"Stairway To Heaven" Plagarism court case

rwwear " ... When Weird Al does a parody he has to get permission from the person or company that owns the rights to the song. As in "Like a Surgeon" he had to get permission from Madonna."

Sorry, but you're mistaken. While you may be correct that Weird Al works closely with the artists he parodies, he’s under no legal obligation to do so. In the U.S., parody and satire are protected under the Fair Use provision of copyright law. The definitive case on this was 2 Live Crew’s treatment of "Oh Pretty Woman." See Acuff-Rose Music v. Campbell, which was decided by the Supreme Court.

To clarify me earlier post, I'm a big LZ fan and the fact that they have a history of stealing others' material is just some baggage that come along with the group.  Remember what Joe E. Brown says at the end of "Some Like It Hot"!

Tostadosunidos, you may very well be correct.  I just think some attorneys are in there's blood in water shark mode and we're going to see more lawsuits.

Bdp24, I don't disagree with your assessment of 60s British blues players in general, although I do have serious respect for Clapton, Peter Green and Mick Taylor as blues guitarists.  One of my favorite guitar solos of all time is JP on the Yardbird's "Smile On Me", but the song is straight rip-off of Howling Wolf.  But then again, Chester Burnett didn't really write "Sitting On Top Of the World".  Everybody steals.

Interestingly, I had created a random Spotify "radio" channel just a couple days ago and Taurus came on. I immediately thought to myself- what a Stairway to Heaven rip off. (I’d never heard it before). Then I thought- I wonder which one came first...

Then I saw this thread. I actually see some merit in the case. The songs are undeniably similar in some ways.

It wasn’t I who said the Brits play Blues "in the worst way", it was Sonny Boy Williamson! I myself like a fair number of them, if you include Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. Yeah, Clapton, Page, and Peter Green, but also Albert Lee (not a Blues player, but still), Dave Edmunds, Billy Bremmer, Richard Thompson, Danny Kirwin, Mark Knopfler, Chris Spedding (fantastic player!), plenty of others. Page, however, is not respected by his peers not only for the topic of this post, but for his guitar playing as well. Very, very sloppy (he was obviously Slash's role model ;-). And Plant’s "singing"? If you look in the dictionary for the definition of corny, "trying-too-hard-to-sound-soulful" singing, there should be a picture of Robert. Just God awful, the absolute worst-of-the-worst. Just my opinion of course, one shared by Sonny Boy Williamson.

Updated news:  Led Zeppelin Found NOT GUILTY!

http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/23/media/stairway-to-heaven-trial-verdict/index.html?adkey=bn