Today the Helsinki court made their decision public in the case between GRG and Timbaland. (GRG made a cover of an Amiga-song by Tempest, and the cover was then sampl.. eh, i mean.. used as inspiration by Timbaland in a song for Nelly Furtado, and so on)
GRG and his crew were making three claims: sampling, performance rights, producer rights. The court did however only consider one of these: the performance rights. According to them GRG’s cover was not unique enough to grant him any kind of authorship rights, so the case was basically lost. This meant that they didn’t have to consider whether the song was sampled or not. Maybe they are just not very good at remembering, since this was sort of the main deal with the case to start with. They are probably very stressed from work. More RAM for the courts!
I got this information from Chris Abbott, who was the expert witness in the court, and as he put it: “So, now it’s back to the court of appeal to get it straightened out, since this is an obvious legal error. So, nothing to see here, nothing to see…”
Hero by Trixs (ZX Spectrum 2007)
CHIPFLIP 
January 23, 2009 at 3:54 pm |
[…] CHIPFLI writes: […]
January 23, 2009 at 4:22 pm |
Crazy – back to appeals – this is why the little guy usually doesn’t even bother with the legal system. Hope they keep fighting to the end. Thanks for the update.
February 14, 2009 at 12:44 pm |
This is absolutely horrendous! We are not only talking about the issue of the economic right, which in this day and age has turned into natural remnant of the past due to the technical advancements coming with the information era, but also the fundamental moral right of being attributed credit for the musical piece.
It is evident that the big 4 needs to be crushed. The sooner, the better!
This serves as a good example and definitely a reality-check for the politicians claiming to be in the service of protecting the little man when adding more and more repressive legislation to “protect” IP-rights.
Go 6R6!
February 14, 2009 at 5:16 pm |
yeah, you are right. the moral rights are the relevant bits of copyright indeed. the 1,000,000 dollar question is how those should be protected without getting into copyright mafia style.
February 14, 2009 at 5:44 pm |
The way I see it the influence of the Internets in relation to Gallefoss, Purple Motion etc is a strong weapon towards protecting the moral right. If it were not for the ability to masscommunicate the state of current affairs the whereabouts of Universal and the other a-holes handling of issues like these would have fallen into oblivion. It is just a matter of getting the old media to acknowledge issues like these instead of just propagating “the big 4”-propaganda.
February 14, 2009 at 6:49 pm |
if there could be a situation where everybody would really mention their sources without risking to get sued, that would be great. at the moment, people don’t. neither mainstreamers nor undergrounders. i wonder if people would do it more often if there were other copyright laws or no money involved, though. hehe, i guess i am just doubting the moral of the artistic ego :)
June 16, 2009 at 12:32 am |
[…] but GRG (who made the C64-cover that Timbaland supposedly sampled) is still fighting the fight, as previously reported. The first battle was lost, despite presenting extensive research with frequency analyses […]
December 22, 2009 at 12:05 pm |
[…] the music in realtime depending on PAL/NTSC, CPU, code, etc. So is it a performance? In the GRG-courtcase it was stated that the Swedish copyright collecting agency STIM considered SID-music as […]