As reported last year, Australian band Men At Work launched an appeal against a judgement requiring them to pay 5% of the royalties on their song “Down Under”. The appeal was dismissed:
Australia’s Federal Court upheld the decision which stated part of the song’s melody came from the tune Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree.
Record label EMI argued the writers did not plagiarise because the inclusion of two bars from the tune was a tribute.
The music company has also been ordered to pay costs.
The latest decision clears the way for Larrikin Music, the copyright owners for Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree, to claim millions of dollars in unpaid royalties from Down Under writers Colin Hay and Ron Strykert.
The original judgement was clearly insane: it assessed the damages at up to 60% of the profits earned by the band on that song (for two bars of a three-minute song). The revised judgement was much more proportional: 5%.
The most likely megaquake on the West Coast would be much further north — in fact, 50 miles off the coast between Cape Mendocino in northern California and Vancouver Island in southern British Columbia. This 680-mile strip of seabed is home to the Cascadia subduction zone, where oceanic crust known as the Juan de Fuca plate is forced under the ancient North American plate that forms the continent. For much of its length, the two sides of this huge subduction zone are locked together, accumulating stresses that are capable of triggering megaquakes in excess of magnitude 9.0 when they eventually slip. As such, Cascadia is more than a match for anything off the coast of Japan.
