Singer alleges 'Glee' ripped off his cover song

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

That was a pretty catchy, sing-songy version of Sir Mix-A-Lot's rap hit "Baby Got Back" in Thursday night's episode of "Glee." It was also very familiar to fans of indie singer-songwriter Jonathan Coulton.

Because Coulton's cover is derivative of the original work by Sir Mix-A-Lot, Coulton does not have a copyright claim against "Glee" for using the Coulton version, Parks said.
Covers don't get their own copyright protection as far as the underlying musical composition, Parks said. But Coulton might have legal footing if the show used Coulton's audio track.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/26/showbiz/glee-coulton-song-copyright/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

[UncleJohnsBand]

The podcast network TWiT (This Week in Tech -  www.twit.tv) did a lot of coverage on this issue since Coulton is a friend of TWiT's.

One of TWiT's podcasts, This Week in Law - covered the issue and the discussion was a good one.   The show can be found at:  http://twit.tv/show/this-week-in-law/195.  The discussion begins at the 16 minute mark.

This guy did an extensive wave form analysis that leads one to think that Glee took the mp3 Karaoke version that Coulton released, made some minor changes and inserted their vocals:  http://geeklikemetoo.blogspot.com/2013/01/about-that-quack.html.  On a side note, if you do read this article, read the follow-on article that the author provides a link for.  This work spawned an even more detailed analysis of the version Glee used totally crowd sourced by the internet.   Some people went to amazing levels of detail in their analysis.  Why?  Because someone who gets the internet was potentially abused by Glee.

Coulton went Oatmeal on Glee and responded by putting his version for sale on iTunes "Baby Got Back (In The Style of Glee), where the Internet responded by buying tens of thousands of copies and the proceeds were donated to charity

Glee took a major internet hit and is clearly a show that has jumped the shark.   Meanwhile, JohnnyC's career is thriving and he no doubt increased his internet profile a couple of more notches which will turn into more money for him in the future.

Another example of someone who understands the internet.