41 thoughts on “Wednesday Writs: Easterseals Society v Playboy, and Other Assorted Smut

          1. And part of the problem is that Page had a… well, let’s call it “cavalier”… attitude towards attribution to others. Page heard the song played by Joan Baez, thought “dude, that’s awesome!” and attributed it on the first Zep album to “Traditional, arr. by Jimmy Page”.Report

        1. You’re going to have to do a whole lot more to plagiarize than a couple of bars of descending on the neck. There are only so many notes in the scale.

          There was an interesting report on this on All Things Considered (I believe). The jury had to rely on sheet music to make the determination, and couldn’t do an ear test.Report

          1. I can see how this gets much harder to prove in court. Just on listening though i could hear STH and i’ve never liked the song. Granted i heard it million times growing up but meh. That , admittedly short bit, sounds so close.Report

            1. There’s a 2 part test to prove plagiarism: access and substantial similarity. Access is probably pretty hard to prove. Similarity in this case, yes. Substantially similar, no.Report

          2. Both songs are in A Minor… I suppose there are only so many keys, I guess.

            Here’s a guy who takes both songs apart:

            He points out that Page also used a descending A-Minor bassline in Babe I’m Gonna Leave You… but also compares it to While My Guitar Gently Weeps.

            I’m not going to say that this video will change any minds but he plays the riffs right next to each other and does a compare/contrast.

            Add on top of that the fact that Led Zeppelin opened for Spirit in the early days of Zep, I’ve gotta say that I’m leaning toward plagiarized.Report

            1. I think George Harrison lost a plagiarism case on My Sweet Lord, which was claimed to have been plagiarized from He’s So Fine, the Chiffons song. Subconscious plagiarism was the finding and it cost him a million and a half.Report

          3. Right. It’s a standard chord progression used by lots of musicians. Finger picking is a standard style. Certainly it’s likely that Page and Plant borrowed the idea for the intro to Stairway: as in, “We’re going to start with an eight-bar chord progression like Spirit used, but then we’re going to take it in a completely different direction. For eight minutes.”Report

            1. Fantasy, Inc v. Fogerty is the case where Fogerty got sued for his song “The Old Man Lives Down The Road” which Fantasy, Inc. said infringed on their copyright of “Run Through The Jungle” (a song also written by Fogerty).

              If you asked me whether Fogerty plagiarized, I’d have laughed.

              If you asked me about whether he infringed on copyright, I’d have gone into a speech about what a “signature sound” is.

              If some kid in a garage told me “hey, I just wrote this song!”, I’d say “dang, you’ve been listening to a lot of Fogerty there, huh?”

              But even if there is a fuzzy, fuzzy line between inspiration and ripping off, that doesn’t mean that there’s not a sorites problem.Report

  1. L1: A lot of seemingly wholesome organizations have revealed themselves not to be wholesome in recent years. So I don’t think your old boss’ advice is necessarily sage. We might find that Girl Scout cookies are laced with cocaine. That’s why they sell so well.Report

    1. Yeah, he mostly just used it as hyperbole when turning down a case. Generally, he was known for not being afraid to sue anybody. He was the guy you took your case to when no other lawyer would touch it.Report

          1. Not sure where racism or misogyny enters into it. She’s just flat out unscientific. As in, if any of her claims have an actual basis in science, it’s purely by accident, and not because she’s suddenly subjecting her claims to rigor.

            She’s a BS artist.Report

            1. I don’t know the site, but glancing at the linked page she basically is pointing out that Girl Scout cookies are made with the same sorts of ingredients as any other packaged cookie. I’m not sure who is supposed to be surprised by this. Someone who has never actually encountered a Girl Scout cookie, I suppose.Report

      1. I don’t buy and eat cookies from time to time because they’re good for me. Nor, on those rare occasions when there are cookies in the house, do I eat them in moderation. My wife describes my approach to it as grazing. Walk through the kitchen, grab a couple of little cookies. Regularly, all day.Report

  2. L7: I am utterly shocked that a bipartisan group of lawmakers don’t want citizens to be able to hide their communications from the government.

    I am amused that any of them truly think that such a bill would somehow stop end-to-end encryption.Report

    1. The last time this came up seriously was back in the early 1990s when the government put software implementing strong encryption algorithms on the do-not-export weapons list. I recall Sun shipping software for their workstations with no encryption library, but with instructions on where to download it from Europe (Finland, I think) and which applications to run through the linker again. The DOD had enough sense to drop the ban quickly.

      I don’t think they’re trying to stop it entirely. They’re trying to stop dummies from using it. Keeping Apple from putting it in their phones, or Facebook from using it for voice and video calls, is probably sufficient for that goal. Keeping you and me from using it is a different degree of difficulty.Report

      1. Exactly, so they force a change that looks like they are doing something, and basically gets the lowest hanging fruit, while not doing anything that significantly impacts the most dangerous players.Report

        1. The people who need to know will figure it out. I have a friend who is a recovering junkie. She has pretty much zero tech knowledge, but she knows how to run TOR. (Evidently you can order dope online.)Report

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