Copyright Infringement Of The Happy Birthday Song, Along With The Walt Disney Company 's Lobbying Tactics

As an artist, the protection of all intellectual property created for distribution should be a priority. The type of protection this case focuses on is the protection granted by copyright. When a piece of work is copyrighted, the copyright grants the creator the exclusive right to use and distribute the piece for the duration of their life plus 70 years. As a creator, copyrighting completed art before disclosing the art with any other interests is very beneficial when proving ownership in a federal court proceeding. Devin Copeland v. Justin Bieber is a case that is based around the copyrights to a song entitled “Somebody to Love”. The facts will be introduced, followed by the issues that arose in court, then the courts analysis of those issues, closing with the lessons learned to be applied to the future of Planet Florida Artist Managements business ventures.

Is important for anyone who has created any intellectual property to protect it. In the music industry, in order for someone to protect their work, they must obtain a copyright. Music has been around before anyone could obtain a copyright and when the invention of the computer came along it made it easier for someone to steal another artist's intellectual property with the help of the internet. This paper will cover what events have taken a big role in copyright protection for artist, the consequences if someone was to break the rules of a copyright which is called copyright infringement, and how will a copyright hold in the future. Were copyrights enacted without the thought of life changing technology, and how can some music companies

Imagine the number one song of the year with the most downloads, streaming numbers and views on Youtube could not be nominated for a Grammy. Up until June 2014, artists could not be nominated for such an award unless the song was completely their own, meaning there was no sampling of past music. This may not sound like a big deal until songs like “SOS” by Rihanna or “Ice Ice Baby” by Vanilla Ice became chart topping tracks, and are both derived from older songs. Mark Ronson, music producer and DJ, speaks about how sampled music has changed the way generations discover music, as well as how creative ideas flourish from sampling other artist’s music. In this TED talk “How sampling transformed music,” Ronson gives his opinion on how artists transform

Now : Songs are created by synthesizers. Nobody can realistically take credit for their own songs because most songs are re-mixes or a collage of dubs from other people's  music.

Is the (Defendant) Bobby Bandleader committing copyright infringement, by singing the song to his customers? Should the (Plaintiff) Johnny Singstealer be paid royalties from the (Defendant)

I can imagine people copying someone else's homework, but I really can’t imagine plagiarism in a career. I genuinely can’t believe it until now that there are people like Vanilla Ice in this world that can copyright songs baseline, and let the people in this world hear it as it is his own song. What Vanilla Ice did wrong is that he tricked billions of people into believing that it was his own work, where he also

“We have held that where the works in question are 'so strikingly similar as to preclude the possibility of independent creation, copying may be proved without a showing of access.'" In some cases, the similarities between the plaintiff's and defendant's work are so extensive and striking as, without more, both to justify an inference of copying and to prove improper appropriation. If a plaintiff demonstrates actual copying through proof of a reasonable possibility of access and similarities probative of copying, however, it can prevail on its infringement claim by demonstrating that defendant's work is "substantially similar to that which is original in the plaintiff's expression." With "inexact copies," this assessment proceeds by a comparison of the "total concept and feel of the contested works" as "instructed by common sense.” The court must "analyze the two works closely to figure out in what respects, if any, they are similar, and then determine whether these similarities are due to protected aesthetic expressions original to the allegedly infringed work, or whether the similarity is to something in the original that is free for the taking."

Over the past fifty years, the British Music Publishing industry has undergone dramatic changes. It has evolved as an entity with innovations in technology, changes and creations of laws and new mediums to promote and exploit songs to a wider audience. Therefore, the way in which the music publishing industry operates and exploits its assets has completely transformed, and continues to do so at a rapid pace. This paper will attempt to explore the ways in which publishers exploit song copyrights and the way in which this has changed over the past 60 years. It is important to define what is meant by copyright and its role within the industry. The Performing Right Society website states: “Copyright

Copyright is the legal right, to an inventor to perform, print, publish, film, or record artistic, literary, or musical material, and to allow others to do the same. Copyright law was developed to provide the creators and inventors of any works with powerful and effective rights of exclusivity over their creations (Patterson & Lindberg, 1991). Over the past, these rights were almost unlimited. People would use existing developments as if they were their own without any regard of the creator’s exclusive rights. The need to balance and limit such rights arose, and governments established these limits for the general good of the public.

The Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) seeks to protect individuals who have created original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works. Sections 14(1) and 36 provide that copyright is infringed when a person reproduces a substantial part of another’s work without the license of the owner of the copyright. In 2010 the Federal Court of Australia considered whether the flute riff in ‘Down Under’ a song by popular Australian group Men at Work was a substantial reproduction of the iconic children’s song ‘Kookaburra’ composed by Marion Sinclair. This case attracted significant media coverage and public interest.

The theory of authorship often challenge the ideals of authenticity, especially within the context of cover songs. This is due to the fact that the composer of the song is a separate entity from the performer. Society has often valued composer-performers as it has been encoded in culture within the past century. "the attempt to understand the past in terms of the past is - paradoxically - an absolutely contemporary phenomenon." Authenticity is a historically specific abstraction and therefore, will continuously be subjected to reconsiderations as our societal construction of authenticity changes through time. A cover version is seemingly an art form that contains a thin line that dictates the authentic an artist presents their image within

Music Copyright is a very important aspect of the music industry. The Copyright law was established to preserve the creativity and rights of authors, composers, performers of expression. Copyright is the law that protects the property rights of the creator of an original work in a fixed tangible medium. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/copyright) A fixed tangible medium is something substantial like copying lyrics on paper or putting a song on tape or CD. Copyright can be seen every where in the music industry. Many music artist of our culture today have been involved in copyright issues. Recently, on MTV news it was stated that, "As the music industry becomes increasingly concerned about protecting the

Nothing is more enjoyable than listening to your favorite song. All over the world, people listen to music on a daily basis. Music plays a major part in a tremendous number of people’s lives. While they are enjoying the music, they do not think about how the song came about. Music is not just the sound you hear or the voices in the background. People do not think about what is behind the scenes of where music comes from. Before the song is completed, someone has to make it happen. In music, there are different careers which are the song writer, the manager, the marketing executive, and the produced. Each of these careers play a huge role in how music is brought to the public.

Copyright protection extends to expressions and not to ideas . Originality is the threshold standard of requirement of copyright. The case Walter v Lane [1900] AC 539 expounded the three essential elements (labour, skill and judgment ) of originality. The court adapted to sweat of brow test with no element of creativity require to make the work original. Copyright can be granted if a work is created through the effort of an individual despite the work containing statement of facts and no creative input by an author.

Many infringement claims involve simple cases of copyright infringement where the copying is obvious. Others, however, are more difficult to resolve because copyright protection is not limited to exact copying. It is inevitable that creative and commercial works will take inspiration from the culture at large, and it is often challenging to determine when this "inspiration" has crossed the line into infringement. There also may be a question of whether the allegedly infringed work is even protected by copyright. Unprotected works may include, for example, compilations of facts that lack the requisite creativity to be covered by copyright, or those works that are in the public domain because the copyright term expired.