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Harvard Law School Lecture - December 5, 2012

I will be speaking at The Harvard University Law School today between noon and 1:15 PM in Wasserstein Hall 3036. The subject will be my work in, and take on, music copyright, intellectual property, tech and entertainment issues. This is a great honor and I am very happy to have been invited.This blog post will also double as my notes or at least a guide to the order of subjects. I'll be able to see this post on a monitor or my iPhone while my iPad plays the music. I'll also bring a DVD or two, unless I choose to access the same material on the Very Wide World Spider Web.

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I've Had The Time Of My Life & Do I Owe It All To Sandals.com Ripping Off The Beatles?

Q U E S T I O N SDoes Sandals sound like The Beatles?Does Sandals rip off The Beatles?Does Sandals infringe The Beatles?Does Sandals sound too much like The Beatles?Is the Sandals/Beatles issue a copyright problem?Is the Sandals/Beatles issue a right of publicity problem?Is the Sandals/Beatles issue an unfair competition problem?...

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Talk Amongst Yourselves, Turn Me On, Beatles One Louder, the Buttocks Bowl

How can you get one's attention? Play a Beatles recording. Play something loud and very noticeable. Maybe the intro to a Beatles song. If one wants to hear a loud, striking, very original opening of a Beatles song, one that will really hit the ear, there is one song that WILL not do it. It would be the WORST BEATLES SONG, worst only in terms of making a listener notice. What is the Beatles song LEAST likely to get one's attention?

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Do The Macarena (On A Fishing Boat In The North Atlantic With An HP Printer)

While working on a project, I heard this HP Office Jet Pro commercial and looked up. What distracted me and attracted me to the commercial was the manner in which it referenced the way-too-big hit song from the mid 1990's, "Macarena." (When I just wrote, M-A-C-A-R-E-N-A, Wordpress thought perhaps I meant, "Macaroni," or "Macaroon." No, I meant M-A-C-A-R-E-N-A. It might take a few more years to convince the world of words that Macarena is Macarena, just as it took a long time to make "Beatles" not be "Beetles.""Macarena" features its hook at these eleven (11) places in Macarena:

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Watching Me Walk Around Naked

Directv has created and is airing a sticky - to be more concise, "ICKY" - television commercial that only succeeds at showing a young couple in their loveless relationship. And the "zinger" line, aired by the male, is mean spirited and aimed at demeaning the woman. It suggests danger, discomfort and intimidation, not exactly positive qualities to connote by means of a television commercial. When I first saw this commercial, I was shocked and thought, "he didn't just say that, did he? Yikes, this is one ugly and disturbing commercial."

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Did Big Happens Here Do Digable Planets?

I know that many traditional jazz players, especially in the early and mid-1980's, would not likely latch on to a short phrase, repeat it many times and make this small and almost "throw away" motif into something big. This tiny melodic gesture, in the hands of an outsider (with respect to a musical tradition), could become the most important part of the melody, or sometimes the only melody that matters to someone from outside of that tradition. This "how does a foreigner view our music" idea is one I will explore later. I'll include myself in this - how and why did I get into hip hop, or Senegalese, Malagasy, Brazilian or Cuban music.All of this to get back to that famous Digable Planets song that samples some jazz.

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