On Super Bowl Sunday, Glee, the high school television drama-turned musical, received more attention than it ever has in the media. Lea Michele sang “America the Beautiful,” to open the game, the Glee cast was featured in a Super Bowl Chevy commercial and the second half of the show’s season aired immediately following Green Bay’s victory.
While viewers of Glee might praise the show as a cheerful good time to be had by all, not too many have questioned the legality of the characters’ countless musical renditions, which cover classic medleys to the latest top-chart singles. Christina Mulligan, a visiting fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School, discussed the issue in a blog entitled, “Copyright: The Elephant in the Middle of Glee Club.”
According to Mulligan, on the show, the students of Glee Club have made imitations of Madonna’s Vogue music video and Olivia Newton-John’s video, Physical. In real life, such students could have been fined $150,000 or more. Whether it is an imitation video or a “mash-up,” a combination of two songs into one, Glee hasn’t ever suggested that there’s anything wrong with such “borrowing.”
A writer from Salon comments that while Mulligan’s point is well taken, Glee actually serves as a new strategic business model, generating millions of downloads of songs featured in any given episode. As reported in Ad Age, Glee’s producers indeed pay for publishing rights of the songs, but not performance rights.
Do you think Glee promotes copyright infringement or exemplifies the purpose of copyright—to share creative works?
