I'm glad he took a stand, and won

 

Ed Sheeran’s court victory reveals the paradox of putting creativity on trial | Alexis Petridis

Beyond merely being an interesting copyright case, the lawsuit alleging infringement by Ed Sheeran's 'Thinking Out Loud' of Marvin Gaye's 'Let's Get It On' threatened artistic creativity and sought to tarnish the singer-songwriter's professional reputation. This was a big case, and Sheeran's taking a stand (and winning) was good for musicians everywhere. Outright theft is one thing. And I'm no expert--I can't even read music, although as a librarian I know a bit about copyright and licensing. Still, even I can figure out you've got eight notes to our music scale and about 338 commonly used guitar chords [possible ones are much greater, but most popular songs use a limited amount of chords, or so a quick Internet search tells me. Like I said, I'm not versed in music.] My point is, when songs are in the same key, there can be some overlap. You know what I do know about music? I listen to it, and a lot of it. I hear similarities all the time, usually fleeting. That doesn't mean the other song was ripped off in any way. This opinion piece outlines the effects of music copyright cases--and their arbitrary nature--has potentially on music creativity. Give it a look.

Lastly, it's true, I've always liked Ed Sheeran.  His latest album will be delivered to my door today. I like his (admittedly public) self-effacing personality.  I love his music.  I have not heard one of his songs I didn't like, and that's something I can say about only a few musical artists, and those could fit on one hand.  I've read that this suit was primarily brought not by the family of the co-writer, but by those who purchased the music catalogue. For them, it is all about money, not creativity. I hope we never get to the point where Money trumps Music.  There are already too many people who sell out, put out music that just sounds the same, use auto-tune to make it sound pleasing, and then stick the singer's name on the writing credits like they really did something for it.  It's interesting that a singer who obviously writes so much of his (and other people's) music, who incorporates different genres into his own catalogue, and who essentially produces 'real' popular music, is the one who got sued (twice now that I know of), given all that other same-sounding music out there.  The author of the Guardian piece is right, it's all very haphazard.

PS I've also read that Sheeran missed his grandmother's funeral in Ireland for this trial.  That's really a shame.

How odd

So someone commented on a post I made some time ago alerting me to the fact that a person was using my likeness on YouTube to make comments that were upsetting people, aka, trolling on the comments system, with my face. The person included a link, which I followed, and lo and behold, my face was, indeed staring back at me. Apparently the person who alerted me had done a reverse image search. I put a comment on the channel to the effect that the channel owner was using my image without my permission, and she (yes, she does say she's female--although really it could have been anyone, male, female, whatever) responded saying that she does occasionally read my blog, that she apologised for using the image without permission, and had been using it for satire, and had acquired a following, but would leave it up to me. I responded that in the interest of avoiding a case of mistaken identity, I would appreciate it if she would remove the image and any others on YouTube or other sites she had been using them on. That's up to her, of course, but I had already contacted Google and explained that someone was using my image without my permission, not only impersonating me that way but also it was a copyrighted image, and that I had asked them to take it down and was waiting on a reply. The form required a scan of a photo ID, so yes, Google now has a copy of my driver's licence. So it's really in Google's hands at this point.

Now I'm not going to get into whether she was using it for satire or trolling--people often don't get satire, both those who read it and at times those who write it, and I didn't see her actual comments on other channels. The thing I don't get is how anyone could see no trouble in taking another person's image and using it as if it were a picture of herself, and not see why anyone might object. I mean, I know a lot of people use celebrity photos in their profile pictures and the like, but I'm not a celebrity. People know such-and-such isn't the real celebrity, or at least realise that it's highly unlikely, especially on sites that verify such things. But if you steal some unknown person's image and use that as your own, no one knows. I did read some of the comments on the channel where the people, annoyed with her comments, were making very crass comments about her appearance and more, based on my image. Even though I know they were aimed at her, I know people often make judgements based on appearance and frankly, even though they should take nothing online as gospel, believe what they see. So they were in part responding to my picture, and it was a little disheartening.

So maybe the moral of the story is to keep a weather-eye out for such things, not just 'Googling' your name, for example, but doing a search to find similar images based on one you have. Don't use other people's likenesses as your own, and please, for God's sake, don't believe everything you see and read online. I must say, it has been an educating experience.