Thursday, May 19, 2011
Glee rips off Divisi's arrangement
I am somewhat a fan of Glee... not all of the plot lines, but the music at least. It's to some extent an extension of my "addiction" (as Pauline calls it) to modern a cappella music, even though Glee isn't all a cappella. The Warblers, for example, are voiced by the Tufts Beelzebubs. However, this time Glee has gone a little too far--they completely ripped off Divisi's classic version of "Yeah", one of the best collegiate a cappella numbers of 2006. See here:
http://popculturebrain.com/post/5645805309/for-comparison-above-is-uo-divisis-award-winning
Unfortunately, beyond publicizing this and hoping that public outcry gets Glee to make amends somehow, I'm not really sure there's much Divisi--and specifically the Divisi member who arranged the song--can do. As I understand things (which could very well be wrong as IANAL), since her version is a derivative work of the Usher original (I'm assuming Usher wrote the song), she & Divisi don't own any legal rights to it, only Usher does. Even if not legally wrong, however, copying someone's arrangement like this with no compensation or even acknowledgement is MORALLY wrong.
If you feel the same way please publicize this information, too.
http://popculturebrain.com/post/5645805309/for-comparison-above-is-uo-divisis-award-winning
Unfortunately, beyond publicizing this and hoping that public outcry gets Glee to make amends somehow, I'm not really sure there's much Divisi--and specifically the Divisi member who arranged the song--can do. As I understand things (which could very well be wrong as IANAL), since her version is a derivative work of the Usher original (I'm assuming Usher wrote the song), she & Divisi don't own any legal rights to it, only Usher does. Even if not legally wrong, however, copying someone's arrangement like this with no compensation or even acknowledgement is MORALLY wrong.
If you feel the same way please publicize this information, too.
# posted by John Colton @ 11:10 PM 
