Edit: eagle-eyed readers have noted this as a duplicate article. That's half-true; the suit against Run DMC has been known for a while, but the fact that music services have also been named is a new revelation.
[via DigitalMusicNews]
alternately titled, It's Tricky to sample The Knack
or
A case that's bad meaning bad, not bad meaning good
Apparently The Knack took twenty years to find out that Run DMC sampled "My Sharona" for their hit "It's Tricky" off their 1986 classic Raising Hell. In other news, K-Fed had no idea that he was sampling Thomas Dolby's "Blinded Me With Science" when he ... sampled Mobb Deep's "Got It Twisted".
That fiasco was tricky but amusing, since Mobb Deep actually licensed the track, while K-Fed just copped it and dropped it on MySpace. This case highlights the shaky ground of the still nascent digital music download industry; Yahoo, Amazon, RealNetworks, and Napster are all named as plaintiffs in the case along with Run DMC. Perhaps The Knack can take a page from the RIAA and sue the millions of folks that bought Raising Hell, or if they're hard up for cash, perhaps they can license "My Sharona" out for the next Guitar Hero.