Don Henley Claims 'Arrogant' Frank Ocean, Okkervil River Stole Songs; Rolling Stone, 6/4/14

Kory Grow, Rolling Stone; Don Henley Claims 'Arrogant' Frank Ocean, Okkervil River Stole Songs:

"In addition to condemning Ocean, Henley explained why he prevented Okkervil River from recording his solo song "The End of Innocence" and releasing it online for free. Although that group's frontman, Will Sheff, had previously claimed Henley had objected over money issues, the Eagle told the Telegraph it was because the group had changed his lyrics.

"They don't understand the law either," Henley said. "You can't rewrite the lyrics to somebody else's songs and record it and put it on the Internet. I'm sorry, but it wasn't an improvement. We were not impressed. So we simply had our legal team tell them to take it down and they got all huffy about it." Furthermore, Henley wondered how they would feel if he turned the tables on them and recorded an Okkervil River song with his own lyrics. "Maybe they wouldn't care, but I care," he said. "We work really, really hard on our material. We spend months writing it and years recording it. You don't go into a museum and paint a moustache on somebody else's painting. Nobody would think of doing that." He summed things up by saying, "If you respect somebody, you ask their permission to diddle around with their work – you don't just go and do it."

United States copyright law allows anyone to record a cover of any song without asking permission, so long as the musician does not alter the original. Henley told the Telegraph he was perfectly fine with that aspect of the law, but "that's not what Mr. Ocean nor Okkervil River did.""

Beastie Boys win $1.7 million in copyright case vs. Monster Beverage; Reuters, 6/5/14

Nate Raymond, Reuters; Beastie Boys win $1.7 million in copyright case vs. Monster Beverage:

"Beastie Boys' fight for their right to not let Monster Beverage Corp use the hip-hop group's music without their permission resulted in a verdict of $1.7 million on Thursday.

A federal jury in Manhattan issued the verdict on the eighth day of trial in a copyright dispute between members of the Brooklyn-born band and the energy drink maker over songs the band says Monster used without a license in a 2012 promotional video.

The Beastie Boys had sought up to $2.5 million for copyright infringement and false endorsement."

Okkervil River Responds to Don Henley: Copyright Laws Kill Art: Will Sheff writes artists "communicate back and forth with each other over the generations, take old ideas and make them new"; Rolling Stone, 6/4/14

Will Sheff, Rolling Stone; Okkervil River Responds to Don Henley: Copyright Laws Kill Art: Will Sheff writes artists "communicate back and forth with each other over the generations, take old ideas and make them new":

"All of these artists, on some level, drew from a folk tradition, and, as I got deeper into their work, they led me to old-time American folk and blues – to artists like Woody Guthrie, Robert Johnson, Dock Boggs, Skip James and the Carter Family. As I fell deeper and deeper in love with these artists I started noticing something that they all had in common – they all copied each other. Woody Guthrie took the melody from the Carters' "Little Darling Pal of Mine" and he wrote "This Land Is Your Land." Robert Johnson took the already-existing blues tales about selling your soul to the devil and they ended up incorporated into his whole image. Bob Dylan took the Scottish ballad "Come All Ye Bold Highway Men" and used it for "The Times They Are A–Changin'." Nina Simone transformed the ridiculous Morris Albert MOR ballad "Feelings" and improvised re-written lyrics, stretching the song over the 10-minute mark and creating something harrowing from it.

I realized that this is what artists are supposed to do – communicate back and forth with each other over the generations, take old ideas and make them new (since it's impossible to really "imitate" somebody without adding anything of your own), create a rich, shared cultural language that was available to everybody. Once I saw it in folk art, I saw it everywhere – in hip-hop, in street art, in dada. I became convinced that the soul of culture lay in this kind of weird, irreverent-but-reverant back-and-forth. And I concluded that copyright law was completely opposed to this natural artistic process in a way that was strangling and depleting our culture, taking away something rich and beautiful that belonged to everyone in order to put more money into the hands of the hands of a small, lawyered few."

Copyright infringement suit filed against Led Zeppelin for 'Stairway to Heaven'; CNN, 6/3/14

Lisa Respers France, CNN; Copyright infringement suit filed against Led Zeppelin for 'Stairway to Heaven' :

"A lawsuit has been filed claiming that the iconic Led Zeppelin song "Stairway to Heaven" was far from original.

The suit, filed on May 31 in the United States District Court Eastern District of Pennsylvania, was brought by the estate of the late musician Randy California against the surviving members of Led Zeppelin and their record label. The copyright infringement case alleges that the Zeppelin song was taken from the single "Taurus" by the 1960s band Spirit, for whom California served as lead guitarist...

The estate is seeking court ordered damages and writing credit for California, born Randy Craig Wolfe. Part of the defense includes a printed interview conducted with California prior to his death from drowning in 1997. In the 1997 interview with Listener Magazine, the guitarist claims that some of the music from "Stairway to Heaven" was taken from his group's song.

Bluebeard as a Geek: Plundering in High-Tech: On ‘Halt and Catch Fire,’ It’s Imitation vs. Invention; New York Times, 5/30/14

Alessandra Stanley, New York Times; Bluebeard as a Geek: Plundering in High-Tech: On ‘Halt and Catch Fire,’ It’s Imitation vs. Invention:

"There are absolutists who still believe that everything on the Internet should be free and see themselves as partisans, not parasites. Their motto might as well be “intellectual property is theft.”

Some of those true believers may enjoy a new AMC drama, “Halt and Catch Fire,” which begins on Sunday and is set in Texas in the early 1980s, when PCs were still in their infancy, and IBM dominated the industry.

But it’s an odd show for most viewers to accept at face value. And not just because it’s hard to construct thrilling action sequences out of microchips, floppy disks and coffee breaks. In today’s era of high-tech billionaires and the cult of the start-up, this series goes back in time to glorify imitation, not innovation...

Even the title is so abstruse that an explanation is spelled out in block print at the beginning:

“HALT AND CATCH FIRE (HCF): An early computer command that sent the machine into a race condition, forcing all instructions to compete for superiority at once. Control of the computer could not be regained.”...

Buccaneering on the high seas, the kind that involves daggers, planks and rum, is romantic partly because it remains safely in the past. Copyright piracy, on the other hand, may be too close for comfort."

New Authors Alliance wants to ease some copyright rules; SFGate, 5/31/14

Meredith May, SFGate; New Authors Alliance wants to ease some copyright rules:

"Academic authors aren't generally known for making a lot of noise, but these days, 250 of them are speaking up to call for a change in U.S. copyright laws, which they say make it hard to access and share their work online. They want the law changed to reflect the reality of publishing in the digital age.

The Bay Area-based Authors Alliance was formed recently at the Internet Archive in San Francisco to push for a new Copyright Act that loosens the restrictions on citing, digitizing and sharing published work...

The new alliance's goals include making it easier for scholars, libraries and private citizens to enter pre-Internet, out-of-print and "orphaned" works whose copyright holders are unknown, into the public domain. They want copyright law clarified and amended to allow libraries, archives and heritage groups the right to digitally reproduce and store books.

"Copyright law is so strict, stretching up to 95 years from publication in some cases, that without the right to digitize it we are in jeopardy of losing our long-term cultural and intellectual history," said alliance founding member Pamela Samuelson, a UC Berkeley law professor who filed briefs on Google's behalf during the eight-year book scanning controversy. The Authors Guild lawsuit against the tech giant was dismissed in November by a federal court in Manhattan."...

Others worried

But the push to allow more digital access to academic work is creating a schism among writers, pitting scholars against commercial writers backed by the Authors Guild, who fear their books could be too easily digitally copied and shared by universities, libraries and corporations, much the same way illegal song sharing has undermined the music industry.

The fears of commercial authors are unfounded, Samuelson maintains."

Pirate Bay founder arrested after two years on the run; Reuters via Guardian, 5/31/14

Reuters via Guardian; Pirate Bay founder arrested after two years on the run:

"One of the founders of file-sharing website Pirate Bay has been arrested in southern Sweden to serve an outstanding sentence for copyright violations after being on the run for nearly two years, Swedish police have said.

Peter Sunde had been wanted by Interpol since 2012 after being sentenced in Sweden to prison and fined for breaching copyright laws.

"We have been looking for him since 2012," said Carolina Ekeus, spokeswoman at the Swedish national police board. "He was given eight months in jail so he has to serve his sentence."...

Four men linked to Pirate Bay were originally sentenced to one year in prison and a fine of £2.85m. An appeals court later reduced the prison sentences by varying amounts, but raised the fine to £4.1m."