As part of my module we have also touched on copyright issues and trademarking. Copyright law attempts to balance the right of the creator of the work (or copyright owner) to gain income from the work, against the right of a user to gain access to content. All creative forms are subject to copyright such as music, poetry , novels, films and so on.
Out of all the creative forms, music is probably where copyright happens the most. A quite famous case involved the Miami rapper Vanilla Ice against the rock band Queen and singer David Bowie. Ice claimed that by changing the ryhthm of the baseline to Queen and Bowie’s popular 80’s song ”Under Pressure” it was a different beat from his song ”Ice Ice Baby”.
In the video above Ice constantly states ”it doesn’t sound anything like Under Pressure…it’s not the same” but if you listen for yourself you can clearly see he’s trying to get away with copyright. In the end the case was never even brought to court because by comparing the two songs anyone who hears can understand that Ice was wrong and used the track without permission claiming it as his own. He settled with the rock stars on an undisclosed but probably very high amount of money. Moral of the story never challenge Queen or Bowie.
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