Plagiarism in music and the use of AI
Gilbert Montagné's famous song "On va s'aimer" is plagiarised! This is the outcome of a dispute spanning over a decade against the right holders of Gianni Nazzaro's song "Une Fille de France".
The news broke out yesterday and made clear that:
🎼 33 notes out of 40 of Nazzaro's refrain were copied into Montagné's refrain. Copyright is infringed when the characterising elements of one work are reproduced in another work. The court considered that the refrain is the "heart of a song", repeated 11 times, and, therefore, the plagiarism was substantial.
💡 Plagiarism requires proof that the infringer knew about the original song based on which the infringing song was made. In this case, the same person wrote the lyrics to both songs. So it was easy to make the connection.
🖥️ Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to compare two songs and determine the extent of the parts taken over. Some platforms have already integrated such tools to detect plagiarism, such as Spotify's "Plagiarism Risk Detector and Interface". Nonetheless, we need human beings to take into account non-musical factors (such as the one above) and make the final assessment.
It was a pleasure to speak about this case on RTS (Radio Télévision Suisse) national television and radio on 16 December 2024.
Watch the 19:30 evening news programme here: https://www.rts.ch/play/tv/-/video/-?urn=urn:rts:video:15357961
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