They call her “Stella Thefty.”
Stella Lefkofsky, better known by her stage name, Stella Lefty, is the singer behind the viral song “Boston.” She has faced plagiarism accusations left and right, involving five songs, though no legal action has been taken. She did provide singer Noah Kahan retroactive songwriting credit for “Boston,” after some said it was a ripoff of Kahan’s song “Stick Season.”
Dotan Oliar is an expert on musical copyright at UVA’s School of Law. (Contributed photo)
Lefty is only the most recent pop songwriter to be hit with accusations of copying. Olivia Rodrigo, Katy Perry, Ed Sheeran and George Harrison have all faced similar claims. And musicians regularly borrow from each other, even “sampling” other songs in their work.
So when does borrowing cross the line into stealing? UVA Today talked to University of Virginia School of Law professor Dotan Oliar, an expert on creative intellectual property, to find out.
Q. How much of a song can a musician borrow before they need to give the original artist credit?
A. Legally, there’s no requirement to give credit. Credit is a social norm, something people feel there’s a need to do, but it is unrelated to copyright infringement. You need to get permission to use someone else’s work, but giving credit is a separate issue.
But how much can you use without getting permission? The fair use doctrine in the United States may allow others to borrow from another song in some circumstances, especially if the taking is relatively small, quantitatively and qualitatively; if it is done for a good purpose, such as educational and not-for-profit purposes; and when the taking does not create too much harm to the copyright owner (doesn’t rob them of income they deserve or would otherwise receive). But the law does not provide a clear guideline. It is what the judge or jury will ultimately think fair.
Q. Legally, how can you tell the difference between drawing influence from another musician and copying them?
A. The law provides four considerations to take into account, but does not tell you how to balance those exactly, and what to do if different factors point in opposing directions. The law does not concern itself specifically if you were influenced or not, only if you took too much.
You may have been influenced immensely by someone, but took very little from them, in which case it’s OK. Or you may have been influenced a tiny bit, but copied their whole song, in which case the use is infringing.
Let’s say you copied a few musical notes from another song, and that is a nontrivial amount of material taken. That is facially copyright infringement, so the defendant (the user) bears the burden to prove their use was fair.
Q. Does a copyright case against an artist become stronger the more money, streams or album sales they have?
A. These facts are not taken into consideration, at least on the face of the law. But they will be taken into account in the remedy phase – namely, if a court determines that A copied from B. The more valuable the taking, and the more harm it creates, the greater the money damages that A would have to pay B, all else equal.
There is another way in which fame may affect whether use is fair or not. Copyright law prohibits copying from others, but independent creation is perfectly OK. But courts don’t have any magic crystal ball to know whether A copied from B, or independently created the same (or substantially similar) song. So they use circumstantial evidence of similarity and access. The more A’s work is similar to B’s, and the more A had the ability to access B’s work, the higher the likelihood that the similarities between the two works are the result of copying.
Q. In the case of Stella Lefty, she has covers of some of the songs she’s accused of copying. Does that strengthen the claims of plagiarizing?
A. Covers are legit. Copyright law includes a statutory compulsory license, under which people can create legitimate “covers” of previously released songs, as long as they pay the statutorily set fee (which is about 10 cents for every copy of the song they sell). We would first have to check whether those covers were licensed or otherwise legit under the compulsory license.
