Just flicking between the two - either I'm completely tone deaf, or I just don't get what you mean.

He says "everybody get up"? Is that what you mean?

I think you mean Robin Thicke. But now I have the theme to Growing Pains stuck in my head, so thank you for that. :)

The only thing Sam Smith's song has in common with Tom Petty's is a chord progression and a vaguely similar melody. Compare that with 12 bar blues, where every song has the exact same progression, and limited melodic possibilities. In fact, there are thousands of songs guilty of the same crimes Smith's is accused of, and none of them were put on trial. Smith wasn't a gentleman, but a coward.

Blurred Lines has even less in common with it's inspiration. It does what music has been doing since the beginning - updating the best ideas of the past with a twist from the present. If writing a song like Blurred Lines is against the law, I don't see how music can thrive.

Sure, I'll compare the Smith/Petty thing with 12 bar blues because I can play 12 bar blues in my sleep and have covered about a dozen Petty songs to date.

12 bar blues is, essentially, a musical metronome. 12 bar blues inherently does not have a melody. It's an assembled grouping of public domain chords set in a public domain tempo. The point of the musical metronome of 12 bar blues is for the melody line to be added. That's what differentiates "Stormy Monday" from "Cold Shot" from "Steel Mill" from "Who Do You Love."

By comparison, using a melody on top of a chord progression is what is called a "musical composition." In the case of the Smith/Petty situation, there was a noteworthy musical composition overlap. Do I think it was very strong? Not especially, but was it there? Yeah, it was.

That's what makes the Blurred Lines case so easy for me to understand - it wasn't about the song taking a "feel" or "sound" - which it most certainly did - it was about the song taking the structural components in the form of progression and melody and trying to lift them under the guise of doing something new. That's not legally protected, and I think the jury got it right.

I totally see how music can thrive - now, if I come up with a cool new pop song, some sticky fingered producer can't simply come along and song-jack me. I can be inspired by Jimi Hendrix, just like Stevie Ray Vaughan. I can be inspired by Dimebag Darrell, but there's no way that I'd go out and try to re-work "Floods" or "Cowboys From Hell" and pass it off as my own work. Music has been around longer than the internet, longer than even the written word.

I think it's foolish to say "Oh music is in danger!" when the reality of the situation is actually "Oh the music business of making profits is in danger!" The former is certainly not true with the advent of new music technologies. The latter is fundamentally threatened by the former, and I'm perfectly fine with that.

A composition's more than a melody and a progression. It's about the arrangement, the rhythm, even the words. If two songs share a lot of the same elements, they can sound similar. But sharing just two elements isn't the same as swiping a song. Stay With Me has the same chords as Won't Back Down, and it has a similar 6 note sequence in the Melody. But the rest of the melody is very different. And the tempo, voicing, arrangement, words, all contribute to make Stay With Me an original composition. Nobody confused the two songs until Petty's lawyers pointed it out.

I was using the blues as an easily available example of musical borrowing. You seem to think different rules should apply to blues songs than to "compositions." Blues songs are compositions. They have melodies. Their chord progression is just as common the one used in Stay With Me.

You're incorrect about Blurred Lines. The song did NOT take the progression and melody from the Marvin Gaye song. They have different progressions and melodies. What Blurred Lines took from Marvin Gaye was the drum beat. As a drummer, I can tell you thousands of songs use the exact same drum beat. Granted, this beat is pretty unique. But so is the Purdie shuffle, and to my knowledge, Bernard Purdie never sued John Bonham for Fool in the Rain.

Here's where you're right: It is foolish to say "Music is in danger." But what I said was that it will be harder for music to thrive. Look what patent trolls are doing to the tech industry. If we agree that having the same drumbeat is plagiarism, the same thing could happen to music.

Yeah I could totally hear it from the first couple listens - the fact that the jury made the award without even listening to the recordings, just the sheet music being played should put a big exlamation mark on the validity.

Apparently, on the stand, Pharrell even admitted that the bassline is fundamentally the same. He routinely said it took him "about an hour" to put the song together, and personally, I find that says a lot about the genesis of the song. It's one thing to use customary verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-verse-chorus-verse and put it in, say, the key of D, but some of the best wizards in the business still have to put a bit of elbow grease in to make a hit. "Blurred Lines" sounded like a kareoke version to me, straight up.

I think the Sam Smith thing was a lot less clear cut than this one, but after hearing the tweaked sound comparison, I can understand why everybody just wanted it to get solved and go away.

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