Blurred Lines Copyright Case Causes Controversy In Music Industry
Monday 16 March 2015 @ 12.41 p.m. | IP & Media
Last week in the United States, Marvin Gaye’s children won a copyright case against Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams’ song Blurred Lines. The decision has been a very controversial one, with a number of people raising concerns about how the judgment will impact on the music industry in the future. The case was heard by a jury, who awarded Gaye’s children damages of US $7.4 million (the song has made more than US $16 million in profits).
Case Background
The case was brought in 2013 by Gaye’s children, who were left the copyright to his music in his will after he died in 1984. They alleged that Thicke and Williams had lifted parts of Gaye’s 1977 hit song, “Got To Give It Up”. Williams has acknowledged that the songs have a similar “feel” and that he’d heard Gaye’s song in his youth, but has said that rather than copying, he was “channeling that feeling, that late-70s feeling”. Interestingly, the case was not about comparing recordings of the two songs – Gaye’s estate technically only owns copyright over the original sheet music.
Criticism
In an article on The Conversation, two lecturers from the Queensland University of Technology, Nicolas Suzor and Kylie Pappalardo have raised their concerns about the decision. They say:
“[t]his case highlights a common confusion in what copyright law is about. Contrary to what we often think, copyright isn’t about “credit where credit’s due”. It’s about encouraging people to make and produce new works.
If copyright is about incentives for creativity, this decision makes no sense. No amount of money now will encourage Marvin Gaye to make more music. What this case does do, though, is discourage future artists from revealing their influences and reworking our culture”.
They also criticise the current length of copyright protection, saying that the current length of 70 years after the original author dies is “well after the commercial life of most works” and “means that a huge amount of the material that influences us to create something new is locked away”.
Other critics have made similar arguments. Tim Wu, writing in the New Yorker, says:
“Consider the sheer number of creators who would be affected if such rulings were levied more widely. Everyone knows that the Rolling Stones borrowed their style from Chuck Berry and other rhythm-and-blues artists… Nor is this true only in musical composition. Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso borrowed ideas from Paul Cézanne to develop Cubism, for instance, a style that was, in turn, copied by numerous others. There are hundreds of other examples. To suggest that this verdict will encourage better songwriting is to misunderstand the history of the arts.”
In the New York Times, Jon Caramanica argued that copyright law doesn’t reflect the current state of songwriting in any case, saying:
“the jury was instructed to base its decision on the sheet music, a fact that reflects how inadequate copyright law is when it comes to contemporary songwriting and production practices. In 2015, the arrangement of notes on a sheet of paper is among the least integral parts of pop music creation.”
He believes the case also demonstrates a kind of “generational bias”, saying “implicit in the premise of the case is that Mr. Gaye’s version of songwriting is somehow more serious than what Mr. Williams does, since it is the one that the law is designed to protect.”
Appeal?
Nona Gaye told the BBC that she felt “free from… Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke’s chains and what they tried to keep on us and the lies that were told” after the ruling. The Gayes’ lawyer told BBC News that next they would like to stop the sales of the track.
However, Thicke and William’s lawyer Howard King told the BBC they were planning to appeal the case, saying:
“We owe it to songwriters around the world to make sure this verdict doesn’t stand.”
He also said that some of the expert testimony in the case resulted from comparing the two recordings, as opposed to the sheet music and the recording.
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