Nats told music was safe – lawyer
The National Party thought it had a ‘‘gold standard’’ assurance on the copyright for its campaign advert music, a judge has been told.
The party has defended a claim the ‘‘soundalike’’ music chosen for its 2014 campaign adverts infringed copyright of the Eminem hit Lose Yourself.
Even if copyright was infringed, the party and its secretary should not be punished for flagrant misconduct, lawyer Greg Arthur said.
Throughout the case in the High Court at Wellington talk of the sums involved to buy a licence to use music like Lose Yourself has been kept confidential.
But the National Party paid $4802 for the licence to use the soundalike Eminem Esque.
Arthur said it was hard to conceive of a situation where a defendant had acted more reasonably than the party.
When a single person suggested the music sounded like Lose Yourself, assurances were sought and the party thought it had a ‘‘gold standard’’ assurance that using the soundalike music Eminem Esque was risk free, he said.
The list of people consulted included Mike Chunn, a former director of the New Zealand arm of the Australasian Performing Rights Association and a former member of bands including Split Enz. But no-one asked for a lawyer’s advice.
Arthur told Justice Helen Cull the music industry was built on ‘‘borrowing’’.
One of the composers of Lose Yourself, Jeff Bass, even acknowledged the history of borrowing musical building blocks when he came to New Zealand to give evidence.
‘‘It is an industry of borrowing,’’ Arthur said.
Lose Yourself, which Eminem performed and wrote with Bass and Luis Resto, was released in 2002. It won an Academy Award and two Grammys.
Two United States companies that control Lose Yourself copyright sued the National Party and its secretary Gregory Hamilton.
Arthur questioned the originality of the Lose Yourself composition. To have infringed the copyright there needed to have been reproduction of a substantial part that was original.
Elements of Lose Yourself were compared during the case with The Motels’ song Total Control, Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir, and The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky.
Lose Yourself and the National Party advert music, Eminem Esque, had in common the basic building block of a staccato beat, he said.
There was nothing sinister in the party wanting a regular, syncopated beat to go with the scene in its advert of rowers’ oars hitting the water, Arthur said.
The adverts were broadcast for two weeks before the music was replaced.
Eminem Esquewas from Michael Cohen, a Los Angeles composer of music for adverts, film, and television.
The hearing should end today.