Lotte Kestner accusing ND of plagiarizing her cover of 'True Faith' for the TLOU2 CGI Trailer (update: ND acknowledge the inspiration, see threadmark)
- Thread starter Deleted member 1589
- Start date
I don't think she has any chance of disputing something like this in court. Did she payTrue Faith for the rights for her cover? It's a cover, of a cover. It would be different if ND had used her song directly on the trailer.
That being said, if I were in charge of ND I would throw some money her way in recognition and that would be that.
There's some irony to the situation though.
That being said, if I were in charge of ND I would throw some money her way in recognition and that would be that.
There's some irony to the situation though.
Read the thread, she has no case. Maybe I should record myself humming My Heart Will Go On so I can sue people who cover it.
By the way, you can't retroactively win copyright claims lol. She either has the copyright or she doesn't and she doesn't because you can't copyright a cover of someone else's work. Otherwise there would be no covers of anything.
Yeah cover Copyrights are tricky. It's clearly based on her cover of the song. Legally, all she could hope for with all the luck in the world is a mention saying it's been "inspired by" her version in the ad and that would give her exposure. She could win her case and get compensation based on hypothetical streams but that wouldn't be worth it, at all. (Like, hey here's your 1000$ for 10 million streams, I hope it covers your legal fees)
The humming is an original melody. That melody is in the trailer.
I don't think you're making the point you think you're making. She's not entitled to anything as she didn't write the song. Her version is stylistically different to the original, but you can't copyright style, you can only copyright substance which in the case of pop songs is generally defined by the top-line (melody) and lyrics.
Johnny Cash wouldn't be entitled to any royalties from someone covering 'Hurt' either, even in his style, unless he had his name added to the songwriting credits which would have had to have been permitted by and negotiated with NIN anyway.
As I understand it, even if she'd changed the chord progression, which she hasn't, that would still come under arrangement.
Now, if the creators of the trailer were indeed inspired by her cover, then she definitely should get a credit or a nod out of respect for that inspiration, but she's really not entitled to anything more.
Does she have a copyright or not? That's the only thing that matters, it can't be created through a twitter call out.
I haven't listened to all three versions in a row yet but could it be argued that the "original" part of the first cover was an adaptation of the instrumental lead (keyboard solo?) in the original and another musician doing a cover could easily have the same idea independently?
All this aside, are we really thinking that whoever made this particular cover was actually familiar with her specific cover? I mean, this is hardly some huge artist with a lot of exposure. I imagine most people in this thread had literally never heard of her before this post.
As others have said, slow acoustic covers of songs are plentiful to say the least. This is not an original or unique idea such that I can see much argument for a clear-cut "someone heard this and copied it" argument.
As others have said, slow acoustic covers of songs are plentiful to say the least. This is not an original or unique idea such that I can see much argument for a clear-cut "someone heard this and copied it" argument.
This is actually what I'm getting too (I think I hear some of the notes of the humming in the instrumentation in the original) but I'm not 100% sure. For what it's worth, the chord progression didn't change much in Lotte's version, and the melody of her humming/vocal freestyling is consistent with that which is why I am inclined to think is coincidental.
It seems so Puffy, at least I don't think I've heard it before in any other version of that song. You have an absurd amount of possibilities when creating new melodies, but the trailer song came up with an almost exact melody line as her cover. And a melody line that was not in the original version whatsoever. Maybe there's a version that both are basing off in terms of that melody line? Well maybe, but doesn't seem to be the case, at least until now.
The cover having a similar vibe or arrangement/instrumentation seems ok to me, it happens, in this context it's just the cherry on top of it all.
i didn't knew she was popular, there are plenty of covers that are not licensed because people don't care and they are not well known musicians.
You don't actively have to do anything to copyright something. You either have copyright on a piece of work or you don't.
The humming is an original melody but it's also like one bar repeated four times in the middle eight. It lasts 20 seconds. When they say that a song is (legally) made up of lyrics and melody this is very much on the bottom end of what is considered a melody. It's not a defining part of the song. I would say it's equivilant to a guitar solo but it's not even that really. It's one little part repeated four times. It's additive to the orginal work. It's not enough to give you any kind of rights to the songwriting.
'Humming' could be enough to get you songwriting credit on a piece of work. If you were the guitarist in the band and you hummed a melody line that became the hook or the main part of the song. Think of Peter, Bjorn and John's 'Young Folks' that has a whistled melody line as the main hook of the song. Bet your life whoever wrote that has a chunk of the songwriting credit. Assuming for a moment that it wasn't the same as the verse vocal melody, it'd still be enough to be published as a songwriter because it's literally the hook.
Adding a short, hummed bit to the middle eight of a cover is a lot different... You'd have to convince a judge that the humming was vital to the song and not just an addition or an adaptation. It's so short and doesn't make up any other part of the song as a composition. You're not gonna get any traction with that.
Adding humming in an acoustic cover of a song is pretty standard thing. She may have some kind of case they took heavy inspiration from her version tho.
To be fair you wouldn't necessarily have to be familiar with it in the first place. If their starting point was that they wanted a melancholic acoustic version of True Faith (which it probably was as it's such a trope at the moment in marketing and advertising) they could have just searched for covers on youtube for inspiration and discovered it that way.
Yeah, sucks most of the time. Wonder Woman had a pretty amazing use of Blue Monday though.
Doesn't she have to register the song on some kind of authority? Here on Brazil we need to register songs on the National Library to have copyright, iirc. While I think she deserves recognition, I don't think she has legal rights. I may be wrong, tho, I don't know US law.
Gonna quote myself for this page since people still seem to be having trouble. The person who's owed money here is the original artist, who Sony has likely paid a licensing fee (for the purpose of using the song).
People make and sell covers of other peoples' songs pretty freely in this country, but those are derivative works--works which the original artists have a right to be paid for. Making a cover without a license, even a good one, is basically fanart.
Perhaps she bought a license to perform the song, but I think it's a long shot that she's entitled to something for this.
I have not listened to the music, I assume they are very similar, and it would be nice of them to say "inspired by Lotte" to acknowledge her, but the painful truth is that acknowledging that connection probably seems risky to their legal team.
Her husband posted on Reddit that she didn't copyright it.
www.reddit.com
Reddit - Dive into anything
www.reddit.com
With the last of us part 2 it's actually truer to game than something like gear's mad world. Ellie is singing it, and by all indications she'll be singing in the game.
I haven't seen the trailer but at most, assuming the trailer ends with 'Song: New Order' then they could add 'Arrangement: Lotte Kestner' I guess. Other than that I don't see what else she could ask for. Even then if she wasn't involved in the recording and directing of the performance it seems a stretch to me. I know nothing of course. I can see why she might be upset but it's not illegal to make someone upset I don't think but again, I know nothing.
So nothing will happen, I guess.Her husband posted on Reddit that she didn't copyright it.
Reddit - Dive into anything
Her husband posted on Reddit that she didn't copyright it.
Reddit - Dive into anything
Again, it's not that she 'didn't' and more that she can't. She can't copywrite the song writing because it's not her song, it's New Order's.
What she's doing on social media (and what her husband tried to do on that Reddit post before it got removed) is exactly what they should be doing - trying to get some recognition that the trailer nicked a bit that she did work on herself. That's fair game and it sucks for them that it's been lifted with no credit.
But they also clearly know that they can't do anything legally. It's fans that are jumping to conclusions of suing people or whatnot. They're not suggesting that and they're probably not going to do that as it'd go nowhere. They're just asking Naughty Dog/Sony, personally, to make it right. Which I think is probably fair.
Didn't Naughty Dog already have a plagiarism snafu with some concept art from Assassins Creed or something?
A cover of a cover is pretty fucked up though without crediting and contacting, that would be the minimal anyone would expect. Especially so when it's not a direct 1:1 cover and has unique parts added in.
Last edited:
I know they had stolen someones copyrighted map for the first last of us that ended up in the game.
And a subway map in TLOU. I assume it's due to the sheer number of assets they use and maybe outsourcing processes? I don't remember how those other incidents were explained by ND.
Yeah, that was in Uncharted 4. They also had a plagiarism SNAFU in the first TLOU with a subway map.
Hey Grimmy I've been listening to the original song again and again this morning, but I don't see any similarities with the vocal melody of the original one, neither in any other sub melodies in the instrumentation, which part are you referring to? Maybe I missed it.
Of course he knows, he's just too busy being ND's lawyer. There are a lot of them for the looks of it. Maybe she doesn't want money, just recognition, either way i would love to see a well known company using an asset from Uncharted or any other exclusive game, just to see if the reactions would be the same.
Because it looks to me, that now the usage of an asset from another game is totally accepted as long as the game is good.
For a game people need to create a lot of assets. I am pretty sure that nearly the entire house at the epilogue of Uncharted 4 is filled with objects/models based on real world objects.
For example the blue thing to the right of the laundry box I know for a fact is from IKEA.
ROSKUG bord med hjul (50227973) - anmeldelser, prissammenligning
ROSKUG bord med hjul (50227973) - anmeldelser, prissammenligning
You can do this for any realistic game btw, name one and I will give you at least 1 object
Seems you are right and I owe you an apology, I was wrong. I just went through all the Johnny Cash songs that you can get a mechanical license of (which is all of them) and you are indeed correct, Hurt was not on there as the mechanical license is automatically granted by the original author.
Good on you for actually researching and admitting a mistake. That's super rare these days. These boards would be so much better if everyone acted that way.
Mad World trailer is amazing, and also 15 years ago, when it wasn't done to death.
Last edited:
Toxic
I missed this, do you have a link?
For real. This trend started 15 freaking years ago with Gears of War. It's so played out at this point.
Reading through this thread, it's sounding like she doesn't have a case and the least Sony/ND could do for doing a cover of her cover is credit her. Should hopefully be easy enough for them. Maybe reupload the trailer crediting her? Or at least put it in the description.