"Intellectual Property" WTF ...

I'm a huge Tom Petty fan. I've never heard of Sam Smith. And frankly I'm embarrassed for Petty and Jeff Lynne that they would even try to pull this kind of thing and surprised that Smith would just roll over for it.

The piece says that Petty and Lynne "noticed a likeness" between Smith's "Stay With Me" and Petty/Lynne's "I Won't Back Down."

If there's a likeness, it must take the original songwriters to detect it. I guess if I strain really hard I can detect a very slight melodic resemblance in the chorus. But I do have to strain really hard. Otherwise, it's one really good song from circa 1990 and one completely unremarkable tune from ... well, some time recently, I guess. But just because it's completely unremarkable doesn't mean he owes royalties to the authors of a song it bears almost no discernible resemblance to even if the whole idea of "intellectual property" wasn't complete bullshit.

What do you think?

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