I was listening to Holst’s Mars: The God of War tonight and quickly picked out sections of it that had been borrowed or had influenced the soundtracks for Star Wars, Gladiator, and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Holst’s works are, of course, in the public domain, so people are free to crib from them all they want.
What I’m wondering is, if I sat down with a musicologist and we picked apart something like The Imperial March from Star Wars as to what parts of the piece came from where (and what parts were original), then, taking public domain recordings of the source pieces, spliced them together so that we got as close as we possibly could to The Imperial March without using any of John Williams’s music. Would this “new” piece be inviolation of copyright if it was almost indistinguishable from Williams’s piece? Or would it be considered enough of an original composition that Williams (and Lucas) couldn’t sue for copyright infringement?
Yeah, copyright is for the creativity involved… someone can take things in the public domain, rearrange them, splice them, whatever and have a new work. If you go back and do the same thing with the original public domain sources purposefully to duplicate the new work, you violate the copyright on the new work.
Copyrights don’t cover the process used, however, so if you think up an example of where someone mainly just did some new process to old music (or other public domain works) you can do a process as well on the same thing and end up with something so close to the other new version that it’s just a nature of the process and not an infringement. But figuring out what counts as what can get complicated.
The use of recognizable motifs from other earlier works, adapted for a new use in the particular work of art under consideration, has always been considered an hommage or a simple way to invest a particular theme with a lot of meaning packed into it. Consider how many composers, from modern classicists to Tin Pan Alley to alternative Christian, have borrowed the melody of the Shaker “Simple Gifts” and invested it with new meaning while using its original significance to enrich their own compositions. Consider the New World Symphony and Finlandia, both evoking deep emotion through use of folksong motifs. Above all, consider the creative use of several existing themes in the 1812 Overture, describing Napoleon’s invasion of Russia and his defeat and expulsion by, first, an old Russian folk song used to evoke a pastorale-type image, then the Marseillaise representing the French incursion and then morphed into a sort of cavalry-charge call, with the Russian defense represented by “God Save the Tsar,” the old Tsarist Imperial anthem (known to present or past Protestant churchgoers as “God the Omnipotent”) and its morphing into the image of massed battalions inexorably advancing.
There is a very clear difference between “I’m going to steal your musical composition,” and “I want you to hear this theme I borrowed, recognize it and keep in mind what it meant in the original. Now, watch what I do with it!”
[QUOTE=PolycarpThere is a very clear difference between “I’m going to steal your musical composition,” and “I want you to hear this theme I borrowed, recognize it and keep in mind what it meant in the original. Now, watch what I do with it!”[/QUOTE]
There is also derivative works which means you’ve borowed part of the recognizable work to need to pay licencing fees for it or else you’re in breach of copyright (if the copyright holder opts to pursue the matter). You can look up “derivative works” when you google “copyright” and it will explain.
DJ Shadow is a talented individual that uses hundreds of regognizable bits and pieces to create fascinating original works. His lawyers proactively will take care of the ones that really stand out and get licences. The rest is just so interesting that few people have bother him about it (his works will have chunks of eveything from Corey Har to movie dialog from Prince of Darkness).
“Sound alikes” are a bit different. One of my sister’s friends had a music prof who was hired to write music for a TV commercial “that sounded like Bjork”. It does sound like Bjork, but it’s an original piece so the TV commercial didn’t have to pay the exhorbitant fee for Bjork.
It doesn’t matter what medium you copy with, or what the “instrument” is (in your example, samples of sound from other public domain recordings). The test would be, does an average person recognize it’s a copy or an arrangement of John Williams’ music? You say they would, so your example is a copyright violation.
This is what happened to The Verve with “Bitter Sweet Symphony.” They licensed a sample of an orchestral performance of a Rolling Stones song, but because of how the sample was used they ended up losing the copyright to the song (which is why Jagger/Richards have the songwriting credit on it, despite not having written a single lyric.)
I’m not sure aobut that exact case, but normally (I think) the derivative work is copyrighted separately as a new but derivative piece. I think it then gets really comlicated with licencing agreements for the derivative work.
For example if the derivative work was to appear in a movie, the licencing agreements would keep the lawyers a bit busy, I’d imagine.
The case boiled down to “how much of a sample makes a song a derivative work?” It ended up that to settle the case, Jagger and Richards got the songwriting credit, the label that owned the original recording got the copyright to the new song and The Verve were SOL.