Hallefreakinglujah.
The judge finally ruled yesterday that Ed Sheeran did not copy Sami Switch's song "Oh Why" when writing his song "Shape of You." Which was the correct ruling. Normally cases like this are subjective. But no. This one had a definitive correct answer. And the judge got it right.
As Ed himself noted in his closing statements, we're entering into extremely murky water when it comes to music publishing lawsuits. Importantly, I'm not advocating for the dismissal of all music copyright lawsuits since there are definitely occasions where I think the prosecution makes a valid case; the Duo Lipa "Levitating" lawsuit right now is a great example. But for every one of those, we seem to get ten lawsuits where a less-successful artist is demanding royalties because the ninth track on their 2007 self-titled album loved by dozens of people around the world has a similar "vibe" to "Say So" by Doja Cat. It's getting not just ridiculous from a legal standpoint, but incredibly toxic for musicians. We need to be encouraging inspiration, not shaming it. As Ed said in court, there are only 12 notes artists can work with, and unless we want to start heading in musical directions that make black midi look accessible, we're going to have to accept that some songs will have slightly similar passages and stop letting the lawyers channel their sexual frustration into baseless copyright lawsuits.
In this "Shape of You" lawsuit, the prosecution was claiming the melodies in two otherwise unrelated songs cannot overlap by a few notes. In the "Blurred Lines" lawsuit, the prosecution claimed (successfully) that two songs cannot have a similar "feel" in their instrumentation. In the ongoing "Thinking Out Loud" lawsuit, the prosecution is arguing that two songs cannot use the same chord progression in the same general tempo.
I don't know how to prevent this from happening. What I do know is that music is too beautiful of a thing to let some law practice in Cleveland ruin it for everyone. Thank you "Shape of You" judge for setting a precedent that will hopefully discourage this sort of litigation in the future.
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