Earlier this week our friend Dan over at Red Sox Monster told us about a lawsuit involving Bart Steele of Chelsea, MA in which he was suing Bon Jovi to the tune of $400 billion dollars for stealing his work.

The song in question is the one that TBS is overplaying titled “I Love This Town.” Steele says the song closely mirrors his 2004 song which was an ode to the Red Sox “(Man I Really) Love This Team.” Dan has the details about the songs and also has the background of it as well.

The reason I bring this up is that I was contacted earlier today by Steele himself and he wanted to convey the message that he is not actually directly suing Bon Jovi, the main defendant in the case is Turner Broadcasting Systems. Bon Jovi and the others named are merely co-defendants.

He has been speaking out about this at his blog over at Myspace.com and here is the latest blog post about what is really going on with this lawsuit after the jump.

Let’s set the record straight folks, I’ve liked Bon Jovi since 1985

The media has spun it such that I said Bon Jovi stole my song or lyrics…this is simply not true . The media does this to create a ‘story’, I never accused Bon Jovi of stealing lyrics or anything. I’ve been a fan for a long time which is also why this whole situation stinks. I only wanted fair credit and compensation for my work. Unfortunately, I’ve spent my past year learning the in’s and out’s of copyright laws…and they are very VAGUE!!!

Here are a few things you need to understand…copyright law is confusing, complicated, and outdated.

1) Confusing: The issue in this case is not whether both songs sound exactly alike. The issue is whether the whole advertisement (visual images and BJ soundtrack) is derived from my original song or my derivative version.

2) Complicated: There is no clear standard that decides when one artists’ work is so similar to an earlier work that it infringes on that first artist’s work. Rather, the law considers the ‘total concept and feel’ of both works, as well as musical and lyrical similarities. Here we have the added complication of video images suggested by my lyrics and music.

3) Outdated: Using an unknown artist’s work a s a ‘temp track’ to be revised by an established artist has become common practice. Because computers make it so easy to change music, the damage is done (and the derivative version recorded) before anyone notices that they did not start from scratch. This practice usually goes beneath the radar of copyright law…but it does violate the laws protecting an artist’s rights to create (change) and control derivative works.

Again, BJ was most likely used by corporate america and did NOT steal anything. So don’t keep implying that I said that. The most likely scenario is that TBS liked my song and concept of a baseball playoff anthem, made a video to my original song, and thought it would be the perfect medium to ‘deliver their message’. They hired BJ to deliver that message (cause who the hell am I to sell TBS/MLB to the world???). The problem here is that they did not have the right to give BJ the right to do their derivative version of my song, nor to redo the song for commercial purposes. Thus if they gave BJ permission to redo my song, and/or claim they had the rights to it, BJ might be a victim too (they might have used him if they didn’t explain it was an advertisement…rather than just a ‘baseball song’) I am not abusing the court system here. I never wanted to file a lawsuit. I have tried everything else without success…read the letters I sent BJ’s peep’s. To all his fans that have berated me for not solely going after TBS, why don’t you also send him a message to shake my hand and work it out instead. If you read my complaint, I have tried everything to avoid legal action…yet all I received back was stonewalling and threats. The $400 billion number is for ‘wilful’ infringement which is how all the parties seem to have behaved. Innocent infringement in this case is close to $1 billion…I’d like to believe all the parties are innocent, but they have not acted as such. I am more than willing to be reasonable and settle this case out of court but have never had that option…thus here we are today. Please read the case carefully before assuming this is against Bon Jovi…the case is against Turner Broadcasting Systems, BJ and many others are just unfortunate codefendants!!!

Sincerely,
Bart Steele

Many thanks to Bart Steele for giving me permission to use the blog post. Be sure to check out the other blog posts as well to understand the situation better.

On a not so serious note, I wonder if he should add in Ernie Johnson, Dennis Eckersley, Harold Reynolds and Cal Ripken Jr. for their awful rendition.