Maiden settles the Hallowed Be Thy Name claim in full

It's a bit odd that someone in the Maiden camp got in touch with Frank Herbert about them naming a song 'Dune' after his book, but nobody bothered to do anything about Steve stealing someone else's lyrics. I suppose Steve and Rod just thought that Beckett weren't as big a deal as Frank Herbert and that they could get away with it. Nobody would ever manage that nowadays with the mass access to almost every song ever on the internet though. 'The Nomad' is super-strange though - recorded nearly 30 years after the Beckett song. That piece of theft baffles me. :confused:
 
Black Wizard said:
I suppose Steve and Rod just thought that Beckett weren't as big a deal as Frank Herbert and that they could get away with it.
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Or maybe there was some sort of informal agreement with Barton at the time, with the extent of Quinn's involvement not being made clear to Steve. Maybe Steve didn't understand it as theft at the time because he only used a few lines, they were adapted rather than straight copied, and he applied them in a completely different setting (musically and thematically). Maybe he saw it as basically a salute to a song he though was good, and when an artist such as Steve considers your material good enough to borrow from, it is, in truth, a compliment. Even Quinn himself, in the first instance, said he wasn't interested in money, he just wanted an official acknowledgement that he had contributed some lyrics to a song that was well-regarded (and by the way, I'm not sure he actually got this out of the court case). The subsequent high-profile lawsuit and quest for cash seems to have been McKay's idea.
 
Black Wizard said:
It's a bit odd that someone in the Maiden camp got in touch with Frank Herbert about them naming a song 'Dune' after his book
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They approached McGoohan to use the prisoner as well. You would wonder if they approached every work of art that inspired a Maiden song? Potential minefield there, there's loads of Maiden songs based on someone elses work.
 
srfc said:
They approached McGoohan to use the prisoner as well. You would wonder if they approached every work of art that inspired a Maiden song? Potential minefield there, there's loads of Maiden songs based on someone elses work.
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Not just The Prisoner though but his actual voice for the intro I think? Makes a difference.
 
No no, that's not his voice. But McGoohan was the "owner" of The Prisoner series, so they needed his permission to use that spoken passage.
 
Forostar said:
"Based on" is something. Using/taking/copying is something else.
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I know, what I meant was To Tame a Land is "based on" Dune. They had to get permission from Herbert to call it Dune and he refused. Did they get permission to call Where Eagles Dare by it's title from MGM? Or 20th Century Fox for Quest for Fire?
 
Black Abyss Babe said:
Or maybe there was some sort of informal agreement with Barton at the time, with the extent of Quinn's involvement not being made clear to Steve. Maybe Steve didn't understand it as theft at the time because he only used a few lines, they were adapted rather than straight copied, and he applied them in a completely different setting (musically and thematically).
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I can understand that Steve Harris, or any other member of the band, wouldn't be aware of the details of copyright laws. Rod Smallwood, however, as the band manager should be expected to know this or at least bring potential copyright infringement to people who do know about copyright law. There's also the record label and the publishing company who are culpable in the lack of correct acknowledgement.

srfc said:
They approached McGoohan to use the prisoner as well. You would wonder if they approached every work of art that inspired a Maiden song? Potential minefield there, there's loads of Maiden songs based on someone elses work.
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Forostar said:
"Based on" is something. Using/taking/copying is something else.
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I agree with Foro here. Maiden didn't need permission to write a song about Frank Herbert's fictional universe (much of the lyrics of 'To Tame A Land' are characters/locations etc. from Dune) but they did need permission to name the song after the book (because apparently Frank Herbert owns the word 'dune'). Plenty of bands have written music about their favourite novels and films and there hasn't been any legal issue arising from it. Blind Guardian, for example, wrote an entire album based on half of a Tolkein tome and there were no problems with it. The Tolkein estate keeps a notoriously tight grip on its possessions. I went to a Terry Pratchett exhibit last year in which there is a letter from Tolkein himself to a young Terry Pratchett. Visitors to the exhibit were allowed to take photos of absolutely anything in the building apart from this one letter because the Tolkein estate says it's not allowed.

There's a band I listen to called Thrice who have adapted poems to make songs, but on each occasion the album booklet always contains the phrase "Lyrics respectfully borrowed from whatever poem by whatever poet". I'm not sure how Sabaton's Metal tribute songs work out legally though - do they require permission to use song titles as lyrics? Does a band named after another artist's song (e.g. Funeral for a Friend) require permission to use that name? What a minefield this is!
 
Forostar said:
No no, that's not his voice. But McGoohan was the "owner" of The Prisoner series, so they needed his permission to use that spoken passage.
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The voices are indeed from Patrick McGoohan (number 6) and from another actor, who was playing number 2 (I cannot remember which one of them though).
 
Operations666 said:
Breaking news! Janick Gers is suing Iron Maiden for ripping off his White Spirit song "Midnight Chaser":

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By this measure quite a few people owe Janick money:
Everything in the above vid (which is certainly not an exhaustive list) is later than Midnight Chaser. Both of the following are earlier though, and Janick is known to be a fan of both these guitarists:
How similar is too similar? There's a reason why the fine line between influence and plagiarism tends to be drawn by the courts ...
 
Let's hope the estate of Frank Herbert don't get a copy of this lp from Portugal
 

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