Some years ago, our friend Jonathan Coulton (I love being able to put those four words together) did
a magnificent cover of Sir Mix-A-Lot's "
Baby Got Back". The arrangement is... distinctive, especially contrasted with the original song.
Apparently, next Thursday, JoCo's exact same arrangement will show up in
an episode of Glee.
Also apparently,
they didn't ask JoCo. (Scroll down in comments; a number of online news sources have picked up on the story, including Wired, Wonkette, and the Onion AV Club.)
Obviously, JoCo doesn't own the song -- but he does own the arrangement, and that ownership is subject to protection by copyright. If it were, oh, I don't know, me doing JoCo's version, and selling it for download or putting it on a CD, I'd, y'know, ask first, because JoCo's version has been in the wild for several years and it's pretty well known in geek circles, and because it's The Thing To Do. At the absolute minimum, I'd mention the guy.
This is going on frickin' Glee. Worldwide TV. CDs. DVDs. Karaoke games. It'd be nice to make sure the guy who came up with that arrangement and melody got some notoriety from it.
Not to mention cash. This is Fox, after all.
This entry was originally posted at
http://filkertom.dreamwidth.org/1595754.html. You may comment there or here, although LJ tends to have a livelier conversation at this time.