It's interesting to look at some examples of legal cases involving violations of copyright in art and in popular songs (you might be surprised at how famous some of the songs are).
graphic design
Musical Plagiarism at Wikipedia
or try some Google searches, such as
plagiarism songs
or
plagiarism Bollywood
Below is a collection of links I put together last year on the topic of copyright violations. I haven't checked all of them yet this year.
- Timbaland
Avril Lavigne (she fights back)
Madonna (she lost)
Michael Jackson 1
Michael Jackson 2
Michael Jackson 3
Robbie Williams
"How Deep Is Your Love" (The BeeGees)
Celine Dion
"My Sweet Lord" (George Harrison)
"Chronicles of Plagiarism in Indian Film Music" - Other cases of allegedly plagiarized pop songs:
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=plagiarism+song&btnG=Search&meta=
Mahalo.com - The article on plagiarism at Wikipedia has examples at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism - Columbia Law Library Music Plagiarism Project provides descriptions of many cases of lawsuits involving alleged copyright infringement (not all the complainants won) --
http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/law/library/song.html - People have posted YouTube files showing similarities between songs (not all of them have gone to court)--
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryf0aG0X73g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFdtntKPDYk
Do you agree they're copies? - How to avoid plagiarism in music (video)
- Writers and publishers in Canada tried to sue Staples for copyright infringment for allowing the public to use their photocopying services without controling what they were copying --
http://www.thestar.com/article/276793
