I found out about the Surrey Law Centre. So I contacted them asking for advice.



Hello,

I am looking for legal advice in respect of an intellectual property claim against a music band. A manuscript of mine was stolen from me some time ago and it was subsequently used as the artwork and lyrics for a successful album. I would like to sue the band and receive compensation and payment for my property. Have you anyone who can assist me with this. I am living on benefits so on a limited budget.

Thanks.

There response is below.

Hello,



Thank you for contacting the Surrey Law Centre. The area of law you require advice on is a very specialised one and unfortunately it is not an area that we provide advice on.

I am sorry we have been unable to assist you on this occasions.

Kind regards

Angie.

So what are my options? I have been trying for years to obtain some sort of legal representation for this matter to no avail. Anyone any ideas? Short of representing myself and fucking the claim up, what can I do?

Wait a second, you contact a law firm who are supposed to deal with legal things and they just basically ignore the whole thing for being "specialized?" That's bullshit. So are copyright laws actually, it might be that they don't want to do anything with complicated and dysfunctional law if its anything like its in here.

That's a really nasty situation on which the only sure thing I could think of which would help would be to have some sort of a "status" in the music business.... You know, money talks and when someone so called famous does claims like this, it sets a lot of things in motion and something might actually get done. The world is fucked up, nobody is interested if there's no profit to be made.

It is pretty "specialised" Ian. Not many lawyers even study Intellectual Property Law and even fewer of them go to work in that area. Those that do, expect pay - and you cannot get legal aid to sue someone. You have to have a good deal of money to sue someone because it is civil law and, if you lose, you have to be able to pay the court costs as well as any award given for a counter-claim.

Money, money, money. What else when it comes to Law?

The album sold about 40 million copies worldwide. Then there is the DVD's, concerts, memobillia and stage show. All in all my 10% for mechanical rights would be £40+million. There's plenty of money at stake. I just lack any needed to get what is rightfully mine. Unless I win the lottery that is. If I hadn't stopped drinking I'd be drowni9ng my sorrows right about now.

Btw, stealing someones lyrics is quite a big deal.... I'm not sure how its elsewhere, but in here the normal percentage that goes to lyricist is around 30% which is a LOT considering how much work goes to a musical piece. And if something sold forty MILLION copies, 30% of royalties going to the maker is quite a big pile of cash. Even ten percent of that would be considerable amount of money.

These are complicated things and the law works in the favor of the rich. By the way, from what I've seen how things in the underground go, stealing somebody's lyrics, riffs, songs etc. is far more common than many would like to admit. I can only imagine how its like in the mainstream. There's lot of bad people and also non talented opportunists making music who are more than willing to rip people off to make a buck. Its unfortunate, music business is often times dirty business.

30%! What I'm missing out on just gets bigger all of the time

Ian2day wrote:
There's probably differences to that depending on the country, for Finnish artists, that's the official standard which can be changed by the makers themselves according to how they deal with it. But Lyricist is often highly recognized on royalties, writing the musical piece is of course a bigger slice of the pie, unless there's say four people responsible for music, one person for lyrics and one or two people for arrangement. Arrangements are usually around 10%, lyrics are 30% give or take something and composer takes the rest. This might end up with the lyricist having the biggest share per person and that makes lyric theft even bigger misfortune.

These things usually get ugly when there's big profit involved and people get greedy. That's what I like about underground music scene by the way, nobody has to fight over royalties and which goes to whom as there's very little money involved. Stealing somebody's creative work without due credit and possible royalties is fucking low, disgusting opportunism. The crappy side is that if you're a unknown average Joe without a pile of money under your butt, some big shot "artist" can steal without any fear of consequences. It wouldn't be big loss for somebody who's album sales are in millions to pay a share for some outside lyricist anyway, specially today as there's bigger money in gigs than in record sales.

This is interesting Ian.... but how can you actually prove it?

If somebody stole some music I'd made & tried to make money out of it, I'd be able to prove that it was my intellectual property because I have all the mechanical parts and files stored away, and uploaded as a piece of music to my own profile on the internet. The chances of anybody being able to identically replicate it are almost minimal..... as if 2 artists painted exacly the same picture at separate points in time without each having seen the other doing it.
Lyrics are a different kettle of fish though.... unless you owned a copyright on them, or you had copies of them sent to yourself by sealed post so that they are dated then you have very little chance of being able to legally claim that they are your intellectual property.
For example.... oi's lyrics which he posts on SZ. They are recorded & stamped with internet time and his user name..... this would be a way of proving intellectual property, or at least providing a very strong case for it should somebody else make the claim that it was they that wrote it. There's also a grey area where lyrics can be manipulated and reworded that would be more difficult to prove. Also there is (I forget the phrase for it) a way where you are allowed to use small segments of others' work within your work.

Same goes for music, you can use few bars of a melody from another song and get away with it.... Or just take a melody, change enough notes and its yours, even if it sounds nearly exactly like the original. That's how music in Doom and Doom 2 shooter games are done by the way and that was conscious choice by the makers. Bobby Prince who wrote those songs is a lawyer who knew how these things work, id Software wanted music from famous rock and metal bands but couldn't afford it so second best option was to mimic the originals as much as legally possible.

Song names are one thing that can't be copyrighted as far as I know. But how to prove it with lyrics, that's going to be difficult. Specially if the lyrics are in English. In Finnish for example it would be easier as its much more expressive language and lyrics can easily be more specific. English lyrics is a problem also because its so popular language. I'm fairly certain there's nearly always similar lyrics out there no matter what you write.

But if, the boot was on the other foot, and you stole there unIntellectual Property there would be a team of highly paid vultures, at your door fresh from law school, or from some high end lawyer firm, would pick your bones clean

people have been caught and ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for downloading music , this is another topic but, imagine what shit they would throw at you, loss of income, breech of copyright yada yada now fuck off

Every rich twat, seems to be at it apparently

www.newmediarights.org/business_models/a..._his_or_her_own_song

www.newmediarights.org/business_models/a...ot_federally_registe

Yes Black Cloud, you're absolutely right.... As I said on some earlier posts, law works for the favor of the rich on this one. God forbid a average joe "steals" something made by some rich ass artist. Downloading music is another kettle of fish, everyone knows it cannot be stopped, there's no way of making that happen and those cases seems to be quite random, its always when somebody sees a profit to be made from catching a person or company for illegal sharing of music and there you go and at the same time thousands of people do the same and nobody bats an eye.

Reminds me of the Metallica's Napster fiasco. Millionaires crying out loud for loosing few bucks as if they need something more. Talk about having lost the perspective.

It is fairly easy to prove as the manuscript of mine which they used as the album artwork is in my hand writing. So analasys by a forensic handwriting expert will prove its mine. There's loads of people out there claiming to be hand writing experts. One of these would be no good as they are just laymen calling themselves an expert. A forensic hand writing expert is what is used by the police in court cases. I found one who said that they had to be engaged by a solicitor to do any work. So it would be fairly easy to get a statement that would be believed by a court.

Ian2day wrote:
[/Proofb] and the money to bring and sustain the action is what is needed, Ian.

Have you contacted the band/record company and told them that it is your work and you have evidence to demonstrate this? Just possibly, they might come up with some "deal" if they feel you can actually do that.

cantata wrote:
Good idea. I've not thought about contacting them directly. I'll have to have a think about exactly what to say to them in a letter. As I wouldn't want to cock it up.