Is this plagiarism? (Update: jury says no) (3 Viewers)

[GW93]

I think the Pharrell/Thicke song sounded closer to Gaye than this, and I thought the “Blurred Lines” case was bullshirt.

Obviously the jury disagreed, and I’d never heard anything before now about “Blurred Lines” straight-up sampling “Got to Give it Up.”

 

[Optimus Prime]

 

[GrandAdmiral]

I think the Pharrell/Thicke song sounded closer to Gaye than this, and I thought the “Blurred Lines” case was bullshirt.

Obviously the jury disagreed, and I’d never heard anything before now about “Blurred Lines” straight-up sampling “Got to Give it Up.”

Problem with that is Pharrell talks too much...

On Friday, Gaye's family filed a motion in federal court alleging Williams lied under oath in the case. The motion points to a November GQ interview in which the "Happy" singer told producer Rick Rubin he "reverse engineered" Gaye's tune.

"We try to figure out if we can build a building that doesn't look the same, but makes you feel the same way," Williams said of his production process in the interview. "I did that in 'Blurred Lines,' and got myself in trouble."

'Blurred Lines' controversy resurfaces as Marvin Gaye's family claims Pharrell committed perjury

Marvin Gaye's family filed a motion arguing a 'GQ' interview proves the 'Happy' singer lied under oath in the 'Blurred Lines' copyright case.

ew.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

I just don’t have good ears for these type of things

It took me forever (like 15 years) to hear the similarities between Ghostbusters and that Huey Lewis song

I was driving and I want a new drug came on and the light bulb went off after years of saying ‘I don’t hear it’ I finally heard it

 

[GW93]

I don’t know if The Offspring shared credit for “Get a Job” with the Beatles, but it’s pretty obvious they lifted heavily from “Ob-La-Di.” There was some song by The Strokes recently that I thought borrowed heavily from Modern English. And “Blinding Lights” must surely owe a debt to A-Ha.

I still can’t hear the similarities between Sheeran’s song and “Let’s Get it On” other than they’re both make-out songs.

 

[V Chip]

The potential for huge judgements is just around the corner for the person/estate in blues who can establish the first recorded song after the copyright law covered recorded music...

And I'm surprised every country artist hasn't sued every other country artist.

 

[Optimus Prime]

Imagine a painter in their studio, preparing for an exhibition. The painter is working on a landscape. The sky is midnight blue. The valley is Kelly green. Mountains loom in the back, a spectacular hue reflecting off a brilliant sunset.

The painter reaches for vermillion and then pauses. Wait a second, they think: Does someone own the copyright to this shade of red? Am I going to get sued for this?

That would be crazy, right? Regrettably and amazingly, in the music industry the aesthetic equivalent of this thought process is no longer as insane as it sounds.

The question of who is allowed unfettered access to the metaphorical color palette of songwriting is currently on trial in federal court in Manhattan.

The English singer and songwriter Ed Sheeran has been accused of stealing his song “Thinking Out Loud” from Marvin Gaye’s 1973 classic “Let’s Get It On,” by the wife and descendants of that song’s co-writer, Ed Townsend.

The supposed evidence? A similar but not identical chord progression used by both songs as a principal motif.


In its simplest terms, a chord progression is a sequence of grouped notes arrayed in the chosen manner of a composer to create a melody, the scaffolding on which essentially all songs are built.


To complete the metaphor, the lawsuit and its implications are the musical version of saying to a painter: You’ll have to pay to use red. Someone else used it first.


The dispute boils down to whether the millennia-long continuum of music-making is a valuable tradition that should be vouchsafed for future generations of composers, songwriters and listeners, or alternatively that entire swaths of the fundamental vernacular of a human art form should be divided up and parceled out as intellectual property for the private use and profit of a few.

Even by the standards of our time, this attempt to consolidate and monetize the joy and wonder of personal expression is sinister on an almost shocking scale. The potential ramifications and reverberations verge on the unspeakable.


The case presented by the Townsend estate is nakedly cynical and designed to play on fundamental and understandable misapprehensions about how songs are created.

Much like math or writing, music is limitless in its possibilities but paradoxically required to repeat itself.

The notion of copyrighting any chord progression, let alone one as common as the one used in “Let’s Get It On,” makes no more sense than copyrighting the numbers six and 13 or the conjunctions “and” or “but.”……

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/02/ed-sheeran-marvin-gaye-lawsuit-chord-progression-copyright/

 

[guidomerkinsrules]

Imagine a painter in their studio, preparing for an exhibition. The painter is working on a landscape. The sky is midnight blue. The valley is Kelly green. Mountains loom in the back, a spectacular hue reflecting off a brilliant sunset.

The painter reaches for vermillion and then pauses. Wait a second, they think: Does someone own the copyright to this shade of red? Am I going to get sued for this?

That would be crazy, right? Regrettably and amazingly, in the music industry the aesthetic equivalent of this thought process is no longer as insane as it sounds.

The question of who is allowed unfettered access to the metaphorical color palette of songwriting is currently on trial in federal court in Manhattan.

The English singer and songwriter Ed Sheeran has been accused of stealing his song “Thinking Out Loud” from Marvin Gaye’s 1973 classic “Let’s Get It On,” by the wife and descendants of that song’s co-writer, Ed Townsend.

The supposed evidence? A similar but not identical chord progression used by both songs as a principal motif.


In its simplest terms, a chord progression is a sequence of grouped notes arrayed in the chosen manner of a composer to create a melody, the scaffolding on which essentially all songs are built.


To complete the metaphor, the lawsuit and its implications are the musical version of saying to a painter: You’ll have to pay to use red. Someone else used it first.


The dispute boils down to whether the millennia-long continuum of music-making is a valuable tradition that should be vouchsafed for future generations of composers, songwriters and listeners, or alternatively that entire swaths of the fundamental vernacular of a human art form should be divided up and parceled out as intellectual property for the private use and profit of a few.

Even by the standards of our time, this attempt to consolidate and monetize the joy and wonder of personal expression is sinister on an almost shocking scale. The potential ramifications and reverberations verge on the unspeakable.


The case presented by the Townsend estate is nakedly cynical and designed to play on fundamental and understandable misapprehensions about how songs are created.

Much like math or writing, music is limitless in its possibilities but paradoxically required to repeat itself.

The notion of copyrighting any chord progression, let alone one as common as the one used in “Let’s Get It On,” makes no more sense than copyrighting the numbers six and 13 or the conjunctions “and” or “but.”……

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/02/ed-sheeran-marvin-gaye-lawsuit-chord-progression-copyright/

Thank you - it has always been thus
Composers like Mozart would hear folk tunes in the streets and weave those melodies into orchestral works
(Most) Every artist learns by ‘borrowing’ and reconfiguring- sure there are some egregious Vanilla Ice examples (and Elvis is a separate concern altogether) , but like I said earlier- this is not an artistic discussion, it’s lawyers and VPs playing money games

 

[superchuck500]

Jury says No, not plagiarism.

Ed Sheeran-Marvin Gaye copyright case: Star wins trial over claims Thinking Out Loud ripped off Let's Get It On

Suffolk-born star Ed Sheeran was among those who gave evidence in court in Manhattan over a lawsuit alleging his 2014 hit Thinking Out Loud violated the copyright for Marvin Gaye's classic 1973 song Let's Get It On.

news.sky.com

 

[GW93]

Imagine a painter in their studio, preparing for an exhibition. The painter is working on a landscape. The sky is midnight blue. The valley is Kelly green. Mountains loom in the back, a spectacular hue reflecting off a brilliant sunset.

The painter reaches for vermillion and then pauses. Wait a second, they think: Does someone own the copyright to this shade of red? Am I going to get sued for this?

That would be crazy, right? Regrettably and amazingly, in the music industry the aesthetic equivalent of this thought process is no longer as insane as it sounds.

The question of who is allowed unfettered access to the metaphorical color palette of songwriting is currently on trial in federal court in Manhattan.

The English singer and songwriter Ed Sheeran has been accused of stealing his song “Thinking Out Loud” from Marvin Gaye’s 1973 classic “Let’s Get It On,” by the wife and descendants of that song’s co-writer, Ed Townsend.

The supposed evidence? A similar but not identical chord progression used by both songs as a principal motif.


In its simplest terms, a chord progression is a sequence of grouped notes arrayed in the chosen manner of a composer to create a melody, the scaffolding on which essentially all songs are built.


To complete the metaphor, the lawsuit and its implications are the musical version of saying to a painter: You’ll have to pay to use red. Someone else used it first.


The dispute boils down to whether the millennia-long continuum of music-making is a valuable tradition that should be vouchsafed for future generations of composers, songwriters and listeners, or alternatively that entire swaths of the fundamental vernacular of a human art form should be divided up and parceled out as intellectual property for the private use and profit of a few.

Even by the standards of our time, this attempt to consolidate and monetize the joy and wonder of personal expression is sinister on an almost shocking scale. The potential ramifications and reverberations verge on the unspeakable.


The case presented by the Townsend estate is nakedly cynical and designed to play on fundamental and understandable misapprehensions about how songs are created.

Much like math or writing, music is limitless in its possibilities but paradoxically required to repeat itself.

The notion of copyrighting any chord progression, let alone one as common as the one used in “Let’s Get It On,” makes no more sense than copyrighting the numbers six and 13 or the conjunctions “and” or “but.”……

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/02/ed-sheeran-marvin-gaye-lawsuit-chord-progression-copyright/

Microsoft patents ones, zeroes

 

[GrandAdmiral]

Jury says No, not plagiarism.

Ed Sheeran-Marvin Gaye copyright case: Star wins trial over claims Thinking Out Loud ripped off Let's Get It On

Suffolk-born star Ed Sheeran was among those who gave evidence in court in Manhattan over a lawsuit alleging his 2014 hit Thinking Out Loud violated the copyright for Marvin Gaye's classic 1973 song Let's Get It On.

news.sky.com

Right decision in my opinion.