
A Legal Loophole May Leave Some Rock Riffs Up for Grabs - docker_up
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2019-classic-rock-riffs-loophole
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bairrd
I feel like the outcome of the case discussed here runs completely opposite to
the outcome of the Marvin Gaye estate against Robin Thicke and the other
writers on Blurred Lines, whereby the song, without any sort of similarity
note-wise, was found to be infringing based on the "feeling" of the song,
which seems incredibly problematic for anyone writing music nowadays.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blurred_Lines#Marvin_Gaye_laws...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blurred_Lines#Marvin_Gaye_lawsuit_and_authorship_questions)

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EVdotIO
It kinda hit me why Frank Zappa fanatically transcribed _all_ his music (at
one point he had a young inter named Steve Vai do it); submit those despot
copies to the copyright office. It's what the major labels did, and he was
decidedly independent with a good helping of paranoia to boot.

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rmidthun
By this logic, would Guitar Magazine, which published very complete sheet
music for many of these songs have a copyright claim? I know I have a magazine
at home with Stairway to Heaven and I'm pretty sure there's a copyright in
there somewhere.

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evasote
For a published magazine like that I'm sure they get permission/pay for the
rights

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pwodhouse
Parent is saying that the magazine that trnascribed the music can get perhaps
the copyright to music they didn't create, due to the OP loopholes .

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mmerlin
Sounds like a lot of pre '78 guitar/bass/horns/keys solos/intros are
potentially non-copyrighted in the USA, because they were not transcribed into
written musical notation.

You'd still probably need deep pockets at some stage to pay a legal weasel to
defend you from another legal weasel suing on behalf of the estate of a dead
or aged musician.

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coldcode
Apparently all jazz music is then not copyrighted before 1978.

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wmil
The usual defence for copyright claims in music is that they are similar
because you are both stealing from an earlier work without a valid copyright.

So I'd bet that jazz cases would be difficult in general. I'd expect there are
a lot of older songs without proper copyright papers.

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itronitron
Seems fair, they should require a reference copy of the deposit transcription
for every takedown request.

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dheera
I didn't know what a "riff" was and thought this was about some free rocky
land that was up for grabs ...

