Earlier in the year, an Australian court ruled that the band's songwriters, Colin Hay and Ron Strykert, had broken copywrite laws by taking parts of a flute riff when they recorded Down Under. Larrikin Music Publishing (Kookaburra... publisher) asked the court for nearly 60% of the song's royalties, but a Federal Court judge said he considered "the figures put forward by Larrikin to be excessive, overreaching and unrealistic".
Colin Hay had stated to the court that the group did not get copyright clearance for the flute riff because it was an "unconscious" reference to the children's song which has the flute riff in just five bars of a 92-bar song. The children's song was originally written by schoolteacher Marion Sinclair in 1934 for the Girl Guides. Copyright to the song was bought by Larrikin back in 1990 for $6,100 (£3,520).
This is a crazy decision. Larrikin's buying this song years after M@W's song became a hit seems crass. Did Larrikin deliberately buy the song with the hopes of suing M@W? Isn't this more of a rip-off of the original song owner than the very minor quote or homage to the Kookaburra song that M@W published?
Why can't song writers borrow a snippet from a readily recognizable and old folk song, especially when its value as a commercial property is questionable? What came first, Baa Baa Black Sheep or Twinkle Twinkle Little Star?
Posted by: R West | Jul 06, 2010 at 05:21 PM
Replying to R. West: I would guess you could quote "Twinkle, Twinkle" without worrying about being sued, since that one does date back at least as far as the 18th century, and possibly earlier: Mozart, who knew the tune by the name of "Ah, que dirai-je, Maman," wrote a set of variations on it. (And I don't believe he was sued, by the way.)
I agree that the judgment is outrageous. I assume Men at Work will file an appeal.
Posted by: Jonathan Bernard | Jul 06, 2010 at 06:25 PM