Music: Austrailia’s courts just as F**ked up as ours, case against ‘Men at Work’ goes forward

Australian band ‘Men at Work’

• Court awards greedy family and music company damages for so-called plagiarism…nearly 30-years late…
• The Litigious Society beat goes on…Seriously, when the hell are people going to stop using the courts to make money and get off their lazy asses and make it themselves???

by Mike Zimmer, Court Reporter

Eighties music icons ‘Men at Work’ have been sued for millions of dollars for their so-called rip off of a bit of flute music.  No, Really.  http://music.msn.com/music/article.aspx?news=456417

The Australian group, one of many favourites of mine from the 80′s (and lead singer Colin Hay is still today pretty good by the way), big hit “Land down under” is in question.  The part where the flute kicks in is what the lawsuit is aiming at.  The family and music company of a woman who wrote a song in 1935 that was intended for a campfire song book for Australian version of Girl Scouts, is at the center of the suit.

Here’s the kicker: the woman who wrote the song, died a few years back.  In her lifetime as an Aussie, she never once brought up the issue that the song had been “ripped off”.  After all, the song had been out since about 1982 in Austrailia and the world and was a super big smash hit.

An Australian court ruled that damages and copyright infringement charges can go forward and the band can be sued for money from royalties that could be as much as $33-million dollars.  All because the flute part of the song ‘Down Under’ sounds something like a children’s flute song from 1935 that had gone un-detected even by the woman that wrote it for nearly 30-yrs???

When the hell is this litigious society that we all live in, try and make money the old fashioned way?  Seriously, this is just a back-door way to make money where it has been earned from someone else.  Really, if I was a smarter man, I’d try and just sue everyone instead of looking for a job these days.  I mean, that Mike Zimmer guy that runs the Bengals defense has stolen my name and all.  I bet I can sue him for using it.

The world is doomed when our economy, society and law is based upon having your hand in someone Else’s pocket for it all to work.

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