Robin Thicke & Pharrell Williams to Pay $5M in ‘Blurred Lines’ Lawsuit | Billboard News

Love her

One reform I would like to see enacted in copyright law is for the degree of infringement to be taken into account when awarding copyright infringement damages. This was such a controversial case because it was somewhere in the "blurred lines" where inspiration gradually grades into infringement, which is why so many musicians and musical experts have argued for years about whether it's really infringing.

Even if we agree with the court's decision that "Blurred Lines" is infringing, it is also different in many ways and is arguably a new creative expression of the musical ideas in Gaye's "Got to Give It Up." It's not blatant theft in the same way that an unauthorized cover song or a BitTorrent upload of Gaye's "Got To Give It Up" would be. That's why I'm disappointed that the damages awarded by the court are so high. Copyright law gives a rather wide latitude for awarding damages, and it would have been more fair in my humble opinion for them to have been on the lower end of the scale.

This sends a chilling message to musicians who fear they might be next if they express the influence of someone else's song in their own. It could also encourage "copyright trolls" to go after musicians whose song bears some similarities to one they own the copyright to. Even if the similarities are not especially strong, the legal risk of losing in court and have a multi-million dollar judgement against them might force them to settle out of court for a lesser (but still substantial) sum – and an aggressive plaintiff and their lawyers go home richer.

Before clicking I thought the lawsuit would be for promoting rape