Led Zeppelin copyright trial

[mstng86]

I am a little torn on this stuff. This is my favorite band of all time. These songs were epic in their own right, but its too obvious they most definitely took elements of other peoples work from the same time period. I get using certain samples or phrases from old works, but some of these were from contemporary artist of their own time.

http://www.businessinsider.com/copyright-lawyer-explains-led-zeppelins-stairway-to-heaven-trial-2016-5?r=UK&IR=T

Website won't let me copy and paste.

[blandnuts]

Yep, I like them too as a remaker. You'd be surprised of some well known bands jacking shit. I stumbled across a Youtube video awhile ago that had a bunch of bands that "stole" songs and made them their own. I blame Nixon.

[Scott Mc]

Damn that sucks but that past history shows what they were doing. My question is why so long for all of those to go to court?

[SS Junk]

They'll lose. Forty million is walking around money to either of those blokes.

[WhiteMach1]

Happened to catch this on the radio yesterday. Just thought wtf, this song was released almost half a century ago.

[46Tbird]

It's bullshit. In those days, everyone - EVERYONE - stole music from everyone else. It was before people protected IP with whole fleets of lawyers like they do today. How many thousands of times have you heard someone give 'Walkin Blues' a rip without so much as a tip of the hat to Robert Johnson... or whoever he stole it from?

Just want to brag on my mom a bit, here. She went to see Led Zeppelin in Fort Worth when she was 14 years old. There is actually a bootleg recording of that concert floating around, and one of the songs is Stairway to Heaven.

The concert was 8/23/71 and Led Zeppelin IV was released about two weeks later, 9/8/71. My mom is one of the first people to ever hear it.

Check it out... no one recognizes the intro at all. At the end, there's a little applause and someone yells, "far out", heh.

[BLAKE]

I think this guy nails it.

Comparison:


Analysis relative to the legality of things:



Personally, I don't give a damn. Doesn't get much better than Led Zeppelin.

Edit: Danny, that is all kinds of rad.

[abecx]

Like Nick said, everyone plagiarized back then and hell still do. Here is the most plagiarized samples of all time, it introduced dozens of new music genres based on itself alone. It is very hard to be original when we are all inspired by someone, you can only play a beat so many different ways no matter the style. Same goes with chords.

Also, lol at the irony you cant copy and paste from the site.

[Big A]

I also find it telling that it's the estate making the claim, and a maverick lawyer. The guy actually to have supposedly been plagiarized is long dead, and didn't care enough to file suit himself while still alive. The song has been plenty popular and lucrative for many years.

On a side note, I don't agree with how they are coming up with the settlement numbers. The song was/is famous explicitly because of who performed it, and it's not fair to say that the original writer would have made even a penny had he tried to put it on a record himself. He should get royalties as any writer would should he win, but to say those are his lost sales is preposterous.

[93LXHORSE]

Damn, Plant looks like a homeless dude, and Page looks like that Asian astrophysicist dude that's always popping up on the Science Channel to talk about complex theorems relating to black holes and what not.

Danny, that's awesome man. My buddies mom grew up in Detroit and saw a ton of cool concerts back then, like Zeppelin, Grateful Dead, Stevie Wonder, Bad Company, Santana, Crosby Stills / Nash / Young...

I watched about 6 hours of Led Zeppelin on You Tube a couple of weeks ago, starting with their BBC sessions and wandering through their early 70's concerts... man they were several notches above what anyone else was doing back then, Jimmy Page with a violin bow, and John Bonahm beating the shit out of what looks today like a little kid's drum kit and still being awesome.

[cobrajet69]

It's bullshit. In those days, everyone - EVERYONE - stole music from everyone else. It was before people protected IP with whole fleets of lawyers like they do today. How many thousands of times have you heard someone give 'Walkin Blues' a rip without so much as a tip of the hat to Robert Johnson... or whoever he stole it from?

Just want to brag on my mom a bit...

Tin Pan Aly

Cool story on your mom Danny!



David

[CyaNide]

I find this bs that this can come up this far in time. How do we know the original writer did not give them the right to use it? Could have just been verbal. Could just be a coincidence anyway that they are that similar.

CN

[mstng86]

This trial has been going on this week.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/06/17/led-zeppelin-page-dodges-court-questions-riffs-air-guitar.html

Led Zeppelin's Page dodges court questions, riffs air guitar

LOS ANGELES – "Stairway to Heaven" and other Led Zeppelin songs have produced nearly $60 million in revenue over the past five years, an economist testified Friday in a lawsuit accusing the band of lifting a passage from another songwriter's tune for its best known work.

Michael Einhorn told jurors in federal court in Los Angeles that songwriters Jimmy Page and Robert Plant have received $58.5 million since 2011 for dozens of works, including "Stairway," their band's 1971 hit and most recognizable song.

Einhorn was the final witness for plaintiffs in the copyright infringement case brought against Led Zeppelin, Page and Plant by the band Spirit and the estate of Spirit's late guitarist Randy California.

The action claims Led Zeppelin lifted a passage from the Spirit instrumental "Taurus."

Under cross-examination, Einhorn said some of the $58.5 million in revenues were under terms of a 2008 contract that covered the band's catalog of 87 songs.

Led Zeppelin lawyers have challenged the inclusion of the contract in the case, contending it falls outside the statute of limitations.

Page has testified that he never heard "Taurus" until years after Led Zeppelin released "Stairway to Heaven."

The instrumental was written by California, whose real name was Randy Wolfe and who died in 1997.

On the witness stand Thursday, Page was reluctant to compare the harmony, tempo or structure of the two songs, thwarting the lawyer representing Wolfe's estate in the suit that also targets several music companies.

"You want to step through it," attorney Francis Malofiy asked as he tried to get Page to discuss the "Taurus" sheet music, which is the work protected by copyright.

"Not necessarily," Led Zeppelin's lead guitarist replied, sending a ripple of comic relief through the gallery during an otherwise dull day of testimony.

Page, 72, had entered the courtroom carrying a guitar but wrapped up testifying without playing a note. The closest he came was during a break when he briefly struck a jamming pose and played air guitar and laughed with Plant in the courtroom.

Jurors and a packed audience in court did get to hear the familiar opening chords of "Stairway," but they came not from Page but from an expert who said he found it strikingly similar to "Taurus."

Kevin Hanson, a guitar instructor and former member of Huffamoose, played passages from both songs on acoustic guitar, concluding they are virtually identical.

"To my ear, they sound like they are one piece of music," he said.

On cross-examination, however, Hanson, who doesn't have a college degree and is not a musicologist, said he can easily tell the songs apart.

Another plaintiff expert, Alexander Stewart, a music professor at the University of Vermont, said he found five categories in which both songs had significant similarities, including a descending chord progression, notes lasting the same duration and a series of arpeggios and similar pairs of notes.

Stewart said the descending chord progression and other elements have been found in songs dating to the 1600s. But he testified that of more than 65 songs the defense has said have a similar construction, including "My Funny Valentine," the Beatles' "Michelle," and "Chim Chim Cher-ee" from the movie "Mary Poppins," none contained all five elements shared by "Taurus" and "Stairway."

"Not one of them came close," Stewart said, though he acknowledged on cross-examination that the notes in both songs didn't all line up in the same places.

One of the biggest challenges for the plaintiffs is showing that "Stairway" is substantially similar to the sheet music for "Taurus" because that's what's filed at the U.S. Copyright Office.

The recording of "Taurus," which contains a riff very similar to the opening of "Stairway" is significantly different from videos of experts playing the sheet music.

Because the recording is not protected by the copyright, jurors can't consider it and it can't be played in court.

Malofiy tried several times to get Page, who said he never heard "Taurus" until comparisons began popping up online a few years ago, to compare the two songs. Page's lawyer successfully objected and the question was never answered.

However, when Page was asked to compare "Stairway" to the "Taurus" sheet music, he said he preferred to hear it.

"I'm asking if I can hear what was played," he said, knowing he couldn't.

To demonstrate the shortcomings of sheet music, though, Malofiy showed Page the copyright version of "Stairway to Heaven."

Page, who said he composed the music and Plant wrote the lyrics, said he had not written the sheet music he was shown.

It begins with the opening lyrics, "There's a lady who's sure/All that glitters is gold," eliminating the famous instrumental introduction that lasts nearly a minute.

"It's not there," Page said.

[SS Junk]

Not guilty.

http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/23/media/stairway-to-heaven-trial-verdict/index.html

Music history will not be rewritten. A jury found Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant and guitarist Jimmy Page not guilty of copyright infringement on perhaps their most famous song, "Stairway to Heaven."

A Los Angeles jury deliberated for about five hours before deciding the band did not steal its most famous licks from another band.

In a statement issued after the verdict was announced, Led Zeppelin said they were "grateful" that the jury "ruled in our favor, putting to rest questions about the origins of 'Stairway to Heaven' and confirming what we have known for 45 years."

The case centered on claims that Led Zeppelin copied key note patterns in the first two minutes of their hit from a song by the 1960s psychedelic band, Spirit. That song, "Taurus," is an instrumental ballad released four years prior to "Stairway to Heaven." The suit was filed for partial song writing credit and compensation by the estate of a deceased Spirit musician, Randy Craig Wolfe.

The plaintiff failed to show that Plant and Page were familiar with "Taurus," and that the works were substantially similar.

The estate's attorney, Francis Malofiy, tried to introduce evidence that Page and Plant had seen Spirit in concert, owned a recording of "Taurus," and testimony on the songs' musical similarities. Led Zeppelin's lawyer, Peter Anderson, brought Page and Plant to the stand to dispute their familiarity with "Taurus," questioned the estate's copyright claim, and said the passage in question was a common descending chord sequence in the public domain.

Plant took the stand Tuesday and described in detail writing "Stairway to Heaven" with Page at a countryside retreat in Hampshire, England in 1971. He told the court Page was playing some music by a fire and he offered a couplet to go with it as a lyric. When asked by his attorney if he remembered what that lyric was, Plant recited what has become the well known opening line to the hit song, "There's a lady who knows all that glitters is gold and she's buying a stairway to heaven."

Under cross-examination, Plant acknowledged that Led Zeppelin played a cover medley that included a different Spirit song in the band's early days, but he didn't recall seeing Spirit in concert, or ever meeting the group. "Don't remember now, and didn't remember then," Plant told the court.

Related: 'Stairway to Heaven' suit: What you need to know

Last week, Page testified that he didn't remember hearing Spirit perform live. He said he first heard "Taurus" on the internet two years ago, despite owning an album with the song among his more than 4,000 records. "Something like that would stick in my mind. It was totally alien to me," Page said.

When Page returned to the stand on Tuesday, like Plant he described their songwriting process on "Stairway to Heaven" to flatten the claim some of it had been lifted.

Copyright cases have resulted in increasing scrutiny -- and damages -- within the music industry.

Condé Nast Portfolio estimated in 2008 that "Stairway to Heaven" had earned more than $562 million in publishing royalties and record sales since it released.

Last year, Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams were ordered to pay the estate of singer Marvin Gaye $7.4 million after a jury found their song "Blurred Lines" had taken riffs from Gaye's classic "Got to Give It Up."

[BLAKE]

I'm cool with it.