http://www.iptrademarkattorney.com/2012/04/copyright-song-black-eyed-peas-court-infringe-i-gotta-feeling-destroyed-evidence-pringle-spoliation.html

bryan pringle - take a dive (1999)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7drHJ71rIw&t=0m17s

black eyed peas - i gotta feeling (2009)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSD4vsh1zDA

they changed one note and used the exact same sound, yet the copyright courts felt "the two songs are not substantially similar".

lol.

just like suni/timbaland, rick ross/william roberts, the riaa obviously has these courts bought and paid for.

be careful what you publish online, if somebody famous steals it - you won't have any legal recourse.

And he lost partly on some technicality shit.

But apart from that, clearly the BEP stole the harmony and rhythm (comping chords), but the melody of the BEP song is original. Did someone mention on here, or did I read somewhere else, that chordal structure doesn't fall under copyright laws, just, or mainly, melody? Please correct me if I'm wrong on that.

the copyright he filed in 1998 for the song was for some reason invalid.
so the onus switched to him producing his hard drives from 1998.

how many people would be able to produce a working hard drive from 1998 if legally prompted to do so?

so, he produced disc image files that apparently validated his backdates in some way but no completed track and no full hard drive.

it reads as if he remade the track with the files that bore the 1990's modified dates to show the song in it's completed state, but that wasn't good enough for the court.

i mean the guitar twang is the exact same sound playing the exact same notes at an alike tempo.
you'd be hard pressed to produce a more clear-cut case of plagiarism.
if there was a physical hard copy of the song that bore a 1999 production date, that should be all that's necessary to prove his case imo.