Columbia Law Library Music Copyright Infringement Online Archive

Link: The Columbia Law Library has built a great site for anyone interested in court decisions in music copyright infringement cases. The site has a bounty of resources for dozens of cases dating back to the 1800’s, including court opinions, comments, and sound clips. Relevant video clips are even included for some cases (e.g., a clip from “Pretty Woman” (the film) in which Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman” is played).

This site is a lot of fun. I spent an hour here tonight just playing the various songs and reviewing some of the opinions.

I thought about assembling an iMix on iTunes that compiles some of the more popular songs that have been the subject of copyright infringement litigation. I had a vision of hundreds of intellectual property attorneys critically analyzing song after song on their iPods. But, the iTunes library had very few of the relevant songs, so I killed this project (for now). I was especially disappointed to learn that 2 Live Crew is not yet on iTunes. Bummer.