Entertainment Lawsuit & Legal Controversies ("Julie Taymor & Joe Satriani")

In the music entertainment business, I’ve realized that there different things that you need to prepare yourself for. The main one that stood out for me, are the amounts of lawsuits that plague the music industry. I took the opportunity of reading two articles that spoke about plagiarism of music, and the other one talked about receiving royalties and respect for any of the creations or ideas that have been put together.

Julie Taymor was the director for the Broadway musical Spiderman: Turn off the Dark. This young lady decided that she wanted to sue Michael Cohl’s and 8 legged Production company for not paying her the money that she deserved for the creative ideas that she left them come with. Michael Cohl’s stated that her ideas for the musical called for bad ratings in the first couple of weeks, and it also cause countless accidents on the set. He did admit to the fact that they made only minor changes to some of her ideas; but was not willing to own up to the fact that the foundation of the show was still based off of Julie Taymor’s ideas.

A guitarist by the name of Joe Satriani is suing a well-known band by the name of Coldplay for stealing his song. The songs that are in question are as follows;

Joe Satriani-”If I could Fly”

Coldplay-”Viva La Vida”

I took the liberty of listening to both of these songs, and I must honestly say that they are very similar, just played in different keys; but the melody is the same like wise the tempo.

After reading these articles, I believe that Julie Taymor should receive the 500,000.00 that she is suing for. Regardless of the fact that she was terminated, the production company needs to be reminded of the fact that with out her laying the foundation of the show with her ideas and creativity, they would not have been able to make any profit from it. In respect to Joe Satriani, if I was an individual that did not know anything about music, I could have been oblivious to the exact changes and raises in both songs. Coldplay has been reaping the benefits of this song for quite sometime now. So in the end I believe that he should be paid for this song.