I’d like to know how Parker comes back to life in the video. He obviously starts out as a ghost because we see him floating through things, but later he has a physical body around which the woman wraps herself (and boy, a feminist critique of the video would be *so* rich).

@DPSquared: Since music is a form of intellectual property, wouldn’t this mean at least some aspect(s) of it must be intangible, abstract, etc.? A non-thing is still a thing in that it’s an idea, thus a noun, ergo something a person can own. I agree there are two parts to music ownership, the first being the notes on the page, and the second being the execution/what is recorded/heard/etc. But since the latter is something we cannot actually touch or move around in itself, it’s an abstract concept the author of the notes spawning the sound can still have rights to.

@Tom: And then there was Vanilla Ice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7hBhhmLGEA

The video is great, by the way, especially the Infinite Brian Mays at about 2:30 in.

Maybe you can explain something more, though. If copyright doesn’t give “thingness” (great word choice!) to individual melodies, etc, why is it a violation of copyright to sample even a single note without permission? I’m not trying to argue with you, I’m just honestly curious.

You know what, I’m actually curious about another thing too, and here I am trying to argue with you. “There’s nothing abstract about it at this level: there needs to be a physical thing to have a copyright… In the case of a musical recording, you have two separate works: the recording itself, and the music as expressed in the recording.” In what sense is the music expressed in the recording not an abstraction? If you take the complete works of Metallica and arrange them for string quartet, you are keeping the pitch relationships and rhythms but discarding everything else, and it’s illegal if you don’t have permission (and a bad idea in any case). If, on the other hand, you discard the pitch and rhythm (and lyrics) but keep everything else (certain instruments mixed a certain way, a certain vocal technique, etc.) you’re entirely within your rights. Certain aspects of music are therefore privileged, and I would argue that they are privileged precisely *because* they are abstractions (or more accurately because they can be abstracted). We have a symbolic vocabulary for writing down pitches and rhythms; no such language exists for vocal technique and instrumental balance; therefore, pitches and rhythms are coyrightable and the other aspects are not.

Wade – I think actually it went the other way around… the Ghostbusters producers tried to hire Lewis, but he was busy working on BTTF, so they hired Parker instead. This may have contributed to Lewis’ decision to sue… it certainly sounds plausible that the producers would have told Parker “Look, we wanted to hire Huey Lewis, so write us something that’s as close to that as possible.”

And apologies for nitpicking but this sentence muddles a couple legal concepts: “If we’re going to claim that the riff from I Want a New Drug is a legal entity that can be abstracted, copyrighted, and owned, why is one artist allowed to hold separate copyrights on different versions of the riff?” First, legal entities are things that can in their own right have rights or property, like corporations. Second, copyright law doesn’t give “thingness” to individual parts ideas, melodies, words, etc. It gives a bundle of rights to the author with respect to an entire creative work fixed in a tangible form. There’s nothing abstract about it at this level: there needs to be a physical thing to have a copyright, even if it’s a hard drive. In the case of a musical recording, you have two separate works: the recording itself, and the music as expressed in the recording. Here it would be an infringement on the music and not the recording, to which Parker’s work would supposedly bear a substantial similarity. Huey holds rights to his work as a whole, not any individual riff or variations on it. But the more pieces of it you borrow, the closer you get to that “substantial similarity” standard.

This reminds me of all the patents on proteins, naturally occurring events that are in patterns and someone asserts that they own the intellectual property.

Huey needs to take his lumps. I imagine if we followed every Jazz or Blues riff, we could find a zillion ripoffs. Maybe I should make my first million getting patents on song riffs and suing people. Sounds silly, doesn’t it?