Men At Work plagiarism

[Plawranc]

As an Aussie I am going to say this.

I am guessing that an American company copyrighted Kookaburra. WHY IS AN AUSTRALIAN FOLKSONG COPYRIGHTED BY ANYBODY LET ALONE AN AMERICAN.

 

[bj229r]

Has anyone ever heard of a plagiarism lawsuit where the plaintiff was actually the puke who wrote the song?

[RightF00T]

There's the entertainment industry for you: One person makes millions, and someone else tries to get a piece of the action screaming "they stole my idea."

I'd like to know why these suits don't come about until AFTER something becomes a major success. If someone stole your idea, get it out there IMMEDIATELY.

It takes awhile to find out music is stolen, a song may be a huge success on one coast and then 6 months later it hits big and you realize it's a song you wrote.  Unfortunately, alot of these artists never bothered to officially copyright and takes a few more weeks as well to get that sorted out(copyrights exist the moment you create something if you can prove it was created before the other artist they have less of a leg to stand on)

If you have a legitimate claim, the more money they make off it, the more you stand to get.

A) More exposure for your art
B) All/Most of the money earned from the theft goes to you.

[Lusche]

Has anyone ever heard of a plagiarism lawsuit where the plaintiff was actually the puke who wrote the song?

Yes. For example Jürgen Winter, guitar player from the Krautrock band Jud's Gallery, and composer of a song called "Nordrach"
He sued Gary Moore for his song "Still Got the Blues" and won. Moore has filed an appeal against that judgement.

(One interesting fact in this case is that "Nordrach" wasn't put on any recording medium until 1999!)

[AKH]

Has anyone ever heard of a plagiarism lawsuit where the plaintiff was actually the puke who wrote the song?

Many examples, but a famous one would be Chuck Berry http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Zz8fmHrIpg vs The Beach Boys http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1FaflUn4Co

[sluggish]

Has anyone ever heard of a plagiarism lawsuit where the plaintiff was actually the puke who wrote the song?

John Fogerty got sued by his old record company for plagiarizing himself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_plagiarism#Unsuccessful_suits

[Mustaine]

Thing about it all is the song is so old, decades of royalties...

and if you listen to the samples it is almost identical...

BUT, unlike that verve song bittersweet symphony where the main part of the song was a complete sample; this case is about the minor flute part in the song. It is distinctive and most of you could probably hum it, but it doesn't make up the majority of the song's composition like the aforementioned bittersweet symphony.

[james]

I had thought that in order for there to be a problem the
copied song had to have 4 chords exactly in tempo and consecutive with the original
for there to be grounds for a lawsuit.