Moving over to the frontage road for the time being with a tale from my stint teaching college classes. This was pre-AI, mind you. Like most colleges, even shitty for-profit puppy mill colleges, we had a code of ethics regarding plagiarism. - ThreadSky

theonethatgotaway.bsky.social • 14 days ago

Moving over to the frontage road for the time being with a tale from my stint teaching college classes. This was pre-AI, mind you.

Like most colleges, even shitty for-profit puppy mill colleges, we had a code of ethics regarding plagiarism.

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theonethatgotaway.bsky.social•14 days ago

The verbiage was pretty dense and I tried to make it easier by referring to famous music copyright cases. The first, and easiest, was of course the Ice Ice Baby / Under Pressure case. Blatant cut and paste, no attribution, defensive when confronted by evidence of lack of attribution.

theonethatgotaway.bsky.social•14 days ago

The second (and more obscure for the demo I was teaching but still useful) was the My Sweet Lord / He's So Fine case. A case of not direct cut and paste but of subconscious reinterpretation most generously, but essentially putting someone else's idea into your own words without attribution.

theonethatgotaway.bsky.social•14 days ago

The third is Blurred Lines / Got to Give It Up. This is most likely a no harm no foul... unless you get weird and defensive about it then suddenly it seems way more suspicious if you don't at least start citing your influences.

theonethatgotaway.bsky.social•14 days ago

Anyway, it made me think again about the more modern version of the My Sweet Lord case, which I previously alluded to: Smith vs. Lynne/Petty. This is the absolute best case scenario of a good faith copyright infringement handled in the most elegant possible way.

theonethatgotaway.bsky.social•14 days ago

Melodically, "Stay With Me" and "I Won't Back Down" were damn close, but only for one part of the song. Smith's people didn't think they had heard the song before writing "Stay With Me" and Petty didn't think the melody was intentionally copied.

theonethatgotaway.bsky.social•14 days ago

Smith's people agreed to share songwriting credit - probably because it's hard to have actually avoided "I Won't Back Down" as a human being in the world for your entire life, no matter what generation you're from as chain coffee shops are ubiquitous and inter-generational.

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