I am writing this in response to Marc Albert’s column entitled “Music scams might be the results of politics.” I applaud his efforts to denounce the fraud duo Milli Vanilli, but I question the manner in which he does so.

In the article he claims Billy Joel did not credit his use of a Beethoven sonata in the song “This Night.” This is simply not true, as it is clearly mentioned inside the album’s cover—”This Night” by L.V. Beethoven.

He also complains that commonplace music borrowing is wrong, in fact every composer ever to have lived has borrowed a countless number of tunes from others.

Beethoven took from Hadyn and Mozart, Stravinsky took from Mussorgsky and Ravel, and even Sting has borrowed from Prokofiev.

The fact that one song may sound like another is just a way of life for musicians. There are only so many ways to play twelve notes!

This is not to say I support plagiarism, for I do not. The fact is that plagiarism exists only when an individual knowingly takes ideas from another, chooses not to acknowledge them, and claims them for his or her own.

And “unintentional plagiarism” is no factor here. Every song, if analyzed, could be claimed to be using “unintentional plagiarism” to some extent.

Even John Cage’s 4:33, for stealing the silent bars of every other piece written.(John Cage’s 4:33 is 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence).

And anyhow Milli Vanilli is not about music, which half of the column is based on.

They did not plagiarize music in the compositional sense. They plagiarized in the sense of saying they sang the songs when in fact they did not.

Most importantly, I believe the column centered on the wrong arguments of why the Milli Vanilli scam took place.

Political corruption might have been an influential factor, but I believe greed for money and the fact that nowadays we have more of a society of guiltless consciences were much more dominant reasons.

Mitchell A. Renner

Freshman

Music