AU Band Men At Work Owes Royalties On 'Kookaburra'

neonsignal writes "Iconic Australian band Men at Work have been ordered to pay royalties for an instrumental riff in their song 'Down Under.' The notes were sampled from a well-known children's song 'Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree,' written in 1934 for a Girl Guide's Jamboree. The Justice found the claims of the copyright owner Larrikin to be excessive, but ordered the payment of royalties and a percentage of future profits. Let's hope the primary schools are up to date with their ARIA license fees!"

Re:1934

[JustinRLynn]

Residuuuuuuaaaaaaaaalllllllllllzzzzzzz!

Well, in truth.....

[Lord_of_the_nerf]

.....Men at Work do come from a land down under, where women glow and lawyers plunder.

Re:1934

[phantomfive]

Someone made a point that I think made sense......if we're going to have copyright, we ought to not make it based on the life of the creator.....otherwise it will be motivation to kill artists. Make it 15 years from the time it was created or something.

Re:1934

[Lord_of_the_nerf]

Yeah, the song even references them. "On a hippie trail, head full of zombie."

Re:Nine billion names of God

[dangitman]

Well, atleast Swedish copyright law states explicitly that machine generated things can't be copyrighted because they're not creative.

But what about the mutterings of muppet chefs?

Re:BROKEN LINK

[Sulphur]

After it made the rounds, it made the squares.

--

A mullet is what pattern baldness does to an afro.

Who can it be now?

[deniable]

Nobody expects the Copyright Inquisition.

All I remember is

[Centurix]

Kookaburra sits on electric wire,
jumping up and down with his pants on fire.

Laugh Kookaburra,
laugh Kookaburra
how hot your pants must be.

It Matches Perfectly

[Wolvenhaven]

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree
Eating all the Vegemite he can see
Stop, Kookaburra! Stop, Kookaburra!
Leave some there for me
He just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich
And he said,
"I come from a land down under
Where beer does flow and men chunder
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Somewhat bizarrely...

[catmistake]

"It really saddens me to think that, in the last years of her life, while Down Under was having huge commercial success, she was in a nursing home, not earning any money from it, and was probably entitled to."

Quoted above, Larrikin Music Publishing managing director Norm Lurie drags through his day, having not been able to help the author, he's had to settle for taking the money for himself, wiping his tears away with her royalties. It's so touching when a music executive is... sad.

Re:Copyright is too long

[Vintermann]

Paraphrasing old gospel hymns, are you? Be careful! In ten years the rights to "Gimme that old time religion" will be retroactively assigned to an African-American Christian orphanage, which will eventually disappear and sell the rights to Warner Music in the process.

Then you will get sued for this comment.

Re:Defense doesn't add up

[Anonymous Coward]

Colin Hay defends the song saying (emphasis added):

"It is no surprise that in over 20 years, no one noticed the reference to Kookaburra. There are reasons for this. It was inadvertent, naive, unconscious, and by the time Men At Work recorded the song, it had become unrecognisable," he said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/02/05/2811671.htm [abc.net.au]

Yet in the music video for "Down Under" a flute player is shown playing the quotation while sitting in a gum tree.

Pure coincidence?

But was it an old gum tree?