What is the legal limit?

[jim500]

For starter's, I,m new at this Posting threads. But I was wondering, what if you took a lick of somone's an turned it in to your own? Let's say you transposed it or bent a note or done it your way. Would it be a copyright law? Or, Would it be your own? Some tell me that I'm steeling. Is it steeling or is it just an influense. OOPS! Miss spelled sorry.....Please let me know someone>

[Raskolnikov]

It depends on how close you are:
Vanilla Ice got busted for plagurism with Ice Ice Baby, Godsmack gets away with "borrowing" Alice in Chains riffs. The legal definition isn't strict as my personal definition, I know that much.

Of course, everybody has influences. Nobody who's listened to me play hasn't thought "that guy listens to Primus." On the other hand, they can't say "Wait a minute... THAT'S 'SEARGENT BAKER!' THAT BASTARD!"

Really though, this isn't an easy question and everybody feels a little differently about it.

[chris mood]

there is a legal limit, its something like 3 or 4 beats of a melody. Copyright laws are pretty strange, and I know they revised them a lot in the past year, I believe you can now copyright an improvised solo.

[Hootayah]

I think it's 4 bars before you have to pay royalties... something like that.
Course that also depends on the ability of the copyright holder to prove his claim in court. ie, if you copied a Beatles riff, you're way more likely to get sued than if you rip of Joe Blows lead solo. There's also other stuff to consider like even if you won your claim in court it won't get you anything if no money was made or lost or no monetary damages were incurred.

[jim500]

Yeh, that is a pretty hard question. You don't want to sound like someone and have them sayin that YOU STOLE THAT! Witch in a way one did'nt. I think! LOL

[Raskolnikov]

My solution has been that if I riff I come up with reminds me of something else a bit too much, I scrap it. More than anything, I want to sound like me.

[jake sommers]

I hate that too Ras. I've come across many songs on the radio that i've listened to and said to myself that sounds like one of mine. I just say "God darnit" and hopes no one ever notices the similarities. If it sounds too much like something else i've gotta get rid of it.

[jim500]

I know, when someone starts to sound like someone eles, you want to through it away. Forget it. I do that a lot! I start sounding like someone and say, WHOOO!! Can't do that! but then if you do that, how would you take something so little and take it farther...How would you take an "E" bend it a whole step or a half step an not make it sound like someone eles?

[lalimacefolle]

you have to file your song and send it to a special place where they protect it from copyright infringment (I thing it's called ascap in the US, in france, it's called SACEM) It's 20 dollars per song in the US, and it's a 100 dollars in france for as many as you want.

You have to be careful with the terms used. If you steal a lick from a solo, when you improvise, it's not bad, otherwise, we would owe a lot to BB king and Hendrix, and Van halen etc... What you can't do is steal the theme of the song. The stuff about the four bars is false... If someone can recognize the theme, it's considered as if you had stolen it.

There's something about coming up with a theme that could be already an existing song (it's rather unusual, but it could happen). If you can prove that you haven't been exposed to the song, then you might get away unharmed, otherwise you have to pay royalties...

[PonyOne]

My girlfriend and I were just talking about sampling, ironically. It seems like there's sort of this unspoken "plagirism is the highest form of flattery" mentality... if the aforementioned Joe Blow makes this really awesome guitar part, and you have a song that has lyrics that are the total flipside of it, a bass part that doesn't match, and drums that don't either, he probably won't care too much. We all play other people's stuff at some point, that's how we learn. And I let all my friends in other bands "borrow" my drum parts and some of my guitar stuff because, if nothing else, it can be interesting to see what my work evokes in others.

But if Joe's song goes "I love you with all my heart/I never wnat us to part" and you borrow his guitars, then add "I care about you all my heart/no one can tear us apart", that's when people start to notice.

Being into more underground, obscure, or if nothing else non-mainstream music, it pisses me off to no end when I hear a new hit song on the radio and go "Hey, that's the guitar part Failure's 'Submission' or Refused's 'Return To The Closet!"

Case in point: every time I hear Ozzy's newest song ("I'm not the kind of person you think I am...") I immedeately think, for the first piano part, that the radio is playing Tool's "Message To Harry Manback." I think that Ozzy has a little bit more of a creative liscence to do such things as he and Maynard are cool, and he was one of the founders of that general type of music, but the point is still the same.

[Benoit]

I think this is a bigger problem (ending up playing someone else riff) when you start playing guitar. Since you don't have big repertoire, you ultimately go back to what you know. I know I did this a lot.

Personnaly, I always scrap riffs that sounds like a particular artist but not that feels like one. You can play in the style of... without copying his or her riff.

I'm really not a fan of sampling. In my mind, you play their song entirely or you don't use their riff. Simple as that, but I have to admit that there seems to have a market for this so it's probably not all that bad.

[Raskolnikov]

I dunno, when I hear that new Everclear song where they sampled the guitar and horns from "Mr. Big Stuff" then rap about the 70s come on the radio, I grab my CDs and the radio goes off for the day. Good bye plagurism, hello Primus, Frank Zappa, Morphine, and Tom Waits!

I think sampling can be done artisticly, but more often then not, I end up hearing cheese.

[friskynibbles]

The most recent example I can think of-
(nobody else i know has noticed this)
Creed - "My Sacrifice"
Listen to the end of it, doesn't that sound like he just ripped a piece of "Kashmir"?
*shrug*

[Raskolnikov]

No, but I noticed just how much "With Arms Wide Open" sounds like Pearl Jam.

[chris mood]

what about yellow ledbetter (?) sounding like the intro to little wing?

[jake sommers]

true, hendrixy indeed, when i first heard it, that is instantly what i thought. But liked they said earlier playing in the style of isn't rippin' exactly.

[atc323]

if your band is playing live and you cover, lets say.. a metallica song.. and you are making money on the performance, you have to pay royalties or something?

i have a band but we arent good enuf for playing live yet so im just wondering about the rul3s

[lalimacefolle]

the club's owner pays something to ascap, but YOU don't have to pay. If you RECORD it though, you have to pay a royalty to ASCAP

[crazyguy]

There are two rules I use to sound original while "stealing":
*Never copy just one player, that's way to recognizable. The larger the number of the players you're copying from, the more original you'll sound.
*Play it your way, don't just copy everything.
I'm totaly against stealing parts of songs or whole songs. If it's a cover, that's how it should be called. It is possible that the quantity of familiar phrases in music today is what makes it so repulsive, at least for me. It has happened in the past, but today it's like a regular practice.
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