[ SECRET POST #2715 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2715 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


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02.
[Tales of Innocence]


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03.
[Transamerica]


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04.
[Final Fantasy VIII]


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05.
[Interview with the Vampire]


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06.
[Andrew Lloyd Webber]


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07.
[Critical Miss]


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08.
[Great British Menu/Emily Watkins]


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09.
[Mike Malinin, Goo Goo Dolls]


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10.
[Pacific Rim]


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11.
[Star Trek TNG]


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12.
[Homestuck]


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13.
[The Man From Nowhere]













Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 058 secrets from Secret Submission Post #388.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Look, I like cracked.com as much as the next person, but I wouldn't put too much stock in anything they say.

[(Anonymous)]

... except that the accusations of plagiarism are actually true. It's just that most of the time, Webber stole from classical music, Puccini or Mendelssohn.

[dinogrrl]

Classical music and plagiarism/homages/borrowing have been close buddies since forever though. What is it about Webber that's causing the uproar? (Not being snarky, I'm honestly curious.)

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe the fact that he makes LOTS of money doing it, doesn't pay any royalties to the people he "borrows" from and you're likely to find more people who can hum something from Phantom of the Opera than Puccini.

[(Anonymous)]

Puccini's works are public domain, though. He wouldn't have to pay any royalties anyway. I agree it's ALWAYS good to credit the people you borrow from, but I don't think it's wrong to combine public domain things with stuff you've written to form a new work and make money off of it. For example, see Looney Tunes, which very rarely credited the inspiration of the songs featured in the cartoons (drawn from classical operas). Although, I'm hazarding a guess that you also object to Looney Tunes as well...

[(Anonymous)]

Are ALL of Puccini's works in the public domain? Because Puccini's estate filed a lawsuit against Webber and Webber settled out of court. Don't think they would've been able to do that if the particular Puccini opera Webber was accused of plagiarising had been in the public domain.

And no, I don't object to Looney Tunes. They actually did use music in the public domain and did so deliberately because it was cheaper. Do you actually have a citation for the fact that they didn't credit the composers?

[(Anonymous)]

Also, Looney Tunes didn't file off the serial numbers and pretend that it was their own, original music.

[(Anonymous)]

Exactly.

[(Anonymous)]

The opera in question, La Fanciulla del West, is public domain in the U.S. and not public domain in the EU/Italy. Rather tricky legal territory.

And yeah, I see what you mean, there's a difference between lifting classical music because it's cheap and you want fitting, incidental music for your cartoon, and making your living as a musical theatre composer and lifting bars off of other composers (some of whom were still living), when that's, like, what people are paying you for.

But yes, in Looney Tunes, the original composers really are uncredited. I don't have citations, but I watched several of the cartoons that make use of classical music recently and looked carefully at their credits, and they ONLY credit the in-house composer (e.g. Carl Stalling). Also, the pieces used are never credited by name (by putting something like, "Featuring melodies from Dance of the Comedians"), which definitely has the effect of hiding the original work.

[dinogrrl]

Mendelssohn is kinda dead though, not sure how one would pay royalties to him.

John Williams stole from Holst for Star Wars, fyi.

[(Anonymous)]

Yep, John Williams also stole from Dvorak for Jaws. It's not really a bad thing IMO.

[dinogrrl]

Yeah, it's kinda fun to pick out influences/lifts from other works and composers! I think the classical music world would be greatly diminished if it wasn't able to do that any more due to copyright law.

[diet_poison]

This is really cool actually because Williams, Holst and Dvorak are all really cool composers :3

[(Anonymous)]

The humming thing has nothing to do with *who* wrote it, and more to do with genre. Musical theater is just something people are more likely to hum/joe on the street is to have seen and remember than classical music. [Granted, Phantom of the Opera maybe not - but in general.]

That said, most of the examples I've seen, aside from Pink Floyd, are classical musicians that have been dead for over 100 years. So who, exactly, would he have paid royalties to in that case? That's before you even get into the complications created by the fact that music is public domain [note: I'm not saying he has the right to use it and claim it as his because it's public domain - just that it makes the situation messier than it already would be.]

I think it's screwed up that he did that stuff, but getting huffy that he isn't paying someone from the 1800's royalties and that most people remember musical theater better than they do classical music is...well. Silly.

[kallanda_lee]

Yeah, this.

Besides the legal aspect (that the whole concept of copyright doesn't or no longer applies to old music) it basically just weaves into that pre-copyright musical tradition.

I think it's a totally different story if you're plagiarizing a living musician and making cash from it, or using pieces of classical music that are in the public domain in your work.

[dinogrrl]

Yeah I think the idea of copyright has really confounded the classical music world, and classical music has confounded the legal world. It's in this weird, unique place and I kinda love it for that.

[(Anonymous)]

No, he's actually been sued by the estates of the composers he plagiarized. He settled out of court with them.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah but he really did steal the main Phantom riff from a Pink Floyd song so...

[(Anonymous)]

Aside from the fact that he settled with the Puccini estate out of court (Puccini's a lot more recent than non-opera people think -- he only died in 1924), you can also just listen for yourself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW5wwi4ahLc