Coldplay is the latest in a long list of bands to be taken to court for allegedly copying another artist's work, writes BRIAN BOYD
WHO NEEDS A court case when you have YouTube? US guitarist Joe Satriani has filed a copyright infringement suit in a Los Angeles court against the rock band Coldplay. Satriani is arguing that his 2004 instrumental composition If I Could Flybears striking similarities to Coldplay's massive hit single of last year, Viva La Vida. Type "Satriani" and "Coldplay" into YouTube and you'll find a huge unofficial jury of people who have posted videos which parse both songs and come to their own conclusion about tricky legal issues such as "original musical work" and "unconscious copying".
Due to the relatively limited nature of popular music – the standard guitar, bass, drums set-up and the verse-chorus-verse format of the songs – a lot of hit tunes sound like previously released works. Whatever about notions of “conscious” or “unconscious” copying, this can be a very expensive business for the accused.
When George Harrison released My Sweet Lordin 1971, he was sued by a band called The Chiffons who alleged that the key part of his song was "copied" from their 1963 hit He's So Fine. Harrison had to pay The Chiffons $1.6 million in damages (a fortune at the time) even though it was found that he had only "unintentionally copied" the earlier song. This was not enough to relieve Harrison of liability.
Since the Harrison case, musicians routinely have slight panic attacks when they have a huge hit single on their hands. It is impossible to discern whether your song bears any similarities to any previously recorded work and conscious of the adage, “Where there’s a hit, there’s a writ”, they prepare themselves for any number of claims from other musicians looking for a financial payout, or more likely, an instant flash of publicity.
Coldplay's Viva La Vidawas one of the biggest selling albums of last year – racking up sales of close to 10 million worldwide. The single of the same name was also one of the band's most successful ever releases. Joe Satriani says that from the moment Coldplay's song came out he was besieged by people telling him of the similarities with his If I Could Fly song. "My e-mail box was flooded with people going, 'Have you heard this song by Coldplay? They ripped you off'," he says.
When Coldplay heard of Satriani’s plans to sue they said in a statement: “If there any similarities between our two pieces of music, they are entirely coincidental – and just as surprising to us as to him”.
The argument of "coincidence" though never works. Singer Michael Bolton found this to be the case when he released the song Love Is A Wonderful Thingin 1991. When he was sued by The Isley Brothers, who claimed his song was similar both lyrically and musically to their song of the same name (released in 1964), the court found that the "coincidence" defence didn't hold water and awarded The Isley Brothers a record $5.4 million in damages.
There are two specific legal tests which will be used in the Satriani vs Coldplay case. The first is the “extrinsic” test whereby Satriani will have to show that the Coldplay song is “substantially similar” to his own composition based on a dissection of the song’s melody lines, harmony and rhythms. Frequently, musicologists are brought into court to provide expert testimony.
The second test is “intrinsic”. This is based on the more general question of “do the songs sound the same” based solely on listening to the songs together without any complex musical analysis.
A hugely important consideration here is also “access”. Because Satriani is a very well known artist signed to a major label who has sold millions of records, it is impossible for Coldplay to argue that they simply had no “access” to his song. His work is widely available.
The “access” argument is important because if some unknown band who had sold only a handful of records was suing Coldplay, the defence could be that Coldplay simply had no “access” to the song (as in, could not have been reasonably expected to have heard it anywhere) and therefore couldn’t be accused of “copying”.
What doesn’t help matters here is Coldplay’s Chris Martin’s frequent references in interviews to his “influences”. “I think as much as possible we look at what other people are doing and try and steal all the good bits from all of them . . . We are affected by everything that’s going on, but we steal from so many different places that, hopefully, it becomes untraceable,” he has said.
Expect that quote to be widely aired in a Los Angeles court room over the next few weeks.