Poor Men At Work....

[jsgtrman]

...or at least they WILL be poor if they've not already blown all their retirement money.  It seems an Australian Court just ruled they plagiarized their hit "Land Down Under" ummm....28 years ago???  Well, they just got around to suing them, apparently some of it was lifted from the theme of a kiddie TV show "Kookaburra" or something, so now they have to pay the publishing company of the kiddie show millions of unpaid royalties.  You think they've saved all their money for just such an emergency? 

[Miracleman]

Feel free to discuss it with Colin in April...

http://theplazatheatre.com/0809_showdetail.asp?EventID=220

I'm sure he'll say "It's a Mistake"

[mikewags]

Listen for yourself

http://www.theage.com.au/national/riff-row-leaves-men-at-work-up-a-legal-gum-tree-20090625-cx5i.html

Personally, I don't see the resemblance.

[ibis]

I would think statue of limitations would come into play here.  And I agree, I hear NO similarities!

[jsgtrman]

It's actually "statute", just to be picky.  The little clip in question is only about 4 seconds long, the little flute intro at the beginning.

[funky49]

This reminds me of a kid's public service announcement in NYC in 1983 that seems to have wound up in a Busta Rhymes song.

PSA - listen at 0:14

This is serious we could make you delirious

Busta - listen at 1:06

Busta Rhymes - DangerousTry our new player

[jsgtrman]

Well, the MAW thing stinks of BS to me.  As an artist writing songs things pop into your head inadvertently, so likely those 4 little notes MAY have rang a bell and sounded good "for some reason" when they were writing the song.  I think the courts really stretched to reach a plagiarism verdict though for THE ENTIRE SONG.  If it was a lot MORE of the song, like the entire melody that's a different thing.  For example, Vanilla Ice doing "Ice, Ice Baby" completely copies Queen's "Under Pressure" throughout... but I'm sure permission HAD to be given by Queen, otherwise an obvious lawsuit.  Or for the dance crowd, Rhianna's "S.O.S." rips off "Tainted Love" riff.  Again, these days I'm sure permission was given as record companies these days won't even go NEAR something like that, and have teams of lawyers to cover their asses.

[number six]

Yeah I heard them play both back to back on the radio today and I was scratching my head. How do you get 'Land Down Under' from THAT???

Plus as others mentioned, why start this NOW?! It's been almost 30 years? Why don't we go find Bow Wow Wow and beat her with a stick? It's about the same situation. How much money can these guys have? They had two hit songs and that was it. Last time I saw them it was on a VH1 special years ago and none of them looked rich.

[mikewags]

Kookaburra calls-Cincinnati Zoo