Columbia Law Library Music Plagiarism Project
Posted January 1, 2006 11:21 PM
TLA 8-16-02: Here is a link to The Columbia Law School Music Copyright Infringement Online Archive, which analyzes more than 100 music federal copyright infringement cases from over the last hundred (and also contains audio samples and commentary).
The Columbia Law Library Music Plagiarism Project features audio samples that compare songs that were involved in landmark copyright cases. Users can compare, for example, Gilbert O'Sullivan's "Alone Again (Naturally)" with "Alone Again" by the rapper Biz Markie, which sampled the original and lifted the lyrics.The site includes court decisions and commentary on them from the site's authors. The judge in the "Alone Again" case, the site says, missed the fact that "apart from the gibberish chanted over O'Sullivan's ostinato, there is nothing original in Biz Markie's song or his recording except his performance of it."
Other songs featured on the site include "Don't Fence Me In," "Feelings" and John Lee Hooker's "Boogie Chillun.'" For some mysterious reason, the sound files are all encoded in the RealPlayer format.