Men At Work ordered to pay song royalties
A judge has ordered Men At Work to hand over royalties from the 1983 hit single Down Under after earlier ruling they had plagiarised a children's song.The article has a couple of snippets embedded, one of the "Kookaburra" song and a 30-second soundbite of "Down Under" (just enough to launch you back to the days of mullets and Trans Ams with T-tops). I'll be damned if I can spot the similarity; I guess if you listened long enough you could hear similar riffs between "Helter Skelter" and the "Clean Up" song from Barney...The Australian band must pay 5% of money earned from the song since 2002 as well as future royalties.
Larrikin Music, which owns the copyright to Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree, had sought 60% of royalties.
What got me, though, was that the royalties had to be paid starting in 2002. Given that "Land Down Under" was a hit in the early part of the 1980s, it seemed odd that the time period would start nearly two decades later. And then I remembered that "Land Down Under" featured prominently in Finding Nemo released just a year later.
All roads do lead to Disney in one way or another...
That is all.
4 comments:
I think they had a legal problem with going too far back to get the money, so they set the date as far back as they could. . . . statute of limitations or some such thing. I guess they can thank Disney they are getting any $$
Bogus! I don't think that would have flown in a US copyright court. Recycled melodies/chord progressions are a very common occurrence in pop music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I (Warning: NSFW lyrics.)
Heck, there's only one blues song if you look at it that way.
Next thing we'll see is bullshit 3-chord band A suing bullshit 3-chord band B, because the songs are just as similar.
Its not like every damn song in the universe is THAT unique..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM
I listened to the offending bits this morning on the ride to work.
You can't tell the songs apart until the kids start singing.
Post a Comment