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Men Vs Kookaburra
Late last year the court found the song's iconic flute riff was unmistakably lifted from the 1934 children's song 'Kookaburra Sits In The Old Gumtree', and ordered both the band and EMI to cough up 5 per cent of royalties to the song's current copyright owner Larrikin Music.
EMI appealed against that decision, arguing that at most, the riff was a form of tribute; however, the three-judge appeal panel weren't having a bar* of that and ordered EMI to pay court costs for the appeal on top of the millions of dollars in royalties it already owes to Larrikin.
*Legal pun intended...sorry.
Source: ABC News 
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Artist Biography
Men at Work are an Australian rock band who achieved international success in the 1980s. They are the only Australian artists to have a simultaneous #1 album and #1 single in the United States. They achieved the same distinction of a simultaneous #1 album and #1 single in the United Kingdom. The group won the 1983 Grammy Award for Best New Artist, and have sold over 30 million albums worldwide.
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Comments
Shame on you Larrikin. A children's song written 83 years ago that should've been in the public domain 65 years ago becomes the latest weapon against the creative morphing of music in Australia. And it wasn't the main riff, but a portion of a bloody solo! What if the composers of La Marseillaise and God Save the Tsar sued Tchaikovsky for releasing the 1812 Overture?
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