Copyright infrigement

Copyright infrigement happens often and it is an inescapable problem. First of all, copyright infrigement is a violation of the copyright law, which means the use of the copyrighted material without the permission of an author (copyright holder) regardless of Fair Use. There were many famous copyright violations throughout the history and I would like to discuss one of them in this post. 

Vanilla Ice vs. David Bowie and Queen

Everybody knows the hit Ice Ice baby from the Vanilla Ice but in fact, the song sampled song "Under Pressure" by David Bowie and Queen. 

Why is this classified as copyright infrigement?

The problem was, that Vanilla Ice did not credit David Bowie and Queen, so it can definitely be classified as copyright infrigement. Music is highly creative work which is protected by copyright law and Vanila Ice clearly used it, even though he insisted that the two melodies are different (since he added some beat into the song, which makes a very weak argument). 

Copyright law protects financial aspects (which should benefit the author) of the work and Vanilla Ice definitely benefited from sampling the song without their permission. Additionally, it had no tranformative use or added value what makes even stronger argument against Vanilla Ice and on the top of that, the amount of the work used is clear- fairly big portion of the work was used which makes it even worse fo Vanilla Ice.

What was the outcome?

Finally, Vanilla Ice confessed to "sampling" the music and the case was resolved without taking it to the court. Vanila Ice paid undeclared sum of money to David Bowie and Queen and also, he gave credit to the authors on the track. 

If you are interested in this topic and some other copyright infrigement cases, you can read more here: 

https://99designs.com/blog/tips/5-famous-copyright-infringement-cases/

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-lists/songs-on-trial-12-landmark-music-copyright-cases-166396/vanilla-ice-vs-queen-and-david-bowie-1990-61441/

Picture source:
https://lessonplans.dwrl.utexas.edu/content/using-music-teach-sound-citation