Portal composer Jonathan Coulton, famous for the song “Still Alive”, is currently battling Fox for the use of one of his covers in the popular TV show Glee.
The show features a bunch of high school teens performing covers of famous hit songs. They employed Coulton’s cover of the Sir Mix-a-lot number “Baby Got Back” recently without crediting Coulton for his work.
According to a blog post, Coulton states, “They also got in touch with my peeps to basically say that they’re within their legal rights to do this, and that I should be happy for the exposure (even though they do not credit me, and have not even publicly acknowledged that it’s my version – so you know, it’s kind of SECRET exposure).”
“While they appear not to be legally obligated to do any of these things, they did not apologise, offer to credit me, or offer to pay me, and indicated that this was their general policy in regards to covers of covers.”
Interestingly, Coulton has legal rights to his cover of the song. It wouldn’t be an issue if Fox had credited Coulton, or, you know, not used his version in the first place. But they did.
“It does not appear that I have a copyright claim, but I’m still investigating the possibility (which I consider likely) that they used some or all of my audio.”
Source: GIBiz
