The 2007 dance-pop song "Do It" performed by Canadian singer-songwriter Nelly Furtado features elements sampled from "Acidjazzed Evening", a chiptune-style track composed by the Finnish demoscene artist Janne Suni.
[1][2] Timbaland, "Do It"'s producer, admitted to sampling Suni's work, but did not believe his usage constituted "stealing", calling the allegations "ridiculous".
The original track, titled "Acidjazzed Evening", is a chiptune-style, 4-channel Amiga module composed by Finnish demoscener Janne Suni (a.k.a.
[8] The song won first place in the Oldskool Music competition at Assembly 2000, a demoparty held in Helsinki, Finland, in 2000.
[4]The first legal action against Universal Finland was officially filed with Helsinki District Court in mid-August 2007, on behalf of Glenn R. Gallefoss.
[5] This device is a MIDI-controlled synthesizer based on the SID chip of the Commodore 64, and it is capable of playing back .sid files the way they would have sounded on the original hardware.
It has been speculated that Timbaland downloaded Gallefoss' version of the song from the High Voltage SID Collection[17] and used the SidStation for running it to the studio system.
[18][19] In January 2009, after a trial that included multiple expert and technical witnesses, a three-judge panel unanimously dismissed the plaintiff's case.
[citation needed] On December 17, 2008, Abbott also testified as a witness for the prosecution in the Helsinki court in Gallefoss's case against Universal Music Finland.
[30] The earliest Internet forum posts suggesting that "Do It" was based on "Acidjazzed Evening" date back to July 2006,[31] and according to the Finnish news portal eDome, "Suni and other demoscene hobbyists" already knew about it at this time.
[5] One of the first large media to react to the on-line controversy was the Finnish Broadcasting Company, which published a news item on the topic on January 14, 2007.
[33] On January 15, 2007, Finnish tabloids Ilta-Sanomat[34] and Iltalehti[35] as well as newspapers ITviikko[36] and DigiToday[37] also published articles about the suspected plagiarism.
On January 16, Finnish news portal eDome published an article about the case saying in the English summary that: It is beyond any doubt that Timothy "Timbaland" Mosley has directly copied large sections of Janne Suni’s songs, much more than any "fair use" would allow.
[5]The article also covered similar cases from the past and notified that both the competition and the prize ceremony "were witnessed by the 4,000 – 5,000 people at the event.
On January 17, the case was reported on briefly by the Rolling Stone website,[40] XXL Magazine,[41] and the popular German IT news portal Heise online.