Batiste v. Macklemore Copyright Infringement Suit Dismissed

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From The 1709 Blog:

In another music industry plagiarism case,  Paul Batiste of the Batiste Brothers Band had, in 2017, filed an infringement suit against Macklemore and Lewis, arguing that a number of Macklemore’s songs . . . had (and in an unauthorized manner) copied and sampled certain original elements of eleven of his songs.

. . . .

Judge Feldman reiterated that there are three elements that need to be fulfilled to determine copyright infringement in a musical work. These are: (i) Ownership of a valid copyright, (ii) factual copying and (iii) substantial similarity. Factual copying needs to be established through circumstantial evidence, wherein the factor of “access” (reasonable opportunity to view) to original works can be claimed while proving such infringement. In the case at hand, neither factual striking similarity was established nor was access proven satisfactorily for an action of infringement to succeed. No evidence which could show that the defendants had even heard of Batiste was adduced before the court. Mere wide dissemination does not fulfill the threshold required to prove conclusive possibility of access.

Link to the rest at The 1709 Blog

12 thoughts on “Batiste v. Macklemore Copyright Infringement Suit Dismissed”

  1. Just like an event giving two writers ideas for similar but not actually copied stories. Stories and songs do not form in a vacuum – they are shaped by things already seen/heard/smelled/tasted/felt …

    MYMV and your senses go wild. 😉

    • Speaking of ideas, another blogger linked to a talk Bezos gave somewhere, about going to space. Starting at the 15:34 mark (where she linked to it), Bezos throws out nice plot bunnies for what it would be like to live inside an O’Neill cylinder. With pictures and video simulations! High speed elevated rail for traveling through the station, and drones for watering crops. He suggests some parts of the space station will be zero-G so that you can go flying. “With your own wings,” he says.

      But I particularly like the part where he supposes that some of Earth’s prettier, more ancient cities might get recreated inside the cylinder. It’s at the 16:09 mark. I don’t recognize the city he’s using as a basis for the idea. It looks cool in that setting, though. Here’s the YouTube link to the talk, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ98hGUe6FM

      A few seconds later he supposes that architecture would be revolutionized by the idea of not having to plan for rain and snow. I don’t like the idea of there not being weather on the station, but I suppose some parts could be “California” all the time (no snow) and other parts could be Scotland (all rain, all the time) and other parts could be “Alaska” (skiing galore). It could be flexible.

      At 17:57 Bezos plays a clip of O’Neill asking Isaac Asimov if anyone in sci-fi ever predicted a cylinder or space habitat like his. Asimov says no, on the grounds of planetary chauvinism. That chauvinism is not a thing now … I sincerely doubt Bezos will sue any one who uses these ideas, so if someone wants to make his ideas come to fruition in their fiction, I will read that story 🙂

      • Babylon 5 used them…but it came after that chat.
        Not sure about Rendezvous with Rama.
        In earlier SF space stations served functions beyond habitability or were generation ships.

        My own issue with habitats is who pays for building them?
        Do 100million taxpayers pay for the comfort of 50,000? This too has been used in stories.

        • Bezos supposes that in this scenario, Earth is used for residential and light industry purposes, and all the heavy industry — the stuff that pollutes the Earth — is done from space. Which had me thinking of the habitats as a new kind of company town, which merges with Asimov’s idea of mining asteroids.

          In the blog that linked to the video, someone supposed there would be a Homeowners Association for the habitat. Which, based on complaints I’ve heard about HOAs, could be dystopian, but a refreshingly different dystopian than the kind I usually avoid.

          It looks like “Rendezvous with Rama” preceded the O’Neill cylinder. Wikipedia says O’Neill published the paper about his cylinder in 1974. “Rendezvous” was published in 1973. The interview with Asimov was in 1975. So, looks like O’Neill should have been asking Arthur C. Clarke that question. I’m surprised, because I had thought Clarke based the Rama on O’Neill’s cylinder. But apparently, neither man had read the other man’s work at that point.

          • Well, Sri Lanka is a ways off and there was very little internet traffic in the early 70’s. 😉

            Still, given how slow tradpub is, Clarke was likely first (yet again). Rama almost certainly was born in 1970 or earlier.

        • I do like that he strikes a hopeful tone of wanting to ensure that future generations will inherit dynamism and growth rather than stasis and stagnation.

          • I liked that, too. I also found his analysis of how efficiency is baked into technological progress to be interesting and hopeful (even though it is not a sufficient answer to the hard limit of finite resources). He makes a persuasive case for expanding into space, one based on realities, rather than just “space is cool.”

            (It is cool. And the first space race generated many beneficial discoveries for those of us here on earth. But I think he is right that we need to expand into space in order to preserve a future of dynamism and growth for future generations.)

      • I’ve always liked the idea of flying with your own wings ever since reading Heinlein’s “The Menace from Earth”, though that was set on the Moon rather than in zero-G. I wonder if this inspired Bezos. The daring could of course fly along the axis of the cylinder, but straying too far off course would result in an Icarus like fate.

        • Icarus, eh? That would be a nice mystery for a 24th century Nancy Drew to solve. I hadn’t heard of the “Menace” story, so thanks for the tip.

          • I should perhaps admit that the “nice mystery” is based only on a mental image and a bit of physical intuition as I’m feeling too lazy to do the math (which would rely on my dredging up knowledge I’ve not used for years and would have to start with a calculation of the air density/pressure on the axis of an O’Neill cylinder).

            I don’t recall any of this being in “The High Frontier” but it’s many years since I read this and have no idea what happened to my copy. A deep enough search of the internet will probably find that someone else has already done all the work and is a better plan than my maths revision.

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