From: Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Date: Fri Feb 11 2000 - 20:18:45 MST
> > From: Spike Jones <spike66@ibm.net>
>
> > ...Give me light, give me life, keep me free from birth...
>
> James Wetterau wrote: Harrison more or less conceded at
> trial that he must have heard the song in the past and subconsciously
> been aware of the two motifs his song had in common with "He's So Fine".
I stand waaay corrected on attributing MSL to Lennon. I *must*
study my history books more carefully... {8^D
Nowthen, I may be wrong about this too, but I understood that
if a person writes new words to an old melody, it can be copyrighted
as a new song. The court essentially decided it was not going to
spend its time sitting around listening to music.
The exception being the case of song parodies, where the new song
not only borrows the tune, but *almost* knocks off the words too,
as in Weird Al Yankovic's timeless masterpiece:
Like a surgeon, cutting for the very first time... [instead of Madonna's
tepid]
Like a virgin, touched for the very first time.
Please, someone who is up on patent and copyright law, did not
the court decide Harrison did in fact lift the tune for Hes So Fine
but that henceforth it was fair game to do so? spike
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