Grand Upright Music v Warner Bros Records

I sing on this podcast about 3 times and you all have to be nice about it. 

Ariana Miles and Christian McCann - two of Chicago's best and brightest pianos players - join me to discuss the hilarious world of trying to copyright a vibe. Why do we have to pay exorbitant fees for samples? Can you own a chord progression? Will Christian or Ariana play a piano riff accurately enough to get this episode taken down for copyright issues? If you're listening to this episode, they lost...

The central focus of this episode is the lawsuit between Gilbert O'Sullivan and Biz Markie. Something I regret not saying in the episode because I forgot is: Biz Markie died in 2021 of Type 2 Diabetes (or possibly complications with COVID based on when he fell ill). Born 18 years after Gilbert O'Sullivan and died of a treatable disease - yet another layer of inequality that we discuss in the episode that I thought should have been mentioned!

There are two pianos in front of Christian and Ariana. I'm at the sound booth saddle with a paper script, an espresso martini, a diet coke and a dream. I am not a journalist or a comedian, I am just some chick. 

TICKETS TO ARIANA MILES AND AMY DO'S LIVE ALBUM CONCERT JULY 19th 2026: https://www.hideoutchicago.com/shows/amy-ariana-charity-show-early-19-jul

All proceeds from the What She Wants show are going to The Night Ministry, a Chicago-based organization whose mission is to provide human connection, housing support, and health care to members of our community who are unhoused or experiencing poverty. https://thenightministry.org/give/

Christian is playing in the band, and he and I are opening the show with dueling pianos. Yay. 

SOURCES: 

For Gilbert O'Sullivan's general background, I used his Wikipedia page. Interestingly enough, Biz Markie's doesn't cover a lot of his early life, so I used this website: https://blackpast.org/african-american-history/biz-markie-1964-2021/

1. The Guiness Book of 500 Number One Hits (with that goddamn misattributed quote), 1992,  Enfield, Middlesex : Guinness Superlatives, archive.org link here: https://archive.org/details/guinnessbookof500000unse/page/262/mode/1up?q=MAM
2. "With friends like Kevin Duffy, you don't need many friends" quote from KEVIN THOMAS DUFFY: A MASTERFUL TRIAL JUDGE by The Honorable P. Kevin Castel, 2022, link here: https://fordhamlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Castel_Duffy.pdf
3. Judge Kevin Duffy's fuckass opinion from Grand Upright Music, Ltd. v. Warner Bros. Records, Inc c. 1991 found here: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/780/182/1445286/
4. Sorry that I only just realized I got this from ICE's website, but this is the story of the Maralynd guy who burnt too many copies of Kung Fu Panda 2 too close to the sun circa 2012: https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/maryland-man-sentenced-criminal-copyright-infringement
5. You can find the Johnny Cash story in many a listicle, here's one I used: https://americansongwriter.com/on-this-day-in-1955-johnny-cash-recorded-a-song-that-would-bring-him-chart-success-and-legal-issues-decades-later/
6. Fogerty v. Fantasy Inc SUPREME COURT opinion, penned by William Rehnquist in 1994, found here: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/112934/fogerty-v-fantasy-inc/
7. This is the full Griffin v. Sheeran (with Ed Townsend's family, Structured Asset Sales, LLC, etc.) timeline with pdf docs of each complaint. Truly staggering how long this dragged on: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6089110/griffin-v-sheeran/?page=1
8. A lot of inspiration came from this "Not in Court cause I Stole a Beat: the Digital Music Sampling Debate's Discourse on Race and Culture, and the Need for Test Case Litigation, 2012 University of Illinois Journal of Law, Technology and Policy 141 (Spring 2012)"
   https://www.racism.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1446:legaltreatmentdigitalsampling&catid=55&Itemid=178&showall=1&limitstart=
   Note that when I tried to verify the source from Illinois Journal of Law, Technology and Policy, I did not find this article in any issue, let alone spring 2012. There was a different copyright-in-music-related article, but it bore no resemblance to the one I just quoted from. I thus do not know the author of the thing I quoted from, but it was my main jumping off point. 
9. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM6X2MEl7R8 - Adam Neely got copyright claimed by Warner for manually playing Dark Horse on his synth (and they manually did the claim and didn’t flag the correct part of the video
10. https://www.whosampled.com/ the most goated website of all time