Kanye West At It Again?

Kanye West is known for his outspoken personality and making great music (most of the time). There is no doubt he has changed hip-hop and the form it has currently taken. One of his most successful songs was "Stronger" that was released in 2008. "Stronger" arguably launched Kanye's career into superstardom, continuing to pave the way for the creative genius  Just when we thought Kanye's musical intuition had struck again, a little hiccup occurred when Kanye was being called out for stealing a song from an unknown artist. Kanye West was charged of copyright infringement at the hands of Vincent Peters who claimed he had written the original song and placed in on MySpace back in 2006. Peters stated that his song was also titled "Stronger" and Kate Moss references were also made in his song.

West was being charged with stealing lyrics that had been altered slightly, yet the overall concept of the song had remained the same. After the case was all over, the charges were dropped on a few counts. First of all, titles of songs are not legally protected as well as references of people (Kate Moss). Second of all the lyric "that does not kill me makes me stronger" was not protected due to the fact that it is a common saying. The final reason was that the word "wronger" is a typical word that rhymes with "stronger", therefore there is no right to keep that word.

Vincent Peters was apparently on board with one of Kanye's executive producers, John Monopoly, regarding producing his album however the partnership never officially formed and Monopoly dropped out around the same time "Stronger" had come out in December. Sounds a little to coincidental right?

With all of that said, let's focus on the legal aspects that Kanye was facing and what constitutes as official copyright infringement. When it comes to digital property, websites like MySpace that are known for music postings therefore there are specific violations for cases to be considered eligible for legal action. It is true that trademark is concerned with specific words, but as stated in the case there weren't any lyrics that could be marked as "trademark" so the case had to be dismissed.

According to the 1976 Copyright Act, the artist must perform the song in public to give the song credibility and security. Vincent Peters was not reported of playing the song out in the open or distributing it which falsifies his claim for originality. The only proof Peters had was his post on MySpace, however that was not enough to convince the jury that the song was an original with trademark characteristics. 

At the end of the day, one could easily form an opinion based on the facts that Kanye did in fact sample the song and commit copyright infringement. Due to the great number of coincidences and weak foundation of the song, illegal action could easily be misconstrued, putting Kanye in hot water yet again. 

Now, it isn't like Kanye West hasn't been linked to sampling music in the past. Older songs such as "Touch the Sky" and "Gold Digger" were sampled from Marvin Gaye's "Move on Up" and Ray Charles' "I Got a Woman" so this law suit did have some credibility at first. West has acknowledged however that he was aware of sampling those classic songs and remix his own version. With the remix movement increasingly becoming popular in today's music industry, we must ask ourselves, when does it get get out of hand? The remix culture consists of dubbing, sampling, open source, peer-to-peer and mashups. West's songs thrive on the remix culture for the most part.

The idea of taking a song and implementing personal changes is a very risky one to play around with. I do think it can be done, however serious alterations must be made. Based on the information in the case, I have a gut feeling that there might have been a little illegal remixing and sampling involved. There are just too many lyrics in the song that sounds exactly the same as in Peters' version. On the other hand, there are unknown artists who are willing to sue celebrities just to make a quick buck so the outcome can sway either way. I do not have a problem with remixing as long as an acknowledgement is made in the song and gives credit to the original artist. I have a lot of respect for Kanye West but again, his musical history proves that he does use samples often. It's a sticky situation and just to be safe, musicians should just stick to creating their own original songs. What happened to the good old days when musical content was new and fresh?


Sources: http://onellp.com/blog/music-copyright-infringement-lawsuit-against-kayne-west-dismissed/