The law is a mess, but people have got to know what it says and stick to it. The law says that you can only use someone else's work to make money for you if you have their permission. That seems eminently reasonable, and I say this as someone who has been ripped off in my other life as an artist - someone in Switzerland thought they could print my drawings on T-shirts without asking first. I had to disabuse them of that notion. There has to be a copyright law to stop people making money for nothing - hey, thats a good title!

The law says that the whole work does not have to be copied, just a significant part. Half the tune is significant. The law also says it does not have to an exact copy - it just has the pass the "recognisable" test - ie does a jury think it has been copied? The law says everyone can sing Kookaburra to their hearts content - what they cannot do is sell recordings of it. The parody argument is the one I would have gone hardest on in court, but I would still expect to lose on this. But I think this is so close that an appeal might well be won, and I also think that damages should not be high - what damage to "Kookaburra" has been done? And I love Warren's idea of freeing the tune.