Music: Which Cultures are Known for Plagiarism?

Plagiarism is merely theft, it is the worst kind of stealing where a person takes the intellectual property/ ideas of another person and tries to pass them as his own, in other words it is simply cheating on oneself and others. Plagiarism occurs in many fields such as writing, technology, play production, architecture and many others… But in this essay we are going to focus on plagiarism in music , specially that in the Arab world people are still ignorant of such kind of plagiarism, and there is barley any effective law that protects musicians from plagiarism. So how can a musician “quote” or use a musical part without plagiarizing it, and which cultures are known for plagiarism?

To answer the first part of question, musicians can indeed use music produced by other without falling in the trap of plagiarism, this happens through “SAMPLING”. Sampling

Is when a musician takes a portion of a sound record where he/she reuses it as a sound record or an instrument in a different piece, after 1980 the act of sampling was organized threw laws and regulations where the musician must take permission or buy the rights of the piece from the original composer. On the other hand plagiarism occurs when the musician uses the recorded and represents it has his own original work.

Although in most first world countries music plagiarism is illegal there is an exception

And this is in jazz genre; jazz musicians specially when improvising music pieces aren’t accused of plagiarism if it occurs, because it is not intentional. And as well some Arabic legends were accused of mistakably plagiarism while performing and improvised live show such as Mohammad Abed AL-Wahab.

Most people accuse contemporary musicians of plagiarism and acc...

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...ies, government, or Politian’s. Thus proofing againg that in Lebanon and sadly there is no laws protecting music.

Moreover, many Lebanese singers have adopting a tradition of stealing Turkish music and one of those singers non other then Wael Kfoury where most of his songs are based on the music of the Turkish singer Ibrahim Tatlises , one of the songs was “ Tabki Al Touyour 2006” and was based on “Selam Olsun 1999”. Another Arab singer that stole music is Ruby her song “Michit Wara E7sasy” was taken from turkisg song “Ezel” performed by Kim Zerar.

Finally, Like other creative works, music is protected by copyright laws in many countries as well as by the international Berne Convention: international agreement governing copyright for artistic and literal works, 1886 , but the question lies when is it the time to fully apply those laws in the Arab world ?