Since moving to a shiny new job at ICANN, Kieren McCarthy has been a relatively infrequent blogger on his own site (being insanely busy on his various other blogs, like this), but he pops back up with a great post on the dispute over Coldplay’s Viva La Vida, which has been widely reported. The added value here comes from the set of links to court documents and more that Kieren has put together for our enjoyment, although some trigger-happy types have already tried to get rid of some side-by-side demonstrations on YouTube, as reported by Wired here. Hear Coldplay’s track here and Joe Satriani’s one here, and see what you think.
One of my unfulfilled ambitions is to organise, someday, a Copyright Concert – an evening of music that has been the subject of litigation (probably broadly defined so as to cover trademark too, and non-IP contractual disputes between musicians, record labels, etc). We’d have My Sweet Lord, A Whiter Shade Of Pale, Barbie Girl, Pretty Woman (the dirty version of course), to name but a few. Maybe Coldplay will join that shortlist. What would you add?
Easy one this – the Illegal Art Project have done most of the hard work here:
http://www.illegal-art.org/audio/
Ah, wonderful – thank you. It does suggest a further challenge though – giving the track listing of one of those CDs at a law table quiz and asking for the name and/or salient points of the case. One for BILETA or SLS, perhaps…
Internal band disputes would also be a fruitful source for a table quiz. E.g. “Of what musician was it said that he was ‘devious, truculent and unreliable where his own interests were at stake’?”
(http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/1998/1711.html)