Neutering the copycats

defy anyone to would be hard to find a shred of inspiration in this musak version.

To the extent that there was any sort of attempt at artistry, it was more legal than musical.

The intention surely was to change the hit song just barely enough to avoid copyright concerns.

Even by those standards the execution was pitifully inadequate; insufficient dissuade the High Court from finding $600,000 worth of copyright infringement, to which interest of maybe $100,000 will be added.

The Nats fruitlessly argued in court that the Eminem track wasn’t itself all that terribly original to begin with. A contention not especially helped by the Academy Award it picked up as Best Original Song.

Perhaps the academy needs a new category, Best Not-So-Original song.

Nobody’s denying the clotheared Nats took steps to satisfy themselves of the legal legitimacy of the ripoff. So it’s hardly surprising that they will now be shoulder tapping the production library Beatbox and the music library Labrador for recompense. Sure enough, the Eminem people are considering doing likewise.

The case should send shudders through the perhaps not-so-little, essentially parasitical, industry that exists to make soundalike music.

And it’s a gut-punch for the Nats, though there may be a few other political parties out there envious of the recourse Eminem had, when they look back at some of their own policies that they feel the were loftily criticised but later quietly appropriated, marginally changed if at all, and presented as Nat originals.

The court case was much more straightforward than two highprofile others that have, with much less justification, found plagiarism.

The Robin Thicke/Pharrell Williams track Blurred Lines was found to be an appropriation of the Marvin Gaye song Got to Give It Up.

That’s under appeal and in part the debate, rightly or wrongly, is centring around whether you can copyright that musically rudimentary (but you know it when you feel it, baby) of things, a groove.

As for the Australian decision that Men at Work’s Down Under was based on the chirpy-forkiddies Kookaburra song. Now that was a case in which the newer song was unassailably a piece of work in itself; its charms far from misappropriated.

That band was hard done by.