Musicology

On May 25, 2016 Justin Bieber and his co-conspirators got hit with a copyright lawsuit alleging that his mega-hit “Sorry” infringes upon White Hinterland’s track, “Ring The Bell.” You only have to listen to the first 10 seconds of each track to hear what the fuss is about. sorry-introring-the-bell-intro As my eight-year old just succinctly put it, …

On May 25, 2016 Justin Bieber and his co-conspirators got hit with a copyright lawsuit alleging that his mega-hit “Sorry” infringes upon White Hinterland’s track, “Ring The Bell.” You only have to listen to the first 10 seconds of each track to hear what the fuss is about. sorry-introring-the-bell-intro As my eight-year old just succinctly put it, …

The writers of Matt Cardle’s hit, “Amazing,” are suing Ed Sheeran for copyright infringement because his much bigger hit, “Photograph,” sounds too much like their song. Here’s a mashup that proves not a whole lot, but you’ll get the idea. I’m also not automatically impressed by claims about how many notes two songs have in …

The latest lawsuit to hit Hollywood is that of Matt Cardle’s hit “Amazing” alleging infringement by Ed Sheeran and his hit “Photograph.”  There are enough youtube videos with their audio mashups that illustrate the similarities of the two hit songs. But these are hard to sit through, aren’t they? I don’t want to hear the two songs played at the same …

The jury got it right. Whereas an internet full of ordinary observers from what I’ve seen mostly didn’t. Nor did the ordinary observer friends that I personally polled on the matter. We refer to “ordinary observer” by the way as a standard sometimes used to help define infringement, as in “Does the allegedly infringing work …