re: Robin Thicke & Pharrell Lose 'Blurred Lines' Lawsuit, Owe Gaye Family $7.3MM

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Puff Daddy made an entire career off of stealing other people's music, but he at least asked nicely before stealing it.

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There is a lot of confusion regarding the different parts of the music business in this thread.

Since the mid 90's, people have GENERALLY had to have permission to either COVER or SAMPLE or Weird Al another artist's song. Since hip hop has included so much sampling since its inception, they have had to pay the most via song writing credits to the original artist. Once that is established, there is no problem because now everyone with a co-writing credit is making a percentage from the song/album sales.

I prefer the term plagiarized instead of ripped off. After all, there's only so many notes that can be played without being somewhat reminiscent of another persons work.

Someone mentioned other songs that Pharrell had written including - Nelly "Hot in Herre". That entire song is more than just a sample. It's basically the original song - Chuck Brown - Bustin' Loose - with different lyrics. It's all about the music, lyrics really don't matter.

Because I was not familiar with the Blurred Lines writers, I had assumed that the estate of Marvin Gaye had signed off on the use of the original. Having said that, the songs are not identical, but are VERY similar. The song has basically been transposed down in key and then sped up to have a more modern sound.

No matter what, Thicke and Pharrell have heard the Marvin Gaye original and knew they were doing more than merely "borrowing and being subliminally influenced" by the original. They have to pay up and rightly so, as anyone who uses another persons copyright.