Plagiarism in music

Earlier this month there was news that Joe Satriani was suing Coldplay for plagiarising one of Satch’s songs. Not surprisingly this was very interesting to me since plagiarism is a big deal for librarians.  And this is what I’ll say about the case.  Just like the possibility of plagiarism in a school setting Coldplay should [...]

Cory Doctorow – Copyfighting

This fantastic piece by Cory Doctorow describes copyright and the problems he sees with it.  Here are a few passages worth sharing:
There’s a word for all the stuff we do with creative works — all the conversing, retelling, singing, acting out, drawing, and thinking: we call it culture.
Culture’s old. It’s older than copyright.
The existence of [...]

Lessig on copyright in politics

Lawrence Lessig has a nice op-ed in the New York Times on the importance of fair use/copyright in the political realm.  Here’s the quote that I think is most important:
The digital copyright act gives the alleged infringer an opportunity to demand that the content be restored. But in the height of a political campaign, even [...]

DJ Girl Talk & Copyright

This story in the New York Times had been sitting on my desk for a while now and I thought I should write about it.  It reminds me of the whole Grey Album controversy with the Beatles/Jay-z mashup that DJ Dangermouse made and was selling.  In this case, Girl Talk, whose real name is Gregg [...]

Pandemonium Shadow Show

Last night, as I was waiting for the swimming portion of the Olympics to get started, I was sitting at my computer playing Solitaire and listening to music.  One of the songs that came up when I was listening was by Nilsson from his Pandemonium Shadow Show album.  As I was listening to the song, [...]