Tag Archive for 'music'

Eminem Takes On Belgium: Cleanin’ Out My Daydream

Published
by
Bianca Moha
on April 14, 2008
in Copyright Law
. 3 Comments

The 5 year controversy about Eminem’s track “Cleanin’ Out My Closet” and Raymond Vincent’s “Daydream” seems to be nearing the end.

What’s the controversy about?

This particular case has raised questions about the copyright law and its interpretation in Belgium. In the United States, the Plaintiff must prove that the defendant had access to the work and that the works are substantially similar. It is understood that, in the case of music, there will be songs that are alike, as long as the songs aren’t copied and directly lifted from another song.

Eminem | Cleaning Out My ClosetWhat’s unique in this case, due to the fact it centers in Belgium, is that the lawyers have stated that the defendant does not have to prove that they (meaning Eminem in this case) had access to the other song (Daydream), especially when the songs are somewhat alike. The situation is that Raymond Vincent’s “Daydream” was written before Eminem (Marshall Mathers) was born - and on top of that, was written in another country.

In 2002, Raymond Vincent contacted the Belgian Society of Authors, Composers, and Publishers (SABAM) and stated that he believes Eminem’s song had broken the copyright rule and had a portion of Vincent’s song in his song.

In 2003, Vincent again petitions to the SABAM. This time his goal was to block royalties for Eminem’s song. SABAM reviewed the claim. As a result of this, BMI (Broadcast Music Incorporated, a collecting society for composers’ copyrights) sends a letter to SABAM noting their opinion of the infringement after they review and comparison of the two songs.

In this letter from BMI, they declare that the song “Daydream” has three different themes. The first theme was composed by Raymond Vincent while the other two themes were inspired by the second movement of a Tchaikovsky string quartet “Swan Lake”. The committee, after deliberation, found that a part of “Cleanin’ Out My Closet” was very similar to a section of “DayDream”. At MIDEM (Marché international de l’édition musicale, the world’s largest music industry trade fair), SABAM’s executive director claimed that his organization offers a service which provides an expert opinion about the music.

In 2005, Raymond Vincent and BMG appeared before the Brussels Regional Court. The court reviewed SABAM’s opinion. In December 2007, the appeals court wrote, “It is very clear that nothing has been borrowed, particularly when the two pieces are superimposed, which makes the difference between the two very noticeable, producing a cacophony,”

The court has also stated that SABAM’s opinion had “no binding value”, that the opinion was “poorly substantiated”, and that the opinion was “not based on any concrete demonstration by the six experts allegedly consulted by SABAM.”

Another interesting point that the court wrote was that Raymond Vincent’s song Daydream’s first theme was also inspired by Tachaikovsky, not just the second and third themes.

Reaction from Eight Mile Style Music

“I was in the studio with Jeff and Marshall,” says Joel Martin of Eight Mile Style Music. “It was absurd that they used any portion of an obscure Belgian song (written) before Marshall Mathers was born. And if rappers were to use old records, they would use the records. They don’t steal a melody.”

Also, Martin says that some societies like JASRAC (Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers) had stopped sending accountings and payments as a result of SABAM’s letter. Mentioned was that SABAM believes it was in their rights to send out the letters. In their view, The Belgian Ministry of Economics requires that SABAM protect the right’s of their members around the whole world. They feel that must be strong with their actions, even if it means that they have to go to a face-to-face meeting with another association. They believe they are in the right to withhold the royalties on a song until the dispute about the rights of one of their members is finished and resolved.

What do you feel about this situation? Who was in the right: Eminem and Eight Mile Style Music or Raymond Vincent and SABAM?

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How Musicians Are Causing Copyright Law Controversy

Published
by
Michael Law
on November 6, 2007
in Copyright Law
. 2 Comments

Round One: Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails v. The Music Industry (RIAA).

And so far, the public is supporting the bands.

What’s going on with Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails?

Well Radiohead recently just did a really innovative act, they’ve taken their new album In Rainbows, and placed on their website - and you can pay any price for it! Yes, that price includes absolutely nothing -as in FREE. Yes, a free Radiohead album for download online.

I just found about a survey in the United Kingdom that said that about 33% of all the people who downloaded Radiohead’s album online did pay some money to the band, up to as much as £20 ($40 in United States Dollars). There’s even reports that one downloader purchased the album for £100 ($200 USD)!

Nine Inch Nails (NIN) seems to be following in similar suit. Trent Reznor, head of NIN, has released a statement concerning their freedom from their label contract and future musical direction concerning their Year Zero album:

“Right now nine inch nails is a totally free agent, free of any recording contract with any label. I have been under recording contracts for 18 years and have watched the business radically mutate from one thing to something inherently very different and it gives me great pleasure to finally be able to have a direct relationship with the audience as I see fit and appropriate.”

What’s the result from what Radiohead did with the free albums stunt? Did they lose money?

Initial reports are that they actually may be making the same amount of money they would have made normally, with following months possibly bringing even more of a profit! Their success with this marketing may find other bands and musicians going independent, possibly bypassing major record labels and self-release their own products. This may be the beginning of a paradigm shift for musicians and the music industry. Most musicians have grown up with the classic notion:

  1. Make some music.
  2. Grind it out for years and years at clubs and bars until a major label finds you.
  3. Sign with the label and give over a majority of your record sale profits to them.
  4. Make your money from concert sales.

This turns this on it’s head. It’s known that concert ticket prices are at an all-time high. This is due to the immense failure of the RIAA (Record Industry Association of America) to protect the interests of the artists. The RIAA has the major labels as their main concern. It seems that the time has come for artists to make their own way.

Are all musicians this open-minded?

Well, did you hear about the Metallica vs Napster battle a little while ago? That created huge negative backlash for the band and the repercussions are still around today.

In 2000, Metallica noticed a demo for their song “I Disappear” was floating around the Napster P2P (Peer-to-Peer) file sharing network. After more searching, they found their entire album available for free download on Napster. Metallica filed legal action against Napster, demanded the 300,000 users with Metallica songs be banned, and they also filed legal action against Yale University, University of Southern California, and Indiana University for not doing enough to stop internet file sharing from going on in their campuses. Metallica drummer and co-founder Lars Ulrich then provided a statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee:

My band authored the music which is Napster’s lifeblood. We should decide what happens to it, not Napster — a company with no rights in our recordings, which never invested a penny in Metallica’s music or had anything to do with its creation. The choice has been taken away from us.

What about the users of Napster, the music consumers? It’s like each of them won one of those contests where you get turned loose in a store for five minutes and get to keep everything you can load into your shopping cart. With Napster, though, there’s no time limit and everyone’s a winner-except the artist. Every song by every artist is available for download at no cost and, of course, with no payment to the artist, the songwriter or the copyright holder.

If you’re not fortunate enough to own a computer, there’s only one way to assemble a music collection the equivalent of a Napster user’s: theft. Walk into a record store, grab what you want and walk out. The difference is that the familiar phrase a computer user hears, “File’s done,” is replaced by another familiar phrase-”You’re under arrest.”

This caused huge headaches for the band, as tons of parodies were produced on the internet, making fun of Metallica and “Lar$ Ulrich” and the culmination being named #17 on Blender magazine’s list of “biggest wusses in rock” for its “anti-Napster crusade”.

What gave even more ammunition to the anti-Lars Ulrich crowd is an interview where he admits to not a be a user of computers and the internet:

Everybody always attacks me on it, and I’m totally open and frank, the computer is not something that gets a lot of use in my house. The Internet is not something that I utilize very much as a tool. That’s fair enough. Now certainly I have been accused of being ignorant on certain computer things, that’s all fair enough, but once again it’s sort of sad and pathetic that it becomes the best counter argument that people come up with ‘how can he be against a company like Napster if he’s never been on there?’ It’s like, because, my fucking songs are being traded around, you know, hundreds of thousands of them a day against my free fucking will, against my wishes. I think people lose sight of that with all these arguments, all these analogies, all these things that people try to come up with and be clever.

So what’s next for the music industry?

It’s definitely going to be an interesting time in the world of copyright right and the rights of musicians to protect their creative work and interests. Will more musicians join the Radiohead side and adapt with the times? Or will more musicians join the Metallica side and attack the new wave of internet music distribution?

What is the future of the music industry?

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