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Business, Commentary & Insight, Copyright, Music Discovery Business, Commentary & Insight, Copyright, Music Discovery

Dr. Dre Should Have Hired Me

The moral of the story below? Not hiring me can cost money. Dr. Dre hired a musicologist for an opinion on whether he could use a bass line from another song, one that Dr. Dre had not composed. That expert told Dr. Dre that the bass line was not original and therefore Dr. Dre was free to use it. I would have told Dr. Dre that that bass line WAS original and that Dr. Dre should NOT use it. But, Dr. Dre did not consult with me. Dr. Dre took the advice of a different expert witness and it cost him $1.5 million.

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Business, Commentary & Insight, Copyright Business, Commentary & Insight, Copyright

Is Alicia Keys guilty of copyright infringement? A lawyer quotes a feebly written blog and files a foolish lawsuit

I was startled to read that "some of the suit is based on my reporting" as I had never heard of a copyright infringement lawsuit filed because of the "reporting" of a blogger, and especially a blogger who demonstrates his incontrovertible ignorance of copyright law.Friedman states, "Hopefully musicologists will be called in, etc. experts who can testify about Keys's use of two lines from the chorus of 'Hey There Lonely Girl' in 'Girl on Fire.'"This is such a poorly conceived and written sentence. First, is Friedman stating his hopes that musicologists "will be called in, etc.?" As a musicologist who has testified in copyright infringement cases in U. S. federal courts for 20 years, I am extremely curious as to what Friedman means by "etc...." As I try to understand, I think he might mean that we are called in and then comes other actions - the etcetra part. Just what does the "etc." of his sentence mean, and have I been "etc.-ing" these past 20 years or should I start "etc.-ing" now to make up for the times in which I did not etcetera?

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