A
multi-million-dollar judgment in favor of Marvin Gaye's family in the "Blurred Lines" case may have opened the floodgates for songwriters to sue other songwriters for unintentional copyright infringement.
Ed Sheeran has received two plagiarism lawsuits this year: one for "Thinking Out Loud" whose bass resembles that of "Let's Get It On", and another for "Photograph" resembling "Amazing". And recently, Sam Smith had to settle one for "Stay with Me" resembling "I Won't Back Down". But another member of this forum thinks the risk of being made an example of like this is
not a problem.
Are there common-sense steps that composers of music for new video games should take to protect themselves from this sort of lawsuit risk?
tepples wrote:
Are there common-sense steps that composers of music for new video games should take to protect themselves from this sort of lawsuit risk?
To provide reasonable protection? Don't purposely copy a song.
To have a 0% chance of ever being sued over perceived similarities? Don't compose music.
Sorry, I've got to go with RainWarrior on this one.
Someone once said " all music is plagiarism"
I think there's some truth to that
Someone else said, "if you're going to steal material, steal from the best"
Yeah, just don't copy it. Really hope that this judgment gets reversed, but…IP law's pretty broken, and the fooAAs are unlikely to let it get fixed.
And if you find you accidentally did, then fess up and offer to put it right, either by licensing it, getting stickers put on your games, releasing a new version with a different song (which creates a funny collector opportunity, but I digress)…
Alternately, click-through EULA with "indemnify and hold harmless", arbitration, and "liability limited to amount paid to creator for product" provisions [IANAL and don't actually recommend this, it's kind of horrible that one can do so].
I'd say it's comparable to the precautions one could take to avoid getting struck by lightning. Avoid standing in an open field during an electrical storm.. but even if you did it anyways, you're probably still not going to be hit.
I guess if someone was just so uncomfortable with the risk, no matter how small it is, one could start a limited liability company. Sounds like absolute overkill to me, though.
Rahsennor's Rules of Reality #4: There is no such thing as originality.