Sinister: re: tom tom club

[Keith Watson]

there's an advert on british tv at the moment which is all
about the value of words (it's for vodaphone) and most of
the text that flashes up on screen is taken from wordy
rapping hood (or whatever it's called). some of this text is
read out over the jingly music that's playing but the music
isn't the original stuff but something airy fairy. i wonder
if the ad agency actually credited / paid the tom tom club
for the words or whether they tried to pass it off as their
own work...

[Keith Watson]  
There's a number of things like this at the moment... The BT ad has a tune that's almost exactly like the intro to Blur's "The Universal" which I'll bet they haven't paid for (mind you, I'll bet Blur haven't shelled out loads of money to David Bowie for their current single!). About 10 years ago on "That's Life" there was a case where the woman who'd written "Didn't we have a lovely time the day we went to Bangor", which was a number 3 hit for Fiddler's Dram in 1979 (pop pickers) complained about not receiving any money from Anchor butter (Didn't we have a lovely day the time we ate some Anchor or something). So it's pretty commonplace, the problem is, the law doesn't actually penalise people for not volunteering payment, it just forces them to pay the just amount if they're taken to court, so they might as well try and get away with it.

Cheers,
	Keith.

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