Third Day of Quandry, Electra, 66th of Hagwinter, 524 M.E.

Brazilian samba composer Toninho Geraes is suing the British pop star Adele, claiming she plagiarized his song, Mulheres, in her song, Million Years Ago.

I don't know. I'm not a fan of Adele's and although I like samba, especially the tropicalia movement of the '70s, I'm unfamiliar with Toninho Geraes. But I don't think musicians should be sued even if their songs sound similar to earlier songs, or even if they incorporate lyrics from previous songs.

Look, I've heard the song Taurus by the band Spirit and of course I've heard Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven. Yes, the guitar intro to Stairway is the exact same riff, note for note, as used in Taurus, and Spirit once toured with Zeppelin and played that song. I believe (but certainly can't prove) that Zep heard the Spirit song and it creeped into their head, and when they sat down to write Stairway, the riff leaked out of their minds and into the song.

It happens. But that doesn't mean it's plagiarism. Writers use turns of phrases they've read in other books, and standup comics can't help but parrot jokes that got laughs for other comics. And painting and the visual arts . . don't get me started.

All art incorporates what came before it. Music is no exception. 

Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams were found guilty of copyright infringement for their song Blurred Lines after a jury ruled that it was too similar to Marvin Gaye's 1977 Got to Give It Up, even though the songs didn't share common lyrics or chord progressions, but because the jury felt the the latter felt too much like the former. If that's plagiarism, I hope that jury never listens to blues music.

Copyright is often abused, especially by big corporations. I have complete sympathy for the struggling musician who finds that someone else has taken their song, re-recorded it note for note and word for word and passed it off as their own. That's theft. Ditto the poor writers who find their novel in a bookstore after their publisher released it under a different name.

But if you can find the same or similar sentence in two different novels, that's not plagiarism, even if the second author is deliberately trying to sound like the first. That's homage, that's art. Same with music. It's tradition and it's genre. It's not plagiarism.

Back in the 1970s, the Brazilian samba musician Jorge Ben Jor wrote and recorded a song called Taj Mahal, with an extended "doo-doo-doo-doo-doo" sequence. You probably never heard it, but a year or two later, British pop star Rod Stewart recorded the same melody at the same temp with the same beat, but changed the "doo-doo-doo-doo-doo" to "Do you think I'm sexy?" and sold millions of copies. Ben Jor sued and Stewart settled. Whether or nor Stewart, already an established star, was deliberately trying to deny Ben Jor royalties by deceptively retitling his song I don't know, but by settling, Stewart as much as admitted, "Yeah, I copied that."

Copyright is big business. Don't get deceived to think that it's purpose is to protect the little guy. It's for corporations to disadvantage their competitors and ultimately monopolize their field.