Writers gonna write, Judges gonna judge －物書きは物を書くっきゃないし、裁判官は判断するっきゃないー

I sometimes wonder if humans will one day stop producing new books, movies, songs and works of art.  They will run out of fresh ideas because everything interesting has already been said, or sung, or shown or painted before.

Do you want to write a book about the evil side that exists within all men, ready to emerge if only the good side of our nature is weakened?  Don’t bother.  Robert Louis Stevenson has already written “The strange case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde”.  Have you had the great idea of combining classical Indian music with Western pop music?  Too late!  A number of British bands from the 1960s, such as The Beatles, got there ahead of you.

It becomes even more difficult for artists when big companies sue them if their work is even slightly similar to something which has already been copyrighted.

That’s why I was pleased to see one such copyright lawsuit being rejected by an American judge.  Taylor Swift was sued by two older songwriters because they said she had stolen two lines from one of their songs.  The lines were, “Players gonna play, Haters gonna hate.”

A “player”, or sometimes “playa”, is a slang word meaning a confident, influential man, especially one who has many girlfriends.  So the song lyrics mean something like, “You can’t stop some men from playing around (with women), You can’t stop some people from hating (you)”

The reason that the judge gave for rejecting the copyright claim was funny.  He said that the lyrics could not be copyrighted because they were so banal.  “Players gonna play” is no more interesting or original than “Swimmers gonna swim” or “Runners gonna run”.  He said that the lyrics don’t demonstrate even a little bit of creativity.  Maybe he’s more of a Bob Dylan fan.

This blog is copyrighted.

 

Vocabulary:

to run out – of something limited, to use all of it up so that nothing is left

to emerge – to come out

to sue – to take someone to court

to be copyrighted – of an idea or created product, to be illegal to copy without permission

“gonna” –  slang for, “(are) going to”

banal – so lacking in originality as to be obvious and boring