Re: [h2o-discuss] Plagiarism?

["Robert S. Thau" <rst@ai.mit.edu>]

Eric Eldred writes:
 > Unfortunately, the powers-that-be have already
 > taken this to court.  I now remember that a Creedence
 > Clearwater musician was charged with copyright
 > infringement.  He had written a song which was sold
 > to someone else--that corporation later sued him
 > for writing a song that was similar to the first.
 > I don't have access to legal research, but I do
 > believe that the first copyright owner won.

The musician was John Fogerty, who wrote all of the Creedence songs.
The entire Creedence catalog is owned by Fantasy Records (run for
years by a guy named Saul Zaentz), who signed Creedence to an almost
legendarily bad contract which assigned all rights to Fantasy, and was
very skimpy on royalties.  Fantasy did in fact sue Fogerty for
plaigiarising his earlier Creedence work on one of his solo albums;
however, in the end, the jury found for Fogerty, not for Zaentz.

Another series of tangles between artist and publisher which may be
more relevant for this list is the whole question of digital
distribution rights.  The rap group Public Enemy was apparently forced
by their label to withdraw some prerelease MP3s from their own web
site, and I don't think they're the only ones.

rst