What I hope people understand is that so many artists would “have to quit” music if Ed loses this one. If chord progressions and drum beats (not samples) become copyrightable aspects of a work, infringement is going to reach insanity & it’ll to be a shitshow if this is precedence

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Thankfully, Ed Sheeran won this case

I’m posting this because I’ve seen memes going around cheering for Sheeran to lose “because haha then he quits music”. I think the people sharing them mostly aren’t aware of what an awful precedent this would have set. You do NOT want chord progressions and drum beats to become copyrightable

In general, when you hear about a lawsuit involving copyright / intellectual property (including “plagiarism”), you should be skeptical. When you hear explicit calls to expand intellectual property law, you should be hostile. I’m more and more unsettled by how credulous people on this website (and in general) are toward “progressive” framings of IP law, especially the notion that intellectual property somehow Protects Artists. It does not exist for the sake of working artists, it was created by and for capitalists

I detest Ed Sheeran’s music, I resent every second of his work that I’ve been subjected to, but I’m also not a fucking rube

Including his comments below because they’re accurate:

“We’ve spent the last eight years talking about two songs with dramatically different lyrics, melodies, and four chords which are also different and used by songwriters every day all over the world,” Sheeran said Thursday.

“These chords are common building blocks which were used to create music long before ‘Let’s Get It On’ was written and will be used to make music long after we are all gone. They are in a songwriter’s alphabet, our toolkit, and should be there for all of us to use. No one owns them or the way they are played in the same way that nobody owns the color blue.”