Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: You might have noticed that things are a little different
Speaker 2: on Cautionary Tales this year. In twenty twenty four, we
Speaker 2: brought you a new episode every fortnight, but this year
Speaker 2: we are doubling our output. New stories of heart thumping peril,
Speaker 2: mind blowing mistakes and jaw dropping scandal will now be
Speaker 2: delivered straight to your ears every week. Here's on for
Speaker 2: you right now. Gooday, My name's Adam Hills, and welcome
Speaker 2: to a special children's music edition of Spicks and Specs.
Speaker 2: Spicks and Specs is a long running staple of Australian TV.
Speaker 2: It's an irreverent quiz show fitting mixed teams of musicians
Speaker 2: and comedians against one another to answer questions on rock
Speaker 2: and pop. In two thousand and seven, host Adam Hills
Speaker 2: was presiding over a special episode dedicated to kids tunes.
Speaker 2: There'd be lots of comic potential in that he asked
Speaker 2: the teams to buzz in if they could name the
Speaker 2: Australian nursery rhyme that this riff was based on the
Speaker 2: opening bars of Men at Work song down Under played.
Speaker 2: The two teams looked mystified which nursery rhyme down Under
Speaker 2: is often referred to as Australia's alternative national anthem. It
Speaker 2: is to Australians what Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA
Speaker 2: is to Americans. Back in the early nineteen eighties, it
Speaker 2: was a globe smash, topping the charts in Canada, the US,
Speaker 2: New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Switzerland. It went gold,
Speaker 2: then platinum, then double platinum. Millions of copies were sold.
Speaker 2: The team on Spics and Specs had no doubt heard
Speaker 2: it hundreds, if not thousands of times, but no one
Speaker 2: could think of an Australian nursery rhyme that sounded remotely
Speaker 2: like it. Are you kidding? One of the exasperated contestants
Speaker 2: asked Adam Hills. Okay, I'll give you one more. Listen
Speaker 2: to it, said Hills, this bit especially, Hills punched his
Speaker 2: pen in the air along to the rhythm of the
Speaker 2: song's flute line, derda derda more blank stares. One contestant
Speaker 2: held her head in her hands. The question was frying
Speaker 2: her brains. Finally, someone buzzed, Inkuoker burrough sits in the
Speaker 2: old gum tree. That's exactly right, said Hills. Believe that
Speaker 2: someone got the answer at last watching Everyone Flummes wasn't
Speaker 2: a memorable moments that would enter the annals of TV history?
Speaker 2: Or was it? Someone watching Spicks and Specks that night
Speaker 2: was certainly intrigued by the exchange and quickly reached out
Speaker 2: to Norm Yury, managing director of Larrikin Music Publishing. Did
Speaker 2: he know that Men at Work had used kooker bure
Speaker 2: sits in the old gum Tree in their smash hit record?
Speaker 2: Norm did not, but the information interested him greatly. He
Speaker 2: now seemed to have a very value property on his hands,
Speaker 2: because years before, and for a song, he'd bought the
Speaker 2: rights to that simple, catchy nursery rhyme. Now, thanks to
Speaker 2: Spicks and Specs, his company might collect a fortune. I'm
Speaker 2: Tim Harford and you're listening to another cautionary tale. Flute
Speaker 2: player Greg Ham was a late addition to Men at Work.
Speaker 2: The band's founding members, the Scots born singer Colin Hay
Speaker 2: and lead guitarist Ron Strikert, had been playing as an
Speaker 2: acoustic duo for a year or so. They performed together
Speaker 2: and wrote together in what friends described as a musical marriage.
Speaker 2: Colin Hay had a folk background, but with Ron Strikert,
Speaker 2: no style was off the table. They experimented with punky
Speaker 2: new wave sounds and mixed in the more laid back
Speaker 2: beats of reggae. One of their first joint compositions was
Speaker 2: down Under, a jokey ode to the legendary wanderlust of Australians.
Speaker 2: The song tells of an ozzy youth traveling the world
Speaker 2: in a beaten up v W campavan, encountering strange and
Speaker 2: exotic locals who are all transfixed by his Antipodean homeland.
Speaker 2: Do you come from the land down Under? They would
Speaker 2: ask him where bearders flow and men shun under Chunder
Speaker 2: by the way his Australian slang for vomit. Down Under
Speaker 2: paints an unsentimental yet fond picture of modern Australia, and
Speaker 2: it went down a storm when the band, now swelled
Speaker 2: with a bassist, drummer and Greg Ham on flute, played
Speaker 2: it in the rowdy pubs of Melbourne. It was the
Speaker 2: B side of their self financed first single, but it
Speaker 2: wasn't the version you'd probably recognize. It had a slower,
Speaker 2: dreamier tempo, a bit prog rock, a bit reggae, a
Speaker 2: bit psychedelic. When the band signed to a major label,
Speaker 2: When the track was re recorded, Greg Ham came up
Speaker 2: with a new flute hook to enliven a sped up arrangement.
Speaker 2: It had come to him during a live jam session
Speaker 2: down Under was quint essentially Australian and he wanted to
Speaker 2: add to the existing composition what he called an ossie
Speaker 2: cleane melody Derda Derda dead Derda. Marian Sinclair had been
Speaker 2: making up songs and rhymes since she was a girl.
Speaker 2: An only child and home educated, Marian staved off loneliness
Speaker 2: by creating a rich internal world of fantasy and imagination.
Speaker 2: Piano lessons gave her the musical education to hone her
Speaker 2: compositions and set them down on paper. She made this
Speaker 2: youthful hobby her life, becoming a drama and music teacher
Speaker 2: in the nineteen twenties and throwing herself into the Girl Guides,
Speaker 2: the Australian equivalent of the Girl Scouts. It was while
Speaker 2: in church that inspiration struck Marian, prompting her to create
Speaker 2: by far her most popular ditty. Rushing home, she set
Speaker 2: down cuokerburraugh sits in the old gum tree. The Kookaburra
Speaker 2: is one of Australia's most iconic birds, carnivorous, boisterous and noisy.
Speaker 2: Its call resembles a raucous human laugh. Gum trees, or
Speaker 2: rather trees of the eucalyptus family, are equally iconic and
Speaker 2: quintessentially Australian. Perhaps this subject matter swayed the judges when
Speaker 2: in nineteen thirty four Marion entered her song for a
Speaker 2: competition run by the Girl Guides Association of Victoria. They
Speaker 2: wanted a typically Australian round to be sung at the
Speaker 2: upcoming Pan Pacific Scouting Jamboree, and they chose cuoker Borough.
Speaker 2: Rounds are simple tunes where the singers follow the same
Speaker 2: melody but start at different times. Row Row Row your Boat,
Speaker 2: Praier Jacqua and Three Blind Mice are prime examples. There
Speaker 2: are fun and near full proof way for amateur singers
Speaker 2: to achieve a pleasing harmony. You no doubt sung them
Speaker 2: at school. Coooker Borough almost instantly became a classic of
Speaker 2: the genre, and when the international visitors to the jamboree
Speaker 2: returned home, they took with them this slice of Australiana,
Speaker 2: singing it lustily from London to Lahore. Marion Sinclair didn't
Speaker 2: cash in on this success, though heaven forbid, Marion wasn't
Speaker 2: interested in collecting royalties from scat or guides or anyone else,
Speaker 2: enjoying her song and encouraging others to sing it. It
Speaker 2: wasn't until nineteen seventy five that Marian was finally persuaded
Speaker 2: to register the composition as belonging to her, and she
Speaker 2: was far too busy studying, teaching, aiding refugees, working with
Speaker 2: old people, and running a hostel for girls to chase
Speaker 2: people for copyright infringement and demand her dues. It's conceivable
Speaker 2: that in old age she heard down Under in Australia
Speaker 2: it was played everywhere, but she either didn't recognize any
Speaker 2: similarities to her own composition or simply didn't care. Marian
Speaker 2: dismissed kooker borough Sits in the Old Gum Tree as
Speaker 2: a trifle and no match for her other songs. And
Speaker 2: anyway it came to me from above, she'd say, I
Speaker 2: don't own it. After a life of Christian service, Marion
Speaker 2: Sinclair died in nineteen eighty eight, having signed over her
Speaker 2: rights to the Library's Board of South Australia. Larakin Music
Speaker 2: Publishing then swooped in to buy the ownership of Kookaburraugh
Speaker 2: with an interesting business model in mind. For years, people
Speaker 2: had assumed Marion's song was free to use, so they
Speaker 2: had included it in books teaching youngsters to play musical
Speaker 2: instruments and recorded it on albums of children's songs. Norm
Speaker 2: Lewie at Larakin now busied himself delivering the bad news.
Speaker 2: Kooker Burrough was under new ownership and it wasn't free.
Speaker 2: Norm had spent only a few thousand dollars acquiring the rights,
Speaker 2: a sum he'd swiftly recouped. It's earned a hell of
Speaker 2: a lot of money for us since we've bought it,
Speaker 2: he admitted. But thanks to spicks and specs, Larakin was
Speaker 2: now looking at a very different proposition. Down Under had
Speaker 2: helped Men at Work win a Grammy. Its initial success
Speaker 2: as a single had been huge, but it had been
Speaker 2: steadily earning on albums and Greatest Hits compilations for nearly
Speaker 2: thirty years. Norm Lyury now wanted a cut, so sued
Speaker 2: Men at Work for sixty percent of the profits. It
Speaker 2: was a huge sum, and if one it was a
Speaker 2: figure that would cause the members of Men at Work
Speaker 2: immense suffering. Cautionary tales will be back in a moment.
Speaker 2: Men at Work's flute maestro Greg Ham took the news
Speaker 2: of the court case hard. I'm terribly disappointed that that's
Speaker 2: the way I'm going to be remembered for copying something.
Speaker 2: Greg's flute riff improvised at a jam session and overlaid
Speaker 2: on a song written before he'd even joined the band
Speaker 2: was threatening to sink Men at Work. If the judge
Speaker 2: found for Larrikin Music Publishing, how would they unpick thirty
Speaker 2: years of earnings. They'd spent that money on houses, businesses,
Speaker 2: invested it for their old age. To suddenly hand over
Speaker 2: sixty percent now would mean liquidating their assets, auctioning off possessions,
Speaker 2: and putting their homes up for sale. Faced with this,
Speaker 2: and backed by his record company, lead singer Colin Hay,
Speaker 2: decided to fight. He was going to argue that Kuockerburough
Speaker 2: hadn't been to use the legal term substantially reproduced in
Speaker 2: their hit song when I co wrote down Under back
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy eight, the singer said angrily, I appropriated
Speaker 2: nothing from anyone else's song. There was no Men at Work,
Speaker 2: there was no flute, yet the song existed to the
Speaker 2: judge's delight, Colins serenaded the court with a version of
Speaker 2: the song to show that the flute riff wasn't integral
Speaker 2: to the greater work. But Larakin's counterclaim was that greg
Speaker 2: Ham had blatantly copied the first two bars of Kookerborough.
Speaker 2: Colin replied that if his friend had lifted Marion Sinclair's melody,
Speaker 2: it was inadvertent, naive, unconscious, and by the time men
Speaker 2: at work had recorded the song it had become unrecognizable.
Speaker 2: Colin's elderly father agreed, he'd been a singer himself and
Speaker 2: later owned a music shop, so he knew a thing
Speaker 2: or two about songwriting. He was incensed, said Colin. He
Speaker 2: was getting older, and he was getting stressed. Smoke would
Speaker 2: come out of his ears. The court case dragged on, hearings, appeals,
Speaker 2: expert witness, self to expert witness, and the ever mounting
Speaker 2: legal bills, and all the time the scales seemed to
Speaker 2: be tipping in favor of Larrikin. Stressed and exasperated, it
Speaker 2: was all too much for Colin's father. He died in
Speaker 2: twenty ten. I do feel instinctively it contributed to knocking
Speaker 2: him off his perch lamented his grieving son, but the
Speaker 2: copyright case hadn't claimed its last victim, Racked with guilt
Speaker 2: and worried about lou using his home flute player, Greg
Speaker 2: Hamm was observed to be going downhill, had been drinking and,
Speaker 2: according to one friend, using heroin. It was said the
Speaker 2: dispute over down under had undone him. Copyright laws exists
Speaker 2: to protect composers. It's very hard to write an ode
Speaker 2: to joy, a marriage of FIGUREO or a baby shark,
Speaker 2: but very easy to copy them. Copyright gives creators some
Speaker 2: ability to stop copycats, and thus an incentive to do
Speaker 2: the creative work in the first place, and historically musicians
Speaker 2: have had a very hard time getting paid for the
Speaker 2: tunes they've created. Back when there was a music hall
Speaker 2: every few hundred yards on the streets of Britain, the
Speaker 2: songs of Joseph Tabras were almost certain to be wafting out.
Speaker 2: He was credited with over seven thousand compositions, though claimed
Speaker 2: he had written many more. Ting ting, That's how the
Speaker 2: Bell goes, He's Sailing on the Briny Ocean, and Oh
Speaker 2: You Little Darling were among his hits, but all were
Speaker 2: dwarfed by the runaway success of eighteen ninety two's Daddy
Speaker 2: Wouldn't buy Me a Bow Wow? Did I foresee its popularity? Good,
Speaker 2: gracious no, said Tabra. Did I make a vast fortune
Speaker 2: out of it? Yes? Eight pounds and odd shillings eight
Speaker 2: pounds would be just a few thousand dollars compared to
Speaker 2: the wages of the day. That doesn't seem much of
Speaker 2: a return for creating a song that swept the glow.
Speaker 2: It's little wonder then that Joseph Tebra was often penniless,
Speaker 2: a situation he described euphemistically as being impecuniously embarrassed. The
Speaker 2: stars who sang his popular songs got rich. They took
Speaker 2: a cut of ticket sales, and publishers got rich selling
Speaker 2: the sheep music, but few royalties found their way to
Speaker 2: people like Joseph Tabra, who wrote the songs in the
Speaker 2: first place. Think of a catchy reframe, he said, of
Speaker 2: his creative process. Think of the damn silliest words that
Speaker 2: will rhyme anyhow. Think of a haunting, pretty melody, and
Speaker 2: there you are. The fortune of your publisher is made.
Speaker 2: But around the time that Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a
Speaker 2: Bow Wow was wowing the victorians. The music publishers were
Speaker 2: starting to see their profits being eaten away too. So
Speaker 2: called pirates would off copies of the newest hits on
Speaker 2: cheap paper and employ homeless people to sell them on
Speaker 2: the streets for pennies. The knockoff sheet music obviously didn't
Speaker 2: include the printer's address, and the street hawkers had no
Speaker 2: fixed abode, so how could legitimate music publishers sue the pirates.
Speaker 2: The Musical Defense League was formed to push for a
Speaker 2: tightening of the copyright laws and stem the hemorrhaging of profits.
Speaker 2: The piracy of musical copyright has enormously increased, said one
Speaker 2: of those proposing a new law, and has now reached
Speaker 2: such alarming proportions that it is having a paralyzing effect
Speaker 2: on the legitimate trade in musical works. Unless something was done,
Speaker 2: threatened the Musical Defense League its members would stop publishing
Speaker 2: new songs all together. The composers and public bushing houses
Speaker 2: got their way. Over the course of a decade, new
Speaker 2: copyright protections came into force, regulating sheep music, piano rolls,
Speaker 2: wax cylinders, phonograph records, and whatever new technology might come next,
Speaker 2: and the rights and royalties of composers were also improved.
Speaker 2: They demand payments for their songs for the rest of
Speaker 2: their lives and even pass these rights onto their airs
Speaker 2: upon death. Good news. Well, there's a sharp trade off here.
Speaker 2: If you make copyright protections very generous to creators, that
Speaker 2: makes them richer, and it might also encourage more creative activity,
Speaker 2: especially of really expensive projects such as movies. Although Joseph
Speaker 2: Debra didn't seem to need much incentive to churn out
Speaker 2: the hits. But if copyright protections are too generous to
Speaker 2: the original creator, they limit our ability to remix and
Speaker 2: adapt old ideas, or just to enjoy them without paying
Speaker 2: expensive royalties. As I say, it's a trade off. The
Speaker 2: simplest way in which the trade off bites is the
Speaker 2: question how long should copyright protection last? In Australia, like
Speaker 2: many countries, the answer is that music copyright lasts seventy
Speaker 2: years from the date of the composer's death. Kooker Borough
Speaker 2: was written in nineteen thirty two and Marion died in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty eight, so the copyright lasts until twenty fifty eight,
Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty six years for a song she
Speaker 2: composed for fun Remember the tradeoff. We want to give
Speaker 2: creators a temporary monopoly over their work to ensure that
Speaker 2: they actually have an incentive to make art. But if
Speaker 2: that properly is too strict or lasts too long, everyone
Speaker 2: else loses out because they can't enjoy or reuse the
Speaker 2: art without paying. So what counts as too long? I'm
Speaker 2: speaking here as a creative person myself. I benefit from copyright.
Speaker 2: My first book, The Undercover Economist, was published in two
Speaker 2: thousand and five and it's still selling. So personally, I'm
Speaker 2: happy that copyright lasts more than twenty years, But it
Speaker 2: doesn't need to last a century. I'd still have written
Speaker 2: the book and it would still have been published with
Speaker 2: twenty years of copyright protection, or even with ten. But
Speaker 2: we don't need to be extreme about this. Let's say
Speaker 2: copyright should last twenty years after the moment of creation,
Speaker 2: or thirty years or forty that's plenty. Kooker Borough would
Speaker 2: still have been in the public domain from nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 2: almost a decade before down Under hit the charts. So
Speaker 2: why are copyright terms so insanely long? Not because of
Speaker 2: the artists themselves. Show me the author or the composer
Speaker 2: lobbying furiously for royalties to last until after their grandchildren
Speaker 2: are dead. No, it's all about corporate power. Large corporations
Speaker 2: hoover up artist rights. These businesses have the scale to
Speaker 2: enforce their ownership, taking infringes to court, and the clout
Speaker 2: to lobby governments not to reform the copyright legislation. The
Speaker 2: implosion of the Beatles upset many music fans, who couldn't
Speaker 2: quite believe that there'd be no more records from the
Speaker 2: Fab four. Concert promoters began to offer for huge sums, tens,
Speaker 2: and then hundreds of millions for a reunion. It became
Speaker 2: a running joke on the TV show Saturday Night Live
Speaker 2: that it would pay three thousand dollars for the Beatles
Speaker 2: to reform. Saturday Night Live eventually aired a sketch with
Speaker 2: the Beatles parody band the Ruttles. Fronted by Monty Python's
Speaker 2: Eric Idol. The Ruttles performed a raft of Beatlesque tunes
Speaker 2: ouch instead of Help Piggy in the Middle in place
Speaker 2: of I Am the Walrus. Audiences were delighted, and even
Speaker 2: the real Beatles appreciated the comic send up of their work.
Speaker 2: But this blessing wasn't sufficient to protect the Ruttles from
Speaker 2: the lawyers. John Lennon advised us that we might have
Speaker 2: trouble with Get Up and Go, said one Ruttle, because
Speaker 2: it sounded so much like get Back. The Beatles had
Speaker 2: lost the publishing rights to their songs in the late sixties,
Speaker 2: and the new owner's ATV Music certainly didn't see the
Speaker 2: funny side of the parody. All you need is cash.
Speaker 2: They lodged a lawsuit, and, fearing the cost of fighting it,
Speaker 2: the Ruttles surrendered half of the royalties and added the
Speaker 2: names Lenon and McCartney to the writing credits. It's brutal,
Speaker 2: said one Ruttle. I couldn't afford to get a lawyer
Speaker 2: that would go up against these big corporations. The band
Speaker 2: obviously wanted to sound like the Beatles, but denied directly
Speaker 2: ripping off Lenon and McCartney. For centuries, composers have reworked
Speaker 2: and reinterpreted one another's works, quoting a phrase here, a
Speaker 2: melody there, and the Ruttles said they were no different.
Speaker 2: The word ruttle is in fact a verb, they explained
Speaker 2: to Ruttle is to copy or emulate someone you admire.
Speaker 2: In the music business. The Beatles were ruttles. They ruttled
Speaker 2: gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran. Mozart was a ruttle. Of course,
Speaker 2: the Ruttles never tested this argument before a judge. It
Speaker 2: was an expensive gamble. They weren't willing to take men
Speaker 2: at work. However, had accepted the substantial risk to defend
Speaker 2: their ruttling of kooker Borough, and the court was about
Speaker 2: to hand down its final verdict. Cautionary tales will resume shortly.
Speaker 2: I've argued that copyright lasts too long, but the case
Speaker 2: of the Ruttles suggests another problem. Maybe copyright protection is
Speaker 2: also too broad. Economists sometimes talk about the breadth or
Speaker 2: the height of intellectual property protection, which in this case
Speaker 2: means how much of kooker Borough can you take and
Speaker 2: how radically do you have to transform it before you're
Speaker 2: in the clear. These are more complicated questions than simply
Speaker 2: asking how long copyright should last, Which was why down
Speaker 2: Under ended up in court, and why the proceedings dragged
Speaker 2: on for so long. And our attitudes to copying aren't
Speaker 2: just a matter for the courts. They're a matter of
Speaker 2: culture too, and I think we fuss too much about copying. Books, films,
Speaker 2: and songs can be shallow and derivative without plagiarizing, while
Speaker 2: a creative work that does contain plagiarism can still be
Speaker 2: deep and original. The truth is that there's copying and
Speaker 2: then there's copying. I'm a great admirer of Malcolm Gladwell's writing.
Speaker 2: If I were to print ten thousand copies of his
Speaker 2: new book, Revenge of the Tipping Point, sell them, and
Speaker 2: keep the revenue, I'd be committing one form of intellectual
Speaker 2: property theft, indirectly stealing money from him. If instead, I
Speaker 2: printed by Tim Harford on the cover, I'd be committing
Speaker 2: a different form of mischief, stealing the credit as well
Speaker 2: as the profits. Or there's a third thing I could do.
Speaker 2: I could add chunks of his writing to my own.
Speaker 2: That seems crazy, but stranger things have happened. Twenty years ago,
Speaker 2: a Broadway play was attracting praise and a Tony nomination
Speaker 2: for its wrenchingly authentic portrayal of what makes a murderer.
Speaker 2: The reason for the realism was soon revealed. The playwright
Speaker 2: had lifted long uncredited passages from a magazine profile of
Speaker 2: a real psychiatrist who studied killers that profile was by
Speaker 2: Malcolm Gladwell. The psychiatrist was enraged and considering legal action,
Speaker 2: and she enlisted Malcolm to back her case. He was
Speaker 2: initially helpful until he read the script for himself.
Speaker 1: I found it breathtaking, he said. Instead of feeling that
Speaker 1: my words had been taken from me, I felt that
Speaker 1: they had become part of some grander cause.
Speaker 2: Around six hundred and seventy five of the article's words
Speaker 2: had been taken without Malcolm's permission. These words were the
Speaker 2: result of his work and his craft. The sentences and
Speaker 2: paragraphs they created, lodging ideas in reader's minds, belonged to Malcolm,
Speaker 2: and now play was benefiting from them without crediting or
Speaker 2: compensating him.
Speaker 1: A surveyor writer would have rewritten the quotes from me
Speaker 1: so that their origin was no longer recognizable. But how
Speaker 1: would I have been better off if she had disguised
Speaker 1: the source of her inspiration.
Speaker 2: Many people were furious on Malcolm's behalf. Having originally been fated,
Speaker 2: the playwright was now raked over the coals for intellectual fevery.
Speaker 2: It feels absolutely terrible, she told Malcolm. I just didn't
Speaker 2: think I was doing the wrong thing. And Malcolm wasn't
Speaker 2: so sure she had the ferrara over. The play had
Speaker 2: given him a chance to think about where his own
Speaker 2: ideas had come from from the books and articles had read, speeches,
Speaker 2: had heard, films he had seen. Malcolm admitted that some
Speaker 2: of his phrasing used in the play was pretty similar
Speaker 2: to works already in existence. One formation of works sounded
Speaker 2: very close to something Gandhi had once said.
Speaker 1: The dishonesty of the plagiarism fundamentalists is to encourage us
Speaker 1: to pretend that these chains of influence and evolution do
Speaker 1: not exist, and that a writer's words have a virgin
Speaker 1: birth end an internal life.
Speaker 2: Sadly, many of the current copyright laws conformed to the
Speaker 2: thinking of these plagiarism fundamentalists, and it was to these
Speaker 2: standards that Men at Works down Under was being judged.
Speaker 2: It's a big win for the underdog, said a lawyer
Speaker 2: when the judgment was finally read. He was acting on
Speaker 2: behalf of norm Lury and Larkin Music. Men at Work
Speaker 2: had lost, be it intentional or subconscious. Greg Ham's flute
Speaker 2: riff was an infringement of Larakin's ownership of cook Borough,
Speaker 2: and the firm was owed damages. Of course, it would
Speaker 2: be disingenuous for me to say that there wasn't a
Speaker 2: financial aspect involved, said a delighted Norm Ury. But you
Speaker 2: could just as easily say what has won out is
Speaker 2: the importance of checking before using other people's copyrights. One
Speaker 2: person who could think of little else in the wake
Speaker 2: of the ruling was the flute player Greg Ham. He
Speaker 2: felt crushing guilt that he'd landed his bandmates in a
Speaker 2: five year legal battle and tried to blot it out
Speaker 2: with drink and drugs. Having sold his longtime home, hid
Speaker 2: downsize to help settle the bills. It was in this
Speaker 2: more modest apartment that Greg was found dead. He'd suffered
Speaker 2: a heart attack, and Men at Works lead singer Colin
Speaker 2: Hay angrily blamed the stress of the court case. It's
Speaker 2: people you love who you're losing over litigation based on
Speaker 2: greed and opportunism. So what did Norm Yuri and Larakin
Speaker 2: make from suing Men at Work? They'd wanted sixty percent
Speaker 2: of all the profits from down Under and the judge
Speaker 2: gave them five percent, and then only on money earns
Speaker 2: since two thousand and two, not all the way back
Speaker 2: to Men at Works nineteen eighties Heyday. It was deemed
Speaker 2: that a greater share would have been excessive, overreaching, and
Speaker 2: unrealistic under copyright law. Larakin's claim of infringement had cleared
Speaker 2: the legal bar to win the case, but the judges
Speaker 2: spoke of their disquiet at having to find against Men
Speaker 2: at Work. The modest damages awarded to Larakin were perhaps
Speaker 2: a warning to vexatious litigants that they should find a
Speaker 2: more amicable alternative to launching legal action. It's thought this
Speaker 2: five percent settlement amounted to only around one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: Both sides had spent millions in legal fees, so while
Speaker 2: Men at Work had lost the case, there were really
Speaker 2: no winners aside from the lawyers. If we don't like
Speaker 2: that result, maybe we should think about writing a more
Speaker 2: sensible copyright law. But there is one final surprising casualty
Speaker 2: in this sorry tale. As one of Australia's most beloved
Speaker 2: pop stars, Colin Hay, had been a guest on the
Speaker 2: quiz Spicks and Specks. He and the host, Adam Hills
Speaker 2: had become friends. We were actually quite close, said Hills,
Speaker 2: who even house sat for the singer when Spis and
Speaker 2: Specks sparked the devastating legal dispute. Some men at work
Speaker 2: fans held Hills directly responsible. I got a lot of
Speaker 2: pretty abusive stuff on Facebook. The TV star admits it's
Speaker 2: such a weird thing to have happened that a throwaway
Speaker 2: question on a music quiz show leads to a court case.
Speaker 2: It's such an iconic, beloved Australian song, but I'll never
Speaker 2: hear it without knowing that I've got this awful connection
Speaker 2: to it. But it's the impact on his relationship with
Speaker 2: men at work singer that most upsets Adam Hills. I
Speaker 2: haven't spoken to Colin for ages. It all got weird
Speaker 2: between us. Exhausted and embittered by the whole affair, Colin
Speaker 2: Hay found performing down Under on stage an increasingly harrowing
Speaker 2: and depressing experience. Unch into the hit and immediately be
Speaker 2: transported back to the court case. That is, until one evening,
Speaker 2: playing to a crowd of twenty five thousand people, all
Speaker 2: dancing and gleefully singing along, Colin had an epiphany. Looking
Speaker 2: out across the audience, he suddenly thought, they can't touch this.
Speaker 2: For a full list of our sources, see the show
Speaker 2: notes at Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales is written by
Speaker 2: me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright, Alice Fines and Ryan Dilly.
Speaker 2: It's produced by Alice Fines and Marilyn Rust. The sound
Speaker 2: design and original music are the work of Pascal Wise.
Speaker 2: Additional sound design is by Carlos san Juan at Brain Audio.
Speaker 2: Bend daf Haffrey edited the scripts. The show features the
Speaker 2: voice talents of Melanie Guttridge, Stella Harford, Oliver Hembrough, Sarah Jupp,
Speaker 2: massaam Monroe, Jamal Westman, and rufus Wright. The show also
Speaker 2: wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg,
Speaker 2: Greta Cohne, Sarah Nix, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sullivan,
Speaker 2: Kira Posey, and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production
Speaker 2: of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at Wardore Studios in London
Speaker 2: by Tom Berry. If you like the show, please remember
Speaker 2: to share, rate and review. It really makes a difference
Speaker 2: to us and if you want to hear the show,
Speaker 2: add free sign up to Pushkin Plus on the show
Speaker 2: page on Apple Podcasts or at Pushkin dot fm, slash
Speaker 2: plus