Jonathan Coulton vs. Glee
musicmachinery.com
musicmachinery.com
https://soundcloud.com/alacrion/joco-v-glee
Jonathan Coulton in the left ear, Glee in the right ear.
Of course, the reason for the harmony is because the vocals align so (almost) perfectly, creating an effect familiar to most musicians, who rely on it for ensuring that their instruments are in tune.
That's how perfectly the two align. Damn.
I believe you are referring to acoustical beats.
When I see a large player in the industry fuck up and "steal" someone's copyrighted work, it's yet another example of how they don't give a shit about artists, despite what they claim. These incidents are perhaps a good way to show the public what large media corporations are really concerned with; making money for the execs at the expense of anyone else. If the public is aware, maybe we'll have better success at reforming copyright and other IP laws. (Although I cannot deny there is the schadenfreude aspect of it also.)
But please note the scare quotes, because it's not a theft, due to the exact reasons I would argue regarding any other two entities with copyright disputes.
And the difference is about as profound as the difference between downloading a file and stealing a bike. The main reason that this is so appalling, while file sharing is not, is that it's a case of someone taking credit for someone else's work. There is a huge difference between taking someone else's work and saying "Hey, listen to this cool cover that JoCo did" and taking it and saying "Hey, I wrote this cover of Baby Got Back!"
Another big difference is profit. I think most of people feel like downloading a song or movie for yourself and maybe some friends and enjoying it is fine, and that a site like The Pirate Bay covering their bandwidth costs with ads is totally understandable. But I think most people also think that a guy who burns movies to DVDs and sells them on the street corner is an asshole.
Finally, especially in light of that latter point, you've got one of the big media players, all of whom have lobbied hard for stronger copyright law, refusing to play by the same rules that they want to impose on everyone else.
"Neither a pirate nor a hypocrite be." -- Shakespeare [citation needed] [dubious, discuss]
2. It's being sold for a profit...
3. ... by people who sue others for disproportionate sums, for sharing stuff for free.
Coulton actually published a karaoke version of the song, they just added a new, almost identical vocal track.
You know, maybe some of us have a more nuanced view of how things should be. Maybe we think that the people that actually create something (you know, the artists?) should at least get credit; maybe not rewarded indefinitely, but at least given a chance in the market, while not wanting to see their grandchildren leach off a government granted monopoly. Maybe we are in favor of artists who obviously get it (JoCo sells his music with no DRM, in any format you want, not to mention plenty of free samples) not being plagiarized by huge media conglomerates run by ruthless fatcats without an ounce of creativity, who are still stuck in the mindset of being the gatekeepers.
Or maybe we're all just spoiled hypocritical children like you've painted us. Yeah, that must be it.
Also when did a handful of writers at Glee become the stance of the whole Newscorp evil empire? Until every decision by every subordinate is reviewed by Murdoch or the Board of Directors for possible copyright infringement painting Fox as a whole responsible as part of their normal MO is false.
It sounds like you are willfully misinterpreting the concept of "giving credit". Paying for something is compensation, not credit. The concept of downloading something without paying for it is totally unrelated to the concept of claiming that you created someone else's work.
Got it.
It was the second one, wasn't it?
Maybe we are in favor of artists who obviously get it (JoCo sells his music with no DRM, in any format you want, not to mention plenty of free samples) not being plagiarized by huge media conglomerates run by ruthless fatcats without an ounce of creativity, who are still stuck in the mindset of being the gatekeepers.
Please, enlighten me as to what I've missed.
As for the moniker, it's a Calvin & Hobbes reference.
Glee is part of News Corp.
:)
More seriously, JoCo is aware of the unfavorable legal situation given that his work was a cover. But the way he sees it, it'd be nice if he got something from Fox. Attribution, for example -- credit for his arrangement of the song. Glee/Fox was unwilling. I do not know why.
Personally, I'm against any and all forms of copyright. That doesn't mean I cannot consider people that pass of other people's work as their own to be complete assholes.
Also, there are plenty of other laws to cover that. IANAL, but I'm thinking of plagiarism, forgery etcetera.
Actually, plagiarism is not, as far as I know, a legally recognized concept. If you want to go after someone for plagiarism, you're going to have to pound that screw in with the hammer of copyright law.
If you were to ask Fox though, I'm sure they'd insisted that copyright laws are important and should never be violated.
Are you sure?
A (probably) incomplete list I just pulled out of my a^w head:
1. plagiarism
2. espionage
3. for-profit pirating
4. non-profit pirating
5. willful patent infringement
6. accidental patent infringementI don't entirely agree with the outrage but the fact that this is done by Fox who are real jerks about their own copyright really sets off the hypocrisy alarm.
Source: Coulton's blog http://www.jonathancoulton.com
Nominally release a version of the song with the original arrangement and original, throwaway lyrics prior to releasing the version with the original arrangement and derived lyrics.
That way, the cover song is a derivative of two original works, and in order for an entity like "Glee" to cover your cover, they'd need permission from both of the copyright holders -- you (for the melody) and whoever owns the copyright to the lyrics.
Lawyerly types, am I on to something here?
Does he hold the copyright to the original melody he composed for this song?
Does that fact that he released a karaoke version without the vocals affect anything?
Is his melody considered an "arrangement" of the original considering the original had no melody?
If I write an original instrumental song, do I lose the copyright to the instrumental by releasing a version that includes someone else's lyrics?
Interesting final question though - no, you don't lose the copyright to the instrumental, but I'm not sure of the proper way to describe the new arrangement of the song.
1. There is a very weird set of rights around music/sound/synchronization built into copyright law 2. I would never trust random commenters on the internet, even those experience in music, to know the answer.
Why? Because of how this stuff actually works in practice.
People assume that "Fox surely did this right before they did this", except, you know, they often don't.
When they want to use a track, they just use it, and then throw it on the uncleared list and get around to figuring it out later.
This is because they've made a licensing/etc scheme that is so convoluted, that often nobody knows who to contact to get all the rights necessary (ASCAP/NMPA et al are sometimes helpful, sometimes not)
In some types of cases, there are compulsory licenses, in some, there aren't.
a) If a song is published (and BGB was) then anyone has the right to cover it (a compulsory license always exists)
b) If someone covers it, the covering artist gets no copyright of the musical material - all that is retained by the song copyright owner(s). (This makes intuitive sense, as it otherwise would restrict the ability of other artists to create more covers of the song. You'd have to make sure that your arrangement choices didn't conflict with ANY other arrangements out there.)
c) The covering artist does have copyright over the sound recording of the arrangement.
Now, if techie people wanted to get involved in a way they could actually affect things, rather than just theorizing about what someone's actions/motivations might have been, there's opportunity here:
Coulton released a karaoke track of his version of BGB. It's released by-nc-sa. It's considered likely that Fox used this karaoke track as the backing track for their version. If so, they have infringed on all three portions of the license (no attribution, they're selling it, they didn't release it share-alike).
So - I don't know how to do this, but it seems like someone could do a statistical analysis of the karaoke track, and Fox's version, and prove within some statistical likeliness that Fox used the karaoke track and did not simply re-record their own instruments. (Note that it WOULD be legal for Fox to re-record Coulton's arrangement note-for-note since it would no longer be using Coulton's sound recording.)
To me it doesn't seem like a new arrangement of the song because it sounds absolutely nothing like the original, he basically copied the lyrics only, even the cadence was different. If I write a melody to someone's spoken word poem, is that a new arrangement?
If it's instead just lyrics that you write a melody to and it is unpublished so far, then you could be co-writers before the song is published.
I think the more disturbing question is, what if someone takes Coulton's original tracks to the song (they're available), re-records them (I could easily do it with my keyboard and some software samples), and does everything exactly the same except for singing "blah blah blah"? Sounds like that person could claim the entire resultant copyright and not owe Coulton, BGB, or Fox/Glee a damn thing.
Not the first time it's happened, either. Friend of mine had one of her a cappella arrangement "ripped off" without credit too.
Just goes to show... if you're a creative musician, invest that creativity in originals.
Last question - how was Coulton going to get any exposure hit from this at all if there wasn't a stink raised? You'd think the morons over at Fox would do a little spreadsheet analysis and realize that might actually be more profitable to just put his name in the credits as "Guest Arranger" or something.
The lyrics and musical arrangement are clearly distinct entities.
Image I author a book that contains the lyrics as a component. I would need a compulsory mechanical license, right? But does the rights holder own my book now? Of course not.
The melody in this case is not a derivative work. It has nothing to do with the the original work (i.e., lyrics).
Your book example is a different question entirely.
Look at it this way. You can also take a song with a melody, and completely alter the melody into something entirely different, but it doesn't mean that you get a songwriter credit on the new version. If it did, people would be doing this all the time. And the original version of the song isn't "half a song", as in everything but a melody - not legally speaking. If that were true, we'd have thirty years now of people trying to write melodies for already-released rap tunes, in an effort to get their financial cut.
So legally speaking, putting a melody on a rap tune still only yields a derivative work. Coulton has no rights as a songwriter in this case.
Again though, if Fox took the audio to his backing track... that's a different matter entirely.
One big asterisk, though. It might be too late for this, but Coulton arguably could have gathered more leverage had he called his version a parody. But that's a really high bar, because for it to be a parody, it would have to implicitly comment on the previous work, thereby transforming it. As opposed to a simple satire, which "builds on top" of an existing work. A parody is protected by fair use, and it is possible to copyright the original parts of the parody. So if he had been able to argue that his song was a parody, he could have copyrighted the melody. And given that Coulton's artistic choice was limited to putting a nice melody on top of a rap tune, I doubt that would hold up in court, because it would set a hell of a precedent to all the other rap tunes out there.
This Wired article also helps,
Coulton said that while his lawyers have been looking
into the copyright issue, it seems unlikely that he
will have any legal recourse. ”It seems that because of
the compulsory license I purchased when I made a cover
of this song, the arrangement itself is not protected
under copyright, although it’s the darkest gray of the
gray areas [of the law]… While there may be some weird
offshoot of the law, it doesn’t seem like something
where a little guy could sue to get any satisfaction.”
Source: http://www.jonathancoulton.com/2013/01/18/baby-got-back-and-...
http://grooveshark.com/s/Leaving+On+A+Jet+Plane/3nvT5s?src=5
Another strange twist in the area of compulsory licence is that it only applies to fairly close versions. If you want to make a truly derivative work, in my understanding, the compulsory licence doesn't apply: You have to negotiate a special licence from the copyright holder. For example if you want to change the words.
A similar case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbaland_plagiarism_controver...