[LAU] [slightly OT] Musical citation (what is allowed?)

[Brendan Jones]

On 11/30/2011 02:57 PM, Dave Phillips wrote:
> On 11/30/2011 07:47 AM, Julien Claassen wrote:
The Chiffons. From Wikipedia :
>
> "Harrison denied deliberately plagiarising the song, but he lost the
> resulting court case in 1976 as the judge deemed that Harrison had
> "subconsciously" plagiarised "He's So Fine". When considering liable
> earnings, "My Sweet Lord"'s contribution to the sales of /All Things
> Must Pass/ and /The Best of George Harrison
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_of_George_Harrison>/ were taken
> into account, and the judge decided a figure of $1,599,987 was owed to
> Bright
> Tunes.^<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Harrison#cite_note-Plagiarism-96>
> The dispute over damages became complicated when Harrison's former
> manager Allen Klein <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Klein> purchased
> the copyright to "He's So Fine" from Bright Tunes in 1978. In 1981, a
> district judge decided that Klein had acted improperly, and it was
> agreed that Harrison should pay Klein $587,000, the amount Klein had
> paid for "He's So Fine", so he would gain nothing from the deal, and
> that Harrison would take over ownership of Bright Tunes, making him the
> owner of the rights to both "My Sweet Lord" and "He's So Fine" and thus
> ending the copyright infringement claim. Though the dispute dragged on
> into the 1990s, the district judge's decision was upheld."
>

Another recent example is the signature flute in Men At Work's - Down 
Under and a nursery song [1][2]. It's a sad state of affairs...


[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kookaburra_%28song%29
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqOIdtKZTG4

Brendan