Glee rips off Johnathan Coulton

[billybob476]

Looks like this week's Glee will feature a cover of "Baby Got Back" that appears to be a complete rip of Johnathan Coulton's 2006 cover from his Thing a Week album. Coulton claims that he has not been contacted by Fox in any way.

I'm a big JoCo fan and not a very big Glee fan so maybe I'm biased, but to me It comes across as pretty blatant!

http://kotaku.com/5977149/glee-egregiously-rips-off-jonathan-coulton

Joco version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCWaN_Tc5wo

Glee cast version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yww4BLjReEk

edit: Hmm...YouTube embeds seem to be acting funny.

[billybob476]

As a followup, Johnathan posted to his blog:

This morning, someone pointed me to this:
glee.wikia.com/wiki/Baby_Got_Back
Admittedly it seems to be an unofficial wiki, and I can't find any clearly FOX-based source that lists this track as a part of episode 11 of season 4. So I guess the jury's still out on whether or not this is an official Glee recording.
If it is, I have some questions about how IP works in terms of this song. It's a cover of a Sir Mix-a-Lot song obviously, but I wrote a new melody for it, which this recording uses. Back when I released it, I bought the statutory license to distribute my version of this song through Harry Fox. Creative Commons doesn't come into play because it's a cover song, and anyway my CC license specifies Non-Commercial.
A complicating factor is that, to my ears, it sounds like it actually uses the audio from my recording – not the vocals obviously, but the instruments sound EXTREMELY similar. And I could swear I hear the duck quack somewhere in the background there, though it's hard to say if that's just my ears expecting it.
Anyway, yes, weird. Exciting times! I'll post any updates here.

http://www.jonathancoulton.com/2013/01/18/baby-got-back-and-glee/

[X]

I'm more than a little willing to bet that someone signed off on it and Jonathan isn't in the know or will be getting a call from his people about already having been paid for the arrangement.

[billybob476]

My understanding is that Johnathan doesn't have and "people". He's not under a label.

[X]

My understanding is that Johnathan doesn't have and "people". He's not under a label.

He got the rights to make the track through a third party and it could have been that party that approved the remake.

[billybob476]

That may very well be, I guess we'll find out at some point.

[ricdude]

In the U.S., an artist does not require permission from the author or publisher of a song to release a "straight" cover version of it.  All you need to do is inform them of your intent to do so, and pay them the statutory rate for the song.  Last I checked, the mechanical license rate is something like 9.1 cents for any song under 5 or 6 minutes, and a per-minute rate after that, per copy (i.e. mechanical royalty) made. There is a publishing company, Harry Fox Agency (I think), that mass-processes statutory licenses for practically every artist on the planet.  They make it really easy for independent artists to buy small amounts of licenses for cover songs, so they can run small batches of media duplications and keep themselves totally covered, legally.  They will also happily process licenses in the amount of millions for the same 9.1 cents per copy, although artists at that level can usually work out a better deal by negotiating directly with the publishers.

If an artist adds significant artistic interpretation to the song, it may then fall under the "derived art" constraints.  Typically, if you're changing genders in a song, e.g. singing I Want Candy about a boy (Bow Wow Wow) instead of a girl (The Strangeloves), that would not constitute significant deviation from the original, and the statutory rate can still be used.  If you're adding verses, or changing the arrangement significantly (like Coulton does with Baby Got Back), it *may* require consent of the original artist for release. 

When Weird Al mangles an otherwise original song (e.g. transmogrifying Racey's "Kitty" into Ricky), it may fall under the "satire" copyright exemption, and not require any royalties to the original artist/publisher. When he released his parody of Lady Gaga's "Born This Way", he originally did so claiming that as a work of "satire", there was no legal impediment to him releasing it for free, with no compensation to the original artist/publisher.  As a matter of course, Wierd Al works with the appropriate people to make sure he's not headed for a lengthy legal battle - good business sense.  There were "misunderstandings" in the Lady Gaga case, which, well, I won't attempt to summarize here, but is seriously worth a google if this is your kind of geekiness.

Complicating the matter even more, in order to use music in a TV show or movie, "synchronization rights" must be negotiated directly with the author/publisher.  If they don't like what you want to do with their song, they don't have to let you use their music.  I think some shows/movies get around this by using a low-budget cover version of the song they're interested in.  Then they only owe synch rights to the cover band, and the publisher gets the mandatory mech royalties.

So, here we have a right mess.  The copyright claimant for "Baby Got Back" (Def American Records, according to the US Library of Congress Copyright database) should be getting something for the use of the song at all.  If it is indeed Coulton's recording (or presumably derived significantly from it), *he* should be getting the synch rights.  If they release it on a "best of glee" cd or something, Def American would get the mech royalties, and Coulton may be due publishing fees (again, I think this is a statutory fee, per copy).

Of course, this is just a snap analysis by an innocent bystander, who pays way too much attention to these kinds of things, and watches way too many courtroom dramas not to have a legal opinion of his own.  If you want legal advice worth taking to court, go buy some...

[ricdude]

Wow.  Check the side-by-side simultaneous comparison here:  https://soundcloud.com/alacrion/joco-v-glee

[X]

So by them doing a straight cover, all they need do in a legal sense is pay both him and def jam for the fees, but they didn't need permission?

What I find funny is that this is all about a song that was a cover to begin with.

[ricdude]

Here's the best write up I've seen yet: http://t.co/TjQovdJG

The complicating factor is that they did a straight cover of a derived work (Coulton's additions: melody, chords, significantly altered arrangement) based on an original work (Sir Mix-A-Lot: original lyrics). So, I suppose it's possible that they are both owed mechanical royalties, although they may only be owed to Mix-A-Lot. However, since Coulton's arrangement is used, I think he's due something, clearly.

Where this would get really interesting would be if I could be shown that glee used  Coulton's karaoke version of the music (ducks and all). If that's true, Coulton is dedinitely owed sychronization rights, as Coulton's copyright applies to the "fixed" representation, e.g. as released in karaoke version form by Coulton. Synchronization rights are not statutory, they must be negotiated with the copyright owner directly. So, if Coulton despises everything glee stands for, he could refuse to grant synch rights for his music. Which, at this point, would be really interesting.

:popcorn:

Edit: reference for "get a license or don't sample" policy in US: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeport_Music,_Inc._v._Dimension_Films