Topic: My cousins legal opinion on Earthbound

From what I understand, it's the soundalike musical knockoffs of songs that is keeping Earthbound from being released. During dinner last night with my aunts, uncle, parents and cousins I brought the subject up to my cousin who was appointed a federal judge by President Bush in 2003. He told me that there really wouldn't be a case for any of the copyright holders because they didn't use the songs verbatim and the fact that they are very short looping segments. He also brought up a copyright case he had to study in law school in which a band sued WWF/E (the wrestling company) because of a sound alike song they used for one of their wrestlers which the WWF/E won because the song was considered an homage and not a copy. So there is precident.

I just thought everyone might like knowing that there is hope and if it is released or taken to court hopefully my cousin would be the judge lol

Would suck if you went to federal court and didn't get him.

May I ask what WWF theme was in question? Just curious

First of all, there are songs in there that are verbatim. Some use outright samples.

Secondly, what is believed to be the issue is not whether they'd win in court but whether they'd be taken to court. Going to court at this level, especially when it's potentially from multiple sources (not just the Beatles), is expensive whether you win or lose.

He didn't say, but the only one I can think of that would've been WWF was the Ultimate Warriors. Now if it had been WCW/NWA, I can think of a few dozen it could've been lol He's not a wrestling fan so it might have been a different company and just used WWF as the generic term for wrestling (like when someone says "You playing Nintendo?" even if you have a Playstation, Sega or Xbox)

@Adam Ahh, see I had been led to believe that they were just sound alikes, not samples. I've never played it so I had no idea. That is stupidity on a whole new level by Nintendo, especially for a company that went out of their way to keep pirating down by adding all of their "failsafes" over the years and sued Tengen/Atari for developing a workaround during the NES days.

Diamond Dallas Page's theme comes to mind but that was WCW. I can't think of any old WWF themes that sound like a rip-off of popular music. Most of the older WWF themes were done by Jim Johnston. In fact the WWF changed Ric Flair's theme in 1991 just so it would not sound exactly like 2001 Space Odyssey theme.

That's why I think he meant NWA/WCW. All of the themes back then used popular songs as their basis, but changed them so they weren't copies.

The Ultimate Warrior theme was a riff from Black Sabbaths "Paranoid" and another song (I want to say Heart or Joan Jett) but I can't remember it right now. Johnston talks about it on one of the WWE DVDs I have.

There's a whole lot of past wrestler themes that are soundalikes, especially in 90s era WCW (DDP, Raven, one of Jericho's, one of Jarrett's). The classic nWo theme was full of samples as well.

@Tony: Flair's theme is "Also Sprach Zarathustra" by Richard Strauss, not the "2001 Space Odyssey theme". Yes, the film used it, but the piece has been around since the 1890s. The WWF changed his theme slightly to either avoid international problems (i am fairly certain the piece is public domain at this point in the US and Canada, but other countries' laws vary of course) or just to be able to copyright it themselves.

Ninty may be able to win an action brought against them, pointing to things like fair use, parody or other defenses to infringement, but much like Adam said, it would still cost Ninty some hefty money if they would have to respond to the suit period. It's simply not worth it to them in a cost-benefit analysis.

Thank you. I'm glad at least one other person here knows that.

Also, what are these "songs" we're talking about? I've never played much of Earthbound, so I don't really know what is keeping it from being released.

@grenworthshero
I'm not tremendously versed in Earthbound, but from what i understand some of the music riffs or arrangements are from Beatles songs (among others). The rightholdhers for the Beatles catalog are VERY protective of their copyrights and it is quite likely that, especially given that they are now directly involved in the gaming arena via Beatles:Rock Band, there would be litiigtion brought.

Oh, and thanks, i couldn't let the Strauss thing go; it is a common mistake/misperception that i try to correct whenever it pops up in conversation (which is actually more often than one would think). Plus, since i studied Nietzche quite a bit in college, and Nietzche's book of the same title was the inspiration for Strauss's piece, my Existential Philosophy professor (who sadly passed away a few years back) would haunt me to no end.

Can someone please give me a link to an earthbound song that sounds like a beatles song. I never even noticed any music comparisons.

Welp, all I can say to any of this is SELF HIGH FIVE.... badabadabadadada

Maybe Ric Flair's theme is in Earthbound

Did a quick Google search and found this:

http://earthboundcentral.com/2009/02/earthbound-legal-issues/

To summarise:

Dungeon Man = Sgt. Pepper's (Beatles)
Hotel music = El Bimbo
Hotel "Waking Up" song = Good Morning Good Morning (Beatles)
Lost Underworld = All You Need Is Love (Beatles)
The song that plays when naming your character = Monty Python's Flying Circus
Jackie's Cafe = Our Gang/Little Rascals + The Star-Spangled Banner
Moonside = "Keep on Laughin'" (Ric Ocasek)
New Age Retro Hippie = Johnny B. Goode (Chuck Berry)
One battle theme sounds like Tequila by The Champs
Second Runaway Five song = The Changeling (The Doors)
Sky Runner = Won't Get Fooled Again (The Who)
The Drugstore song = Dallas Rag
Belch's Factory = Welcome to the Machine (Pink Floyd)

Wow, that's a lot more than I originally thought there was.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=earthbound+beatle...

Okay. Thanks

There's used to be a good video with all the best known songs to come from pre-written material. Either my Youtube-searching skills have gone seriously downhill or it was for some reason removed. Odd.

In the ultimate act of irony, Nintendo flagged the video for copyright infringement (not really, but that would be hilarious)

Thank you very much for the information. However, I do have a question. Did your cousin study the so-called music similarity present in Earthbound?

@Aenaida: Dallas Rag should be in public domain now, since the song was created in 1929 (I think). Given that they haven't renewed the copyright, we shouldn't have to worry about it.