Toot toot, all aboard the sacrilege train

[spatch]

<Angstrom> Copyright case from 1923.
<chuk> Yeah?
<Angstrom> The one that established that four notes is grounds for copyright
           infringement based on similarity
<Angstrom> "The song "Yes! We have no bananas!", first published on March 23,
           1923 (putting it under perpetual copyright on the installment
           plan), has a quite interesting legal history. As soon as it was
           published, George Frideric Handel's American publisher filed a
           copyright infringement lawsuit against songwriters Frank Silver et
           al. for copying four notes from the "Hallelujah Chorus" of Messiah
           and won, taking some of the profits."
<chuk> Wow.
<Angstrom> "The important part about that case is that it set a legal
           precedent that matching even four notes can easily be enough to
           establish that two songs are substantially similar."
<Spatch> yes, we have no messiah
<Spatch> we've got buddhas and krishnas, vishnus and gurus
<Spatch> and all kinds of saints, and say
<Spatch> we have an old fashioned stigmata
<Angstrom> I smell filk
<Spatch> (something that rhymes with stigmata)
<Spatch> but yes, we have no messiah, we have no messiah to-day
<Angstrom> (pinata?)
<Spatch> virgin mary pinata!
<Skatie> I'm just waiting for lightning to strike Spatch.