Category Archives: Legal news!

Legal News: Olivia Rodrigo vs Copyright Police

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The article I have chosen to comment on, titled Olivia Rodrigo, Paramore, and the murky tides of copyright infringement, was written by Kirbie Johnson for Dazed Digital on September 7, 2021. The article covers a recent topic of conversation in the music industry surrounding Olivia Rodrigo’s album Sour and the vast amount of similarities between her recent music and artists including Paramore, Taylor Swift, and St. Vincent. The main focus of the article is Rodrigo’s single “good 4 u” and its striking resemblance to Paramore’s “Misery Business”. Throughout the article, Johnson discusses the confusing, yet fine, line between copyright infringement and inspiration when it comes to new music. After releasing her album, Rodrigo retroactively added writing credits to a few of her songs because of the buzz around the similarities in previously released music. In doing so, she is handing over (or sharing) songwriting credits and the compensation that comes along with it. The article goes over not only the Rodrigo discussion but also talks about how this never-ending discussion gets different answers and thoughts depending on who you ask.

In my opinion, I think it is a very difficult decision to make. There are many laws and rules in place to prevent the straight-up copying of an artist’s songs. There are even ways to work around it in a legal way through sampling and interpolation. With that, how will any song sound completely different? A quote that stuck out to me in the article was the line, “Does evoking a similar ‘feeling’ really warrant possible litigation, credit, and compensation?” Especially now with so much past music in the worldwide discography, it is hard to say what is straight-up copying and what just sounds similar. Especially in pop music, there are well-known chord progressions that are widely used. Do I think Rodrigo was somewhat backed into a corner and felt forced to add the credits? Yes. In one of her other songs, she did initially include credit to Taylor Swift for interpolation. One would think that if she intentionally and actually “copied” a previous artist, she would have known to credit them. Do I also think “good 4 u” sounded very similar to “Misery Business”? Yes to that too, but I think it was more along the lines of inspiration. If the whispers were not out there about the similarities between the two songs, I cannot say I would have made a connection (and I am a huge Paramore fan!!).

If you want to look into this topic more (specifically stemming from the Rodrigo and Paramore debate) here is a really good video on YouTube that goes into more detail about the similarities, and differences, between not only “good 4 u” and “Misery Business,” but various songs in the pop/pop-punk genre. It also talks about the 4 chords commonly used in pop music. See the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX7a2p5_JsM

Article link: https://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/54036/1/olivia-rodrigo-paramore-and-the-murky-tides-of-copyright-infringement-good-4-u

SAMPLE legal news response! for extra credit!!

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Dear Students:

Here’s the assignment for Legal News Responses that you may post for extra credit. The following excellent legal news response was posted by a student in my Fall 2020 LAW 1101/1103 FYLC.  She earned two extra points on her midterm exam, and we all had an interesting discussion!  As you can see, legal news responses are pretty easy, and can be fun to write.  I hope you’ll write them! 

Prof. C.

The article I chose was called “Columbus Day Or Indigenous Peoples’ Day?” I’m not sure if the author is Leila Fadel but National Desk intern Megan Manata contributed to this report. This was written on October 14, 2019  for the NPR Daily Newsletter and was heard on the Morning Edition.https://www.npr.org/2019/10/14/769083847/columbus-day-or-indigenous-peoples-day

The article was about the reasons explaining why the second Monday in October shouldn’t be called Columbus Day.  Instead, it should be called Indigenous Day or another name that celebrates the Indigenous communities. The reason is it’s been giving memory and honor to a person who did a lot of damage to the indigenous community of North America by raping, causing genocide to their people, and pillaging. We supposedly celebrate that day and that person because he found ‘America’, but technically speaking he didn’t even reach America. Their is a lot of controversy of what should happen to this day because Italians see it as a day where they can finally be safe and accepted.  Others say we need another way to contribute to representation of all different kinds of people on this day. But the objection is clear, that we should change the name everywhere, eradicating Columbus Day so it can be Indigenous Day, honoring people who were first in America, who where kicked out wrongly, abused and killed as a result of Christopher Columbus.

I 100% support this movement because instead of setting our history right we are telling lies and hurting the Indigenous communities. I didn’t know many of them went to our schools and that they even had to hear of this man been spoken of with such praises and proudness over, what he supposedly did. I remember being in school and learning of him thinking he was this great man but little did I know the truth. The Native Americans even have to hear that a whole day is dedicated to this man everyone stopping what there doing to honor this man, that’s like a punishment to the Indigenous community when they should be the ones being celebrated for not Columbus. The law should be changed to rename the day Indigenous Day as a step toward extinguishing the suffering of the Native Americans once and for all. A cruelty is being done towards them when they went through so much over a land they actually respect not like us, who destroy the land with global warming, forests being cut down, destroying animals homes etc. I see Italians’ point of view but they shouldn’t identify to this man as a symbol to their country because of all the inhuman stuff he did to this people.  We need to change the law to amend the wrong of our past, not just in one state but in all.