So, last week my twitter feed blew up with folks losing their minds about Glee “stealing” Coulton’s cover of “Baby Got Back”.
I didn’t pay much attention to it at that point, as I wasn’t familiar with the song.
On my lunch break today, I played both versions of the song on YouTube, and some folks have synced the two and play them simultaneously (one track left, one track right).
I am fairly certain Coulton has a case, if he chooses to take action against Fox.
Given the Glee version keeps the lyric changes from the Coultan version, (including referring to the singer as “Johnny C”!), there isn’t really much room to hold that the Glee version isn’t covering Coulton’s version.
Not sure where exactly that leaves the legalities though. Both Glee and Coulton got permission from Sir-Mix-a-Lot (MBE). If I do a cover that’s really a cover of a cover and I only got permission from the original artist and not the first cover artist…then what?
Who do I pay if I want to cover “All along the Watch Tower” with an electric guitar?
IANAL, but I don’t think that’s a 1 to 1 comparison.
If you wanted to cover “All along the watchtower” on an electric guitar, that doesn’t make it Jimi Hendrix’s version. If you took his entire arrangement and played it note for note, and sung it exactly the way he sung it, then you’d be in the ballpark of what Glee’s done with Coulton’s cover.
I don’t know where the legality falls, but as a layperson it does seem like Coulton’s original arrangement should be protected by copyright. It really is a completely original piece of music.. if you strip away the lyrics, it in no way resembles “Baby Got Back.”
Regardless of legality, in the MORAL realm, it is certainly a shitty move on someone at Fox’s part. I presume someone at Glee gets paid to arrange their covers, and I highly doubt they took a pass on their paycheck this week for stealing Coulton’s work. And Coulton will never see a cent from Fox for his work that they’re using, unless he beats them in court.
I’m always pretty skeptical of musical plagiarism accusations. But in this case, good lord. They’re almost identical. Fox really ought to owe Couton, and if the current law doesn’t require them to pay him royalties, this points to a flaw in copyright law that ought to be addressed.
Though the situations aren’t completely compatible, this puts me in mind of Weird Al. In the early days, his arrangements of song parodies were slightly off in comparison to the originals. As the years went on, the arrangements got closer, until nowadays they’re pretty much identical.
AFAIK, Al doesn’t have to get permission from the original artist; he just does it as a courtesy. Legally, he’s in the clear because of parody (as far as I know). In this case, I have no freaking clue; it seems like a bit murky legally (although I’ve read that Glee has done this before with other artists; it’s just that none of them had the geek fanbase that Coulton does, so much fewer noticed or cared - that leads me to believe they’re on solid ground legally, but maybe not so publicity-wise because of said geek fanbase).
Coulton says the work is copyrighted, granted that doesn’t mean the copyright will stand up in court.
Yea, I agree, morally they’re certainly in the wrong. Even if legally they didn’t owe him money, they should’ve acknowledged him as the artist in the show, at least, and thrown him some publicity (which, I guess they kind of have, but they should’ve done it intentionally).
I imagine “covers of covers” where the cover itself is pretty unique, must’ve come up in other court cases though. How were those settled?
Question: who was acknowledged in the credits for that particular song, if anyone? If it was Sir Mix-a-Lot, would you argue that that credit was actually “wrong”? In that case, could that aspect of it be a simple legal misunderstanding?
Well, it would probably credit Anthony Ray, I’d think.
These versions are totally different. I mean Coulton gets to “sprung” about a full second earlier! That and clearly the Glee version is overproduced and doesn’t sound as good, so that’s not theft!
He’d be in the clear as far as the lyrics, but if the music of the song is essentially identical to the original he could still be in trouble for that if he didn’t have permission. I would guess that a significantly different arrangement of the music could be considered a parody of the original music, though.
As a longtime Glee viewer I’m surprised about the attention this story is getting, because nearly every time Glee has featured an arrangement of a song that differs significantly from the original (e.g. their down-tempo version of “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”) it’s been identified by fans as being basically the same as an existing cover version (e.g. the version of “I Wanna Hold Your Hold” from the movie Across the Universe). I never heard that Glee ran into any legal trouble for that one – and it’s been more than two years since that episode aired – and Columbia Pictures presumably has lawyers who know all about copyright violation. Maybe Glee’s legal folks have been more careful in the past about managing these things, though.
Coulton’s work exists under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommerical license, which gives his fans permission to do whatever they want with his music as long as they give him credit and don’t make money off of it.
That’s weird (hah!); I’ve always heard that he doesn’t need permission to parody their songs. I’ve never heard of anything different for any particular aspect of those songs. And like I said, his arrangements these days certainly sound exactly the same as the originals.
You don’t need permission for a parody, but there are standards for what counts as a parody. You can’t just say “It’s a parody!” and freely make use of other people’s copyrighted material. This is outside my area of expertise and copyright cases are judged on a case by case basis, so I really don’t know how a judge would rule in a case where the lyrics obviously counted as parody but the music was identical to the original. I know the courts ultimately ruled in favor of 2 Live Crew in the lawsuit over their parody of Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman”, but although they made significant use of the original music (either a sample or a sound-alike version of the guitar riff) it wasn’t identical to the music of the original song.
But as you also said, Weird Al has the reputation of always seeking the original artist’s permission. If he has their permission to cover their music then of course he can do an arrangement that sounds just like the original.
Ah, OK, using it on a TV show definitely counts as commercial. I suppose it’s possible, though, that the producers of the show made the same mistake I did, in which case they’ll probably be sending Coulton an apology and a check.
I haven’t heard most of the original versions of Al’s more recent parodies, but in the past, when doing a soundalike or nearly-soundalike version, he typically played the songs at a slightly faster tempo, and often in a different key, and usually cut out or shortened instrumental sections and solos. Looking at the tracks on iTunes, I see that Chamillionaire’s “Ridin’” clocks in at 5:02, while Al’s “White and Nerdy” is only 2:50.
Copyright issues can be pretty complicated, and it would ultimately be the judge who decided whether the unauthorized parodist was in the clear or not. Parody is considered fair use, but Acuff-Rose Music went after 2 Live Crew for an unauthorized parody of “Pretty Woman” and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. And again, this was a case where the music wasn’t identical to the original.