
Led Zeppelin did not steal 'Stairway' riff, jurors say - apo
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-music-ledzeppelin-idUSKCN0Z914Z
======
colordrops
Discussions of this sort are always seem to lack nuance. There are countless
dimensions to music, including things like rhythm, tempo, time signature,
pitch, melody, harmony, instrumentation, timbre, sound design, and production.
Any of these traits could be copied, but people only seem to complain with
melody. Also, for each of these dimensions, something could be copied at
differing degrees of fidelity, from an exact copy, to slight modifications, to
just hints of the original. And in fact, that's true of every piece of music
in existence - at least one of these dimensions has been copied to some degree
from a pre-existing song. With our recent omnipotent control of sound through
digital techniques, music can and does cross the spectrum across pretty much
every dimension possible, and thus drawing a line at where something is
"copied" is pretty damn arbitrary.

~~~
daveguy
This guy does a great job going through similarities and differences (without
commentary on the plagiarism):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCEg9gMJakU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCEg9gMJakU)

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marricks
NPR did an interesting story on this and the effect it'd have on future music
cases.[1]

What could really be argued (if they were found guilty) was that you can sue
people for infringing on the "feel" of your song. That's a real scary future
when so many songs "feel" similarly!

One could imagine how it'd put even more power in the hands of the big labels
to sue smaller upcoming artists for stealing their sound. Happy this went the
other way!

[1] [http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2016/04/22/stairway-to-
heaven...](http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2016/04/22/stairway-to-heaven-song-
lawsuit)

~~~
2bitencryption
> infringing on the "feel" of your song

(Popular) Country music would cease to exist.

"Truck ... girl ... warm beer ... boots ... mud ... tractor" (computer-altered
guitar riff)

~~~
peckrob
As a long time country music fan, I find this current generation of "bro-
country" to be grating at best and downright insulting and degrading at worst.
But I can't tell if it's just because I'm older or the music is legitimately
simplistic and terrible.

~~~
mcafeeryan92
It's probably a bit of both, but definitely the latter is true. I'm only 23
and I greatly miss good old country music like that of Johnny Cash.

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JonoBB
I'm not going to comment on this case directly, but there is no doubt that Led
Zep borrowed heavily from other artists/songs in many of their songs; arguably
a lot more than most bands of their stature.

Yes, there are influences and its sometimes difficult to say who copied what
or what came first. But in their case, its happened again and again and again.

Case in point:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye2N_2ce3QE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye2N_2ce3QE).
There many more examples from Led Zeps music like this.

Massive Led Zep fan here, btw.

~~~
mcafeeryan92
The truth is that musicians have been doing this for centuries. It used to be
seen as a complement. There are a tremendous number of dimensions which can be
copied/have influenced derived from them in any piece of music, and honestly
the world benefits from this proliferation of musical ideas. If the artist had
made something as good as what Led Zeppelin did, they would have profited from
it, even if Led Zeppelin was able to profit from it as well. Intellectual
Property rights in music hardly makes any more sense than Intellectual
Property rights in software (and I think neither make sense).

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dietrichepp
Not surprising, since Randy Wolfe apparently thought it was different enough
and the suit only went forward after he passed away.

~~~
vajrabum
I always figured Davey Graham is the one that should have complained about
Jimmy Page. See here
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWeejHJxGjs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWeejHJxGjs)
at around 20 seconds. That riff is a straight copy. But even that is probably
not a reasonable basis for a copyright suit.

~~~
daveguy
I don't know what you are listening to, but even the riff is not the same. It
takes more than three notes to be a plagiarism.

~~~
Joeboy
They're listening to the intro, which has a lot more similarity to the intro
of Stairway than three notes. I've no idea if Jimmy Page plagiarised it or
even heard it, but it is very similar. Same key, same arpeggiated chords, very
similar bit where it transitions from the arpeggios to strummed chords.

If I heard that intro and didn't know about Davy Graham I'd think someone was
doing a jazzed-up version of Stairway.

~~~
daveguy
Relevant Stairway:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pPvNqOb6RA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pPvNqOb6RA)

Relevant Taurus:
[https://youtu.be/xd8AVbwB_6E?t=44s](https://youtu.be/xd8AVbwB_6E?t=44s)

If you listen to taurus not having heard stairway recently it might be vaguely
reminiscent. If you hear them side by side it is obvious they are different,
which the jury could easily hear.

~~~
Joeboy
Weren't we talking about Davey Graham?

~~~
daveguy
I'm a dumbass. I really didn't know what he was listening to -- I had just
gotten through listening to the songs in the lawsuit. However, the same
applies to Davey Graham. I don't hear anything in the posted video that is
even three notes close.

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kazinator
The chromatic descending bass starting on the tonic of a minor chord is a
cliche that appears all over the place, and is a staple in the blues.

Triumph: "Young enough to Cry":
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em8OqpGjUPI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em8OqpGjUPI)

George Harrison: "Something":
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9lgfa0Nh3c&t=26](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9lgfa0Nh3c&t=26)
(0:26)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lament_bass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lament_bass)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnibus_progression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnibus_progression)

------
iconjack
"The jury was not legally allowed to hear the original recordings of "Stairway
to Heaven" and "Taurus" in determining their verdict."

~~~
lazzlazzlazz
This is good. I don't think a jury could accurately identify that one song is
"copied" from another just through hearing the songs. They could only identify
similarity and then confuse themselves conflating similarity with copying.

There are other means to demonstrate copying that are less prone to errors in
human pattern-detection.

~~~
Joeboy
How do you mean? If I write a song that happens to have the same words, melody
and chords as All About That Bass, should it be assumed I wrote it myself
unless somebody catches me red-handed transcribing the original?

~~~
khedoros
During the trial, they _did_ bring in a pianist (defense) and guitarist
(plaintiff) to compare and contrast the two songs. With a test like that, if
you copied lyrics, melody, and chord progressions from another song, it'd
become obvious.

~~~
Joeboy
That test only works because it conflates similarity with copying.

~~~
khedoros
50% similarity: likely not copying. 90% similarity would be much more
arguable, and you'd have to rely on other evidence to make a decision. With
100% similarity (as in the scenario you originally outlined), it's
extraordinarily unlikely that you _didn 't_ copy the original song.

Even if % similarity and % copied don't have a direct mapping, there's going
to be a correlation between them. It's the correlation that's important, not
some mistaken idea that "similar = copied".

~~~
Joeboy
You and I seem to agree that at some point similarity is good evidence of
copying.

I was just interested to know what the "other means to demonstrate copying
that are less prone to errors in human pattern-detection" are, that were
proposed as an alternative above.

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kazinator
> _Page and Plant, who have attended court ..._

Aha! This was nothing but a ploy to goad a Zep reunion.

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Shivetya
Forty three years after Stairway and they can still sue over it? I am so glad
that LZ won but still this is just annoying. I can see a suit over copyright
infringement being filed if someone copied the Taurus rift today and made real
money, but to be able to sue over events forty plus years ago? Simply because
the target has money?

~~~
fletchowns
It's because the guy died, the people managing the estate are the ones going
after LZ now.

~~~
ChuckMcM
And now one wonders who gets to sue the lawyers for bringing this stupid
lawsuit in the first place. Pretty much every IP lawyer I've talked to thought
the case had no merit, so at the end of the day the estate is that much poorer
after paying this legal firm to pursue a case that was (in the folks I've
polled) unwinnable. Seems like a case of the law firm trying to get more money
out of the estate and denying it to the heirs.

~~~
kstrauser
Presumably the heirs brought the case, so it's only fitting that it should
come out of their pockets.

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Joeboy
This thing talks about Led Zep (~1m35s) among other things and is great:
[https://vimeo.com/14912890](https://vimeo.com/14912890)

All the Everything is a Remix stuff is great, if you've not seen it.

------
dang
Another article at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11963695](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11963695).

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kstrauser
Good. I'm listening to the "Spirit" on Youtube right now, and "Stairway" is
similar in the sense that it has some of the same chords in a progression
(which happens all the time because there are only so many ways to pleasingly
combine chords), and the notes are arpeggiated.

They're alike enough that you could probably make a mashup with just those few
chords and it'd sound nice, but the entire rest of the songs are utterly
different.

~~~
cbd1984
> They're alike enough that you could probably make a mashup with just those
> few chords and it'd sound nice, but the entire rest of the songs are utterly
> different.

To amplify your point:

You can mash up "Hot In Here" by Nelly and "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees and
_that_ sounds good. (In that: Even if it isn't your taste in music, it works
in some objective sense. It sounds like what that kind of music is supposed to
sound like. Can you tell I don't know anything about music theory?)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekwod6Py1RI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekwod6Py1RI)

Anyway, my point is that on a basic, mechanical level, all music is
derivative. That's part of what a 'genre' is. That's part of what a 'musical
tradition' is, why Mozart sounds different from Chinese Opera.

Infringement has to be based on something more.

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nostromo
Why didn't the statute of limitations on civil copyright infringement apply
here? It seems like the law says you have three years after discovering
infringement to sue.

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/507](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/507)

~~~
Joeboy
The claim is for future infringement, not past infringement.

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mavenxinc
They said the lawsuit was for $500 MM!

~~~
Joeboy
According to Wikipedia the song's _past_ royalties are estimated at over $550
million in total, but the lawsuit was for a share of _future_ profits.

