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The Current Transcript for September 2, 2019

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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Sounds from Hong Kong protests.

LAURA LYNCH: Voices gathered in song, the latest sound of protest from Hong Kong, where today's students performed a hymn that's become an unofficial anthem of demonstrators to send a signal. They're not backing down, even after a weekend that saw violence escalate. First up, we'll head to the streets of Hong Kong to get the latest. After that.

VOICE: Our job as an artist is to deliver things that are equal parts nostalgic and futuristic, so we can push the whole art form forward. So it's a thin line. There's going to be a lot more of these cases I'm assuming.

LL: That is Kevvy, a Vancouver music producer who has worked with Carly Rae Jepsen, among others, talking about the fine line artist straddle in referencing the past without stealing from it. I'm Laura Lynch, your host for the next two months and this is The Current.

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Fired airline union head says staff are targets of censorship campaign over Hong Kong protests

Guests: Adrienne Arsenault, Rebecca Sy

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Scenes from protests in Hong Kong.

LL: Footage on social media shows Hong Kong police attacking protesters inside a metro station in Hong Kong on Saturday night. Protesters could be seen running from police on platforms and crouching inside trains, cowering as police hit them with batons and doused them with pepper spray. Police have defended their actions saying they had to stop all violent acts by protesters, which they said included vandalism and arson. 63 people were arrested this weekend alone, as clashes between protesters and put by police grew increasingly violent. CBC News senior correspondent Adrienne Arsenault is in Hong Kong today and she joins me now. Hello.

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: Hi there Laura.

LL: What are you seeing on the streets of Hong Kong today?

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: Well what an interesting day this is. September 2nd is supposed to be this Monday, the start of the school season. There was an expectation on the part of some Hong Kong lawmakers that well maybe this would be the end of it you know their kids go back to school. It's not what's happening. There are thousands of students out on the street. They're at school strike rallies. So high school and college level students at rallies across the city. Interestingly, these are sanctioned rallies, so they actually have permits for them. That they're on the streets at all after the violence of the weekend is incredible. There is a typhoon that is swirling through Hong Kong, that they're still standing in the streets for that, it is also very telling. Below ground, below the city you have the subway system. In some cases it's still in repair from what happened over the weekend where police and protesters rammed through it. But protesters are also still in the subways now, blocking some of the doors. Police are chasing them. There's a fair amount of damage, but by and large compared with what happened on the weekend, this is a fairly functional Hong Kong. Knock wood right now.

LL: OK well then let's talk about what happened on the weekend because I think the level of violence rose to somewhat unprecedented level. Tell me what happened over the course of the day on Saturday.

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: Well you have to go back a little bit one day before. There were a number of arrests of high profile people. This protest movement doesn't have the leaders persay. It's one of their great advantages, but there are some people who are prominent figures, popular figures and they were they were picked up. That made people really really mad. There was a protest that was planned for Saturday. The city said nope not going to happen. This is not going to happen. They cancelled it. But then people started thinking how are they going to find a way to communicate. There was interestingly a religious gathering that was allowed to happen on Saturday. So we went there Saturday morning and you could see in the in the bleachers at this sort of this soccer field mixed in with it with the devout were some of the protesters who were wearing their faces recovered and they're wearing hard hats and they were all in black and they were sort of welcomed into the fray we're mingling and we're saying you know we need to find somewhere where we can be safe but we don't actually feel safe. And even as we were speaking with people within moments police arrived holding up a great big yellow flag. And what happens here is that there are a series of flags that are raised by police and each one represents a warning or an escalation. And the yellow flag effectively says you are in defiance of an order. In other words something is coming. That that really alarmed people they did not expect that to happen at a at a religious gathering that was sanctioned. And then they started to move and then it's very hard to follow this from afar because there is no set plan for where a protest happens. They communicated encrypted apps some of the protesters will use games like pokey go to communicate with each other. And mark the spots where police are. This is a very organic thing that happens and you can turn a corner and suddenly there are thousands of people walking down the street and you really have no idea how they found themselves there. But they started gravitating towards the centre the seats of power marching past the the police headquarters shouting all sorts of insults at the police. Then they moved towards the legislative centre. And it's typical that when there's going to be tear gas it has happened at night usually. But it was different this week. And it started happening pretty quickly during the day. The police brought out the rubber bullets, the water cannons with the blue dye that marks the protesters, so they can arrest them. It got very ugly, very very quickly here.

LL: And then we've seen on social media and also in your television report from last night, this incredible scene in the subway of of police seeming to attack protesters. You met with one young woman who actually witnessed what was going on. So tell us what happened and what she said.

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: Well there are a couple versions of what happened and as you start to put them together, it seems like there was an altercation between passengers on the subway. So some of them were protesters some of them were perhaps pro pro-government passengers others just regular passengers police. At any rate we're called in and came in very hard very heavy and raging through through through the police station visually. That sort of looked like this young woman who said she was not a protester was on her way home from dinner. I was caught in a subway car as the police came rushing in. They were pepper spraying people that were hitting people with batons. When we spoke with her this was about a day Sunday a day after this happened. She was terrified. We had to keep moving around to find a place that wasn't under a CCTV camera. She took off all the identifying jewellery that she wore she we had to hide her identiy. You know we're calling her by different names and she was terrified.

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VOICE: The cops come in and without any warning, they shot hte people and I saw people.

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: Sorry, shot them with what?

VOICE: Shot them. I don't know. I just saw some like guns. I think maybe pepper spray or tear gasses. I don't know, but I just saw a long gun.

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: Who were they shooting at? What was your understanding of what was happening?

VOICE: I think they just shot the protestors who are dressed in black, but in fact they shot three people who dressed like a bystander. I'm not sure if they're protestors or not, but.

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: What do you think of what happened on that subway?

VOICE: I think it's really terrible because even now my hands are shaking. I saw a cop who was very furious and tried to rush on the train and pull out protesters. And when there was a man trying to yell at him and said stop, just let us go. We did not do anything. Then the furious cops just grab him out of the train and when the train trying to leave the station I also saw over the elevator there at least many tens of people getting arrested. And the cops hitting them with their sticks for at least 10 hits. We saw that at the corner there was a man with a lot of blood over his head.

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: You sound to me a little bit like you're in shock still.

VOICE: Yes. I still don't feel safe to go anywhere, even in daytime in Hong Kong because of what's happening last night.

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: So has what happened in the last week made you even more determined to protest or has it scared you off a little bit?

VOICE: Last night the Prince Edward incident, after that I feel very unsafe to go anywhere to protest or just go out. So I am not sure if I will go out to protest anymore.

LL: Alright Adrienne, can you just briefly remind us why these protests have been going on for so long?

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: You're talking about three months of protests at this point. It really began with an extradition bill that was proposed and it frightened people here. It was a belief that people could be moved somewhere into China for example to be tried. That that infuriated people here. So the protest began from people who were worried about China's influence in Hong Kong. This extradition bill terrified them. The demands started to morph as time has gone on. They want an independent inquiry into the allegations of police brutality. They've now asked for universal suffrage. They want police to stop characterizing what has happened in some protests as riots. They want amnesty granted to those who've been arrested for unlawful assembly or acts of violence.

LL: Is there any sense yet that Chinese troops may intervene?

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: That is a massive threat. Quite often China will release images of drills that are happening just across the border. They're very ominous. Pictures move on state media and the swelling music and thousands of troops. There was an exchange of troops, let's call it a shift change if you will last week. It happens at this time of year quite regularly, but it doesn't happen that the pictures of it under way are released. So the threat is there. Beijing has said, even quite recently in the last 24 hours, that the end is near for these protesters. That there are red lines that must not be crossed. It has not been specific about what the threat would be, but if troops were to come in to Hong Kong that would be startling. A lot of people here say they cannot believe that that's what would happen, but Beijing is getting angrier by the day.

LL: Adrienne we will leave it there. Thank you for your reporting on this and be careful out there.

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: You bet. Thank you Laura.

LL: Adrienne Arsenault is a senior correspondent for CBC News and co-host of The National. She is in Hong Kong and you can see more of her reporting tonight on The National.

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VOICE: Like I can see very clearly that the regime and the Hong Kong government is trying to create a white terror to try to scare Hong Kong people to not to participate in the social movement and in the democratic movement in the future. But we Hong Kong people won't give up and won't be scared by these white terror and injustice.

LL: That is Agnes Chow, a Hong Kong activist after she was released on bail last week. Chow says Beijing is engaging in what many are calling a "white terror campaign." Rebecca Sy says she's also been a target of the white terror campaign. Sy says she was fired for her social media account and says her employer Cathay Pacific is being targeted by the Beijing government. She's just the latest person to be let go by the local Hong Kong airline. Dozens of staff have been fired or resigned over what they say is pressure from Beijing. We reached Rebecca Sy in Hong Kong. Hello.

REBECCA SY: Hello.

LL: When were you let go from Cathay Pacific?

REBECCA SY: It happened in August last mont.h I was supposed to do a three day trip to China. After the first night I came back to Hong Kong. In the Hong Kong airport I received a call from the crew operation. They told me to go back home. You are now seized from any duty. The next day I was at home and they called me at 2 something. They asked me to go back to the office within two hours. So I just rushed back and when I arrived management came to me and asked me to go to a room. They immediately showed me three printout of my Facebook post and my Facebook is a private account, just for friends only. They just simply asked me one question. They asked me does this Facebook account belong to you? I just simply answered yes and then immediately say that now to start the process and you will be terminated with immediate effect. I was really shocked at that time.

LL: Have you been involved in the pro-democracy movement?

REBECCA SY: Of course I did go to those protests. Those are all legal protests, especially the one in the airports. In July there was a big event. Everybody from the aviation industry participated.

LL: Did you post anything about the protests?

REBECCA SY: Yes I did of course. Yeah. But this is not with me in uniform. It was just doing it like a normal Hong Kong citizen. Yeah, we've been doing it for years. All kinds of protests. It seems not a problem to them at that time.

LL: Were you warned that you shouldn't be participating in any form?

REBECCA SY: They just warn us you can't participate in those illegal ones. But those I participate in legal. We've got the no objection notification from the police.

LL: You call your termination part of a "white terror campaign." What you mean by that?

REBECCA SY: Because they are asking us to even keep our mouth shut when you're at your private time, when you're off duty and you're not in your uniform. Actually we are not representing the company, we are just telling everyone or share our thoughts or share some post or make some comments on some events using our own private Facebook accounts. But why the company would have the right or they would even listen to the Chinese authorities to ask the employees to stop doing this? We just found it is ridiculous and you shouldn't oppress one's freedom of speech because it's and we have been enjoying it. We have been doing it for so many years in Hong Kong, even after 1997.

LL: How are your colleagues or your former colleagues reacting to all of this?

REBECCA SY: Oh at the beginning when we got the serious warning from the Chinese aviation authority our colleagues just found it very annoying because they have to do extra work to cooperate with the local officers. When we arrive China, no matter you're staying overnight or not, once the aircraft arrived they would have some officers come on board or during the immigration check or custom checkthey would have to check your phone. You have to give the phone for them to screen to have censor. Even search baggage. They have to ask all kinds of safety questions. Check our safety equipment on board. Actually our crews at the beginning they were very tolerant. Our crews are very patients. They know it is not company's problem. They are very understanding. They realize it's something we can't avoid because when China say that they have the right to stop flying through their airspace and even flying to China we know that it is related to our job. The whole we're talking about the survival of the company.

LL: Rebecca you're not just an employee at Cathay Pacific or you were, but you were also cabin crew union leader and a chairwoman of the 2000 member Hong Kong Dragon Airlines Flight Attendants' Association. What happens to those workers now?

REBECCA SY: Since as soon as they know that I've been terminated, even I'm the union representative, the Union chairperson all the members are very angry. They're sad and they're shocked, but they're very angry as well because they know that I've never done anything wrong and I shouldn't be terminated just because I admited that Facebook belongs to me because it's not fair when you are exercising your own freedom of speech and you didn't even say anything bad about the company or making any bad comment or forced comment about what's happening in Hong Kong.

LL: Your firing has been pretty high profile. Very visible I'm wondering are there other companies and industries being targeted?

REBECCA SY: We know the accounting company, also some hospital authority, some hospitals, some schools. They even sacked the principal of the school because she's posting something to express her own political sense. Some nurse or some staff working in the hospital they also have been sacked. Even the airport authority not participating in any protest, but since the protests happened in the airpor,t the airport authority just simply sacked those two management guys without any reason.

LL: Rebecca I'm wondering how tense the situation is in Hong Kong right now for you.

REBECCA SY: For me I would think now although I have to handle my own legal persecution, I have to go for the lawsuit, but what I'm doing now is I want to tell the public what I'm doing now is also to fight for the freedom of speech for Hong Kong people, not just for myself. For what's happened to me actually it's also as you said ,it's just like other employees. This happened in other industries, other companies. If I'm able to come out and then to tell the public that actually we didn't do anything wrong and we shouldn't, the termination shouldn't happen on us. We're trying our best to fight for the justice and tell that they made a wrong decision to terminate us because we have different political stance.

LL: Rebecca, we will leave it there. Thank you very much.

REBECCA SY: You're welcome. Bye.

LL: Rebecca Sy is a former employee of Cathay Pacific and the cabin crew union leader and chairwoman of the 2000 member Hong Kong Dragon Airlines Flight Attendants' Association. She is in central Hong Kong.

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LL: The CBC News is next. Then.

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Clip of "Blurred Lines" by Robin Thicke ft. Pharrell

Does this remind you of...

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Clip of "Got To Give It Up" by Marvin Gaye

LL: This? The estate of Marvin Gaye sure thought so and a court agreed. The first song was brutal for Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke's 2013 smash hit "Blurred Lines." And this is Marvin Gaye's 1977 hit, "Got To Give It Up." We will walk the thin line between inspiration and plagiarism after the news. I'm Laura Lynch. I'll be with you here at The Current as interim host for the next couple of months through the federal election campaign. A permanent host will be announced later this fall. You are listening to The Current on CBC Radio One and Sirius XM.

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Inspiration vs. plagiarism: How copyright lawsuit of Katy Perry's hit Dark Horse puts spotlight on music theft

Guests: Geoff Turner

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LL: Still to come, if I asked you to name three things about beavers, could you? Well they love to build dams. Check. They've got buck teeth and a big flat tail. Check and they're freshwater animals, though, wait a second. Maybe not. Molly Alves is a wildlife biologist with the Tulalip Tribes in Washington state and she's seen saltwater beavers.

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VOICE: I initially saw a beaver swimming through an estuary channel and just thought what are you doing here? This is not a very typical habitat for you.

LL: Saltwater beavers. The Current's Jessica Linzey will try to figure out what's going on in 30 minutes. But first, the thin line between inspiration and theft.

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Clip of Katy Perry performing "Dark Horse" at the 2014 Grammy Awards.

LL: That is Katy Perry performing her song Dark Horse at the 2014 Grammy Awards. The song would become a big hit for her reaching number one in the U.S. and Canada and earning her a Grammy nomination a year later. And with more than seven million units sold in North America alone Darkhorse made Katy Perry and her producers a big pile of money too. But in July, a Los Angeles jury decided they didn't deserve all of that dough. The court ruled in favour of Christian rapper Flame who alleged that Katy Perry and her producers plagiarized his song Joyful Noise in creating Darkhorse. Ms. Perry, her collaborators and her record label will have to cough up $2.78 million USD, Is the latest in a long line of high profile copyright cases from Cole Porter to Led Zeppelin, that have rattled the music industry. The Current producer Geoff Turner has been looking into this. Hi Geoff.

GEOFF TURNER: Hi Laura.

LL: So tell me, what the basis was for the lawsuit?

GEOFF TURNER: Well it's actually two pronged. So first of all there's the copyright infringement part, but the lawsuit is also claiming damages and I'll quote here from the original court filing which says by any measure the devoutly religious message of joyful noise has been irreparably tarnished by its association with the witchcraft paganism black magic and Illuminati imagery evoked by the same music in Dark Horse. Now that matter is still before the court.

LL: Wow, that's quite an assertion. OK. Let's talk about the music part of this then. How similar are the two songs?

GEOFF TURNER: Well there are some elements that are strikingly similar and there are some aspects that just could not be more different. So let's listen to just a little bit of each and see what we hear. We can start with Joyful Noise by Flame.

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Clip of "Joyful Noise" by Flame

So that's a little bit of "Joyful Noise" by Flame and here's just a bit of "Dark Horse" by Katy Perry.

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[Clip of "Dark Horse" by Katy Perry

GEOFF TURNER: So what do you hear there Laura?

LL: Well I'm, so I'm listening to hear if there are similarities and the only thing that sounded somewhat same to me were those beeps.

GEOFF TURNER: Yeah exactly. It's that insistent synth line that just keeps pulsing through the verse and the underlying bass and the drumbeats are similar, but beyond that the vocal parts are very distinct. Katy Perry's verses sung, so there is a discernable melody there. Flame is rapping, so there's no melody and the rhythmic pattern of his vocal is very different than Perry's and we didn't listen to them there, but the chorus is a completely different look.

LL: OK but what about the lyrics? The little bit we heard didn't sound too similar to me.

GEOFF TURNER: No I'll read a little bit. So this is from "A Joyful Noise" by Flame. His Majesty fills the heavens. Our hearts give thunderous praise. Declare the Lord is forever. Make a joyful noise in this place. And then here's a couple of lines from Katy Perry's "Dark Horse." She's a beast. I call her karma. She eat your heart out like Jeffrey Dahmer.

LL: I don't think those could be any more different.

GEOFF TURNER: Yeah exactly one is a document of obsessive, possibly cannibalistic last, the other is a tribute to Jesus.

LL: Okay so you've shown me some similarities, you've shown me some differences. How do cases like this actually get decided in court?

GEOFF TURNER: Well when someone, in this case the artist known as Flame, feels that their work has been infringed upon, they have to A show evidence that the defendant had access to the copyrighted work and clearly that's possible. The song got played on Christian radio, it's available on the Internet. So there's no doubt about that. B, there must be evidence that the works are substantially similar.

LL: OK. That seems to be the tricky point. How do you define what substantial is?

GEOFF TURNER: Yeah. That's where it gets murky because there's no definition of the criteria for that in law. The arguments are made in court and it's left to the interpretation of the judge or in this case the jury to decide whether the bar has been reached. And a lot of the expert testimony over that comes from forensic musicologists.

LL: Forensic musicologists? I see a few new series coming on. CSI, I don't know, CSI Memphis or whatever it is to look into true crime.

GEOFF TURNER: Yeah exactly. It's the forensic musicologists bring their expertise to bear in music and music history to figure out whether a musical crime has been committed. And in the Katy Perry case it was the plaintiff's musicologist Todd Decker who won the day. He argued that repeating synth line that you picked up on, he called that an 8 Note figure. He said he couldn't find another song that shared that descending melody. He testified that the two shared five or six points of similarity, including pitch, rhythm, texture, pattern of repetition, melodic shape and timber and "the quality and colour of sound." And I guess the jury agreed.

LL: But you're not sounding very convinced to me, Goeff.

GEOFF TURNER: Not really and I'm not the only one. Charles Cronin is a musicologist and a lawyer and he's got my back.

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VOICE: I thought it was a travesty. What's so striking is well two things jump out. One is that the basis of these claims have become so attenuated it's now reached the point where you have these absolutely my opinion into difficult claims based on a handful of notes or a similar unprotectable sound. The basis of these of these cases as I mentioned has become so slight, so musically insignificant.

LL: So he listens and doesn't hear the same thing. Those are pretty strong words he's using the other different bar for what actually constitutes substantial than that jury did.

GEOFF TURNER: Yeah. And it's more than that when when he used the term there when he talks about unprotected sounds he means for example the special sound effects that producers might add to a recording. So when Todd Dekker was arguing about the quality and colour of sound, well Cronin says that shouldn't even be considered in these cases. What matters is the underlying the actual mathematics of the music. And Cronin says more and more of these cases are hinging on aspects of expression that aren't or shouldn't be protected by copyright.

LL: But it seems to me there's more and more of these cases that are actually making it to court or am I imagining that?

GEOFF TURNER: You are not imagining that. Cronon himself created a database of musical copyright infringement cases in the U.S. going all the way back to the middle of the 19th century and he says that the number of cases has increased exponentially in recent years.

LL: And why is that?

GEOFF TURNER: Well let's get to that with a little musical segue.

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[Clip of "Don't Fence Me In" by Cole Porter]

GEOFF TURNER: So that's a little musical clue in the form of "Don't Fence Me In" by Cole Porter. Charles Cronin says that in the early instances of copyright cases the lawsuits typically involved outright plagiarization of whole or nearly whole pieces of music. So people would just rip off a whole song, but then there was this pivotal case in 1946 in which a songwriter named Ira B Arnestein sued the great Cole Porter, who he heard there, for copyright infringement. He was claiming that Porter had stolen elements of his songs to create hits like "Begin the begin" and "Don't Fence Me In." Now he lost that case, but the case established the notion of substantial similarity, which opened the door to cases like the Katy Perry case, which Cronin says hinge on insignificant musical parts.

LL: OK. But 1946. that's so long ago/ why is there an uptick in litigation now?

GEOFF TURNER: Well I spoke to another forensic musicologist named Joe Bennett at the Berklee School of Music who says it might have something to do with shifting styles in technology and in music.

[sc].

VOICE: There's a change going on in song form, as songwriting has evolved over the last hundred years or so. So in the early 20th century the dominant song form was the 32 bar standard. Entirely melodically driven and if you think of songs like Over The Rainbow and Blue Moon and anything of that Great American Songbook era, whereas since the rise of hip hop is now the world's most popular genre of music and the and the ubiquity of the digital audio workstation is the songwriting tool. I would say that we're seeing shorter and shorter musical gestures going on. So samples, short loops, cord loops and the like. And because those gestures are shorter, it stands to reason just statistically and mathematically that we're going to see more similarities with other previous popular music.

GEOFF TURNER: So that's musicologist Joe Bennett.

LL: He's saying that rap music has sort of a finite number of combinations and that's part of what's causing the problem?

GEOFF TURNER: Yeah and he's not, it's not just rap music to be clear, it's just that to the extent that rap is an especially distilled form of pop music and since so much pop music has now influenced by rap and hip hop, you hear a lot more of those features and all of pop now. Things like that synth figure that we heard in the in the Katy Perry song. So these songs are built as much on beat as on melody. And with that in mind I want you to hear this little bit of tape from the legendary Motown percussionist Jack Ashford speaking to MSNBC.

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VOICE: You know at one time when they determine what was plagiarism and what wasn't, was the melody. If you wrote the melody close too close to another guy then the melody would determine whether you had copied a song. Well as things went on they had to get rid of the melody because they stopped putting records that didn't even have a melody. They had nothing but lyrics and so they had to come up with something.

LL: And that something. What is that? What is he talking about?

GEOFF TURNER: Well I'm not sure there's a technical name for it, but let's call it the groove or the feel of a recording. So one of the reasons I chose that clip of Jack Ashford is that one of his great performances was at the heart of another recent plagiarism case that had a lot to do with the groove. Have a listen to this.

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Clip of "Blurred Lines" by Robin Thicke ft. Pharrell Williams and "Got To Give It Up" by Marvin Gaye

GEOFF TURNER: So that's a mashup of "Blurred Lines" by Robin Thicke and "Got To Give It Up" by Marvin Gaye, which I should mention features Jack Ashford on that distinctive cowbell there. And in 2015 a court awarded the estate of Marvin Gaye $7.5 million. It agreed that "Blurred Lines" had cribbed from Gaye's 1977 recording.

LL: Now when you put that mash up together that way, I really do hear the similarities there. So what was the issue in the case?

GEOFF TURNER: Well this was especially controversial because people who disagreed with the ruling argued that the case stretched way beyond what should be protected by copyright. Last year the ruling was upheld by an appeals court, but listen to this dissenting opinion from Judge Jacqueline Wynn. She said "The majority allows the gays to accomplish what no one has before: copyright a musical style." "Blurred Lines" and "Got To Give It Up" are not objectively similar. They differ in melody, harmony and rhythm. Yet by refusing to compare the two works, the majority establishes a dangerous precedent that strikes a devastating blow to future musicians and composers everywhere.".

LL: Oh good lord, doom and gloom.

GEOFF TURNER: Yeah that's pretty serious.

LL: It's the end of music as we know it.

GEOFF TURNER: Yeah. So to get a little closer to that story and that argument I wanted to speak to the person who struck this supposedly devastating blow. And I got in touch with Judith F. She was the musicologist who testified for the Gaye estate case and she says that there was plenty of objective musical evidence for her claim.

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VOICE: In this case the constellation of eight similarities that I identified and demonstrated in court were found so much interlocking throughout Blurred Lines that as I showed in an exhibit in court, there were only two or three measures of Blurred Lines, the Robin Thicke song, that had none of this similarity and many many bars had, over one hundred bars, had multiple similarities occurring simultaneously.

LL: OK, one hundred bars, that sounds pretty convincing.

GEOFF TURNER: Yeah when you hear it in numerical terms like that and we heard the similarities. Like you can hear it. But the similarities that Judith identified were things like cowbell, harmonies, use of falsetto, these elements of expression, the party sound in the background, but not the melody and the lyric, which are the elements that traditionally formed the basis of copyright claims.

LL: So again we're hearing about what, the feel of a song?

GEOFF TURNER: Yeah although Judith uses the term expression to capture that.

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VOICE: And the expression means the content. In the case of music it's the exact pitches and a series of pitches and their duration, meaning their rhythm. The chords that support that, the way the song is organized and structured. Those are all elements of the creative process that go beyond any stylistic similarity that might make them resemble one another. And that's, it's the creative expression that was copied in this case.

LL: But that is contrary isn't it to what Charles Cronin told you that expression is actually the thing that should be left out of the equation?

GEOFF TURNER: Yeah it feels, if I'm interpreting these people correctly, they're diametrically opposed in a sense. So you get this fundamental split on interpreting what should be protected by copyright and it's reflected in this other shift that Joe Bennett noted. He said there was a time when a composer who wanted to register a song for copyright, well they submitted sheet music and lyrics, but now they submit a recording of a song. And that's a very different thing because a recording contains all those expressive elements that give the sort of vibe of a recording. Those are the elements that Judith identified in her arguments.

LL: OK. So that that's what the musicologists are disputing. But what about the people who are at the heart of all of this and those are the songwriters.

GEOFF TURNER: Yeah. And I wanted to get a better sense of how songs come together in this day and age and so I talked to a guy. Heg goes by the name of Kevvy. He's a he's a Vancouver musician and producer. He leads his own band called Fake Shark, but he also collaborates with many other songwriters and I asked him what the songwriting process is like in 2019. And he began by talking about working with Mission, BC's own Carly Rae Jepsen.

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VOICE: Well she is a little different than the other pop artists that I've written with because she comes from more of a folk and musical theatre background. So she's very much somebody who writes their songs the traditional way, which is like she sits now with an acoustic guitar and starts writing lyrics to it. And so that's a lot different than a lot of other artists that I've worked with who they come to the studio with a concept or an idea, but no music really and then we'll build it together. I think as artists and musicians, our job is to deliver an emotion and feeling to our listeners. So oftentimes they'll bring a song to me, the artist will bring a song to me that they want a song to feel like.

LL: I'm betting that's not how Cole Porter did it all those years ago.

GEOFF TURNER: No, the Tin Pan Alley guys or people in the Brill Building. But maybe copyright law is just caught up with the modern reality of song creation, as described by Kevvy there. Consider for example the biggest song in the world.

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Clip of "Old Town Road" by Lil Nas X

GEOFF TURNER: That of course is Lil Nas X with "Old Town Road." And you know how he wrote that song?

LL: How?

GEOFF TURNER: He started with a beat that he bought from a teenage producer from Holland who himself created the beat from a sample of a Nine Inch Nails song.

LL: Well I hope he got a lot of money for it.

GEOFF TURNER: He was paid $30.

LAURA LYNCH: $30?

GEOFF TURNER: $30.

LL: That can't be right. This is just so different from anything that I've heard about in the process of songs, but borrowing and music certainly isn't new.

GEOFF TURNER: No it's not. And everyone I spoke to acknowledged that pop music is a fundamentally derivative art form. You grow up loving the Beatles, there's going to be a little bit of Lennon McCartney in your music. Hopefully you put enough of your own voice in there to make it original.

LL: Is it possible that some of what seems to be plagiarism is really just unconscious borrowing?

GEOFF TURNER: Yes. And there's even a word for it it turns out. Here is musicologist Joe Bennett again.

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VOICE: Oh my favourite word in forensic musicology is the word cryptomnesia. And it is a term that comes from late 19th century psychology and it is the act of mistaking a memory for a new idea. And obviously in music that manifests itself as what we might call accidental plagiarism. And in my academic work I interviewed a whole lot of songwriters to ask them about their creative processes and almost all of them reported having experienced it. The challenge is spotting it when it happens and then fixing it.

LL: I love that. Cryptomnesia.

GEOFF TURNER: Cryptomnesia. Yeah.

LL: Great word, but if it were that simple, then Katy Perry would never have been in court, would she?

GEOFF TURNER: Right. And because there's no precise criteria to establish the point at which influence and inspiration become theft, people find themselves in trouble and according to Kevvy, a lot of the best art happens very close to that line.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Oftentimes the best music is the most impulsive music. And so if you're a singer and you hear a chord progression you start writing a melody over it, it's going to feel familiar to you because it's it's just a good melody, but maybe it's familiar to you because you've heard it in another song or it's similar to another song. But I think our job as artists is to deliver things that are equal parts nostalgic and futuristic so we can push the whole art form forward without alienating our audience. So it's a thin line. There's going to be a lot more of these cases I'm assuming.

LL: And speaking of those cases you made reference to that dissenting opinion in the Blurred Lines case, which made that situation sound so dire when they talked about a devastating blow. What is at stake here?

GEOFF TURNER: Well I guess the fear is that if artists are too conscious of policing themselves for possible plagiarism, they might wind up stifling their own creativity along the way and basically producing the opposite outcome I think of what copyright laws are meant to do. And when I began looking into this, I was kind of persuaded of that idea, but now I wonder if cases like Blurred Lines and the Katy Perry one are just more attuned to the realities of 21st century song craft and production. But in any event I don't think the popular music machine is going to grind to a halt anytime soon. Here again is musicologist Joe Bennett.

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VOICE: A song is not an idea, a song is an expression of an idea. That is the building blocks of music are available to everyone. Everyone can play the same chords, everyone has access to the same notes, the same number of octaves that people can physically sing and the same bandwidth of beats per minute of tempo and even a certain bandwidth of thematic lyric material. But this is why I love song writing so much because it's an incredibly constrained and yet every day thousands of people do really beautiful things with it. And those things are original and surprising and emotionally moving and inspiring, but the key adjective among all that in terms of what we're talking about tody is of course, original.

LL: Yeah. That obviously is the key thing, but I'm predicting that the people who are going to make more money maybe than even a lot of the younger songwriters in the next few years and musicologists and lawyers who sue over these plagiarism cases.

GEOFF TURNER: That is the spectre that is haunting this story for sure.

LL: Geoff thanks very much for this.

GEOFF TURNER: My pleasure Laura.

LL: Geoff Turner is a senior producer with The Current.

[Music]

LL: And just a note, Led Zeppelin is expected back in a San Francisco court later this month to defend against allegations it stole significant portions of its classic, "Stairway to Heaven" from the song "Taurus" by the band, Spirit.

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[Clip of "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin]

LAURA LYNCH: And coming up in our next half hour, beavers are deserting their freshwater tributaries for saltwater and it's got marine biologists stumped. Our documentary, A Salty Tail, dives into the issue and yes pun intended. I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

[Music]

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Are saltwater beavers a thing? Scientists observe Canadian critters in potentially deadly habitat

LL: Some stories need very little in the way of introduction. So suffice to say that this next one is about a curious phenomenon, involving Canada's national animal. Yes we're talking about the beaver and a beaver behaviour that has puzzled scientists. Here is The Current's Jessica Linzey with her documentary, A Salty Tail.

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JESSICA LINZEY: Canadians can be arrogant. It's not a trait we like to admit to, but it's true. There are certain kinds of things we are super confident about too confident maybe, stuff we think we know all about, but we actually don't know. Take beavers for example, I thought I knew just about everything there was to know about beavers.

VOICE: There was a time when beaver lodges like this one and the busy beaver that built them had almost disappeared from Canada.

JESSICA LINZEY: I was one of a generation of Canadians who grew up with those iconic black and white TV interstitials. Those little vignettes on our country's wildlife.

VOICE: And it's made a successful comeback.

JESSICA LINZEY: Hinterlands' Who's Who ran seemingly constantly through the 60s and 70s and pulling it up on YouTube. I was reminded of just how many episodes were about the beaver.

VOICE: Beavers may be the most prepared creature in the wilderness.

JESSICA LINZEY: One was nothing but fun facts.

VOICE: Their eyes have clear goggle like eyelids for underwater protection.

JESSICA LINZEY: They have orange teeth that never stop growing.

VOICE: And are extra strong thanks to enamel rich.

JESSICA LINZEY: Beavers live in freshwater systems. They can hold their breath for 15 minutes. The inside of their lips are lined with fur tubing and of course we all know that the beaver is our national symbol, officially recognized as such in 1975. It's on our nickel. The one guy I'll introduce you to here in a bit thinks that the beaver was actually ripped off there. Should have been the quarter. Mind you others might counter that it's curious a country would recognize the second largest rodent in the world on its currency. So all this to say nothing about the beaver has surprised me. Of course not. I'm Canadian.

BRIGETTE BROUILLARD: This is the first beaver that I have rehabilitated.

JESSICA LINZEY: And like any good Canuck, I am up on my international Beaver news, especially when it involves an orphaned Beaver rescued in Louisville, Kentucky and lovingly named after Canadian pop star.

BRIGETTE BROUILLARD: Something happened to mom, dad and all his family. JB is short for Justin Bieber.

JESSICA LINZEY: Little Justin Beaver was adopted by the founder of the Second Chances Wildlife Centre.

BRIGETTE BROUILLARD: People went berserk over him for a couple reasons. I think everybody really loved his name and people really don't often get to see beavers in general. JB does make some oftly cute noises.

JESSICA LINZEY: Brigette Brouillard took Justin Beaver into her home when he was just a kid and she's gotten used to living with him. Though he does get up to some odd things.

BRIGETTE BROUILLARD: He's very particular about what he wants do. He has something in his mind and he is going to do it. He's going to do it his way. It's a beaver thing. Where you go with that JB?

JESSICA LINZEY: In this video that beaver thing manifests itself in the young JB, dragging stuffies, magazines, shoes, a lacrosse stick. Santa hat, the front hall carpet through Brigette's home with purpose. He's building a dam.

BRIGETTE BROUILLARD: Sometimes he does, well actually pretty regularl he does the bathtub. He likes to dam that. Every once in a while dishwasher.

JESSICA LINZEY: But not everything he does is so adorable.

BRIGETTE BROUILLARD: JB has done about $500 or $600 worth of damage to my house. It's frustrating for me that I really can't get angry because well he didn't ask to be orphaned. He just did the best he can be received to he that needs to in my walls and my baseboards, my furniture, they're wood. He gets his favourite type of trees.

JESSICA LINZEY: It's been two years of this. So Brigette Brouillard is ready for Justin Beaver or JB to move outside into the pen she's been building him and what she hopes will be ready for him this month. And while she'll be glad to reclaim her baseboards, she will miss the bedtime routine and those little breathing sounds JB makes when he's drifting off.

BRIGETTE BROUILLARD: It slows down his regular [imitates beaver sounds]

JESSICA LINZEY: It may be strange keeping a beaver in your home, but JB's behaviour is anything but strange when you consider he's a beaver. So I still thought I knew everything I needed to know about beavers, until one morning last summer when I came across one swimming in a tidal pond, a body of saltwater on the island where I live just west of Vancouver. I didn't think much of it at the time, but then sometime later I happened upon a story with a headline that caught my eye. The nine question of saltwater beavers and I wondered Is this really a thing. Saltwater beavers? It seemed impossible. The first thing we learn about beavers after all is that they live in freshwater. Baffled, I told my mum about it. I thought I'd amaze her. Instead she told me something even crazier. A story on CBC on As It Happens back in 2014 and artfully introduced by Jeff Douglas.

JEFF DOUGLAS: Gnarly old bark is no. For its bite so it's usually best for us vulnerable soft humans to steer clear of vengeful beavers. Not that that warning means much to anybody because beavers almost never attack people, but you will notice that I said almost never and almost never is not never, is it? Last week Jeremy McNaughton was snorkelling with his friend Paul Scary off Nova Scotia's Eastern Shore when he encountered a truly enormous beaver. That caught them off guard because they were diving in saltwater and beavers are freshwater folk.

JESSICA LINZEY: I love that introduction for so many reasons. You notice how in Canada we can even refer to beavers as freshwater folk. But the real drama is of course that you've got to beavers paddling around in Canadian saltwater one of which is attacking people. I reach out to Molly Alves. She's a wildlife biologist with the Tulalip Tribes in Washington state and the head of the Tulalip Beaver project. I ask her if in her research she's seen signs of saltwater beavers along the coast.

VOICE: Well I didn't even see signs of beavers. I initially saw a beaver swimming through an estuary channel and just thought. What are you doing here. This is not very typical habitat for you. I thought it was kind of just misguided.

JESSICA LINZEY: But it turns out it wasn't just misguided and Molly wasn't the only researcher who'd begun to notice strange beaver activity in saltwater habitat including one just up the coast from Tulalip.

JESSICA LINZEY: Greg?

GREG HOOD: Yes.

JESSICA LINZEY: Thanks for having me.

GREG HOOD: Sure, my pleasure.

JESSICA LINZEY: Greg Hood is a senior research scientist with the Skagit River System Co-operative in La Conner, Washington. He's not a beaver guy, but back in 2009 he was out looking for a shrub in the Skagit Delta and he found something that made him what he calls an accidental beaver guy.

GREG HOOD: I kept stumbling across these beaver dams that were kind of weird looking beaver dams. They didn't fill up a channel entirely. They're kind of low in the channel and I'd never heard of beaver entitled marshes. So it just was a puzzle for me and I was curious about it.

JESSICA LINZEY: And when you first saw them did you know immediately they were beaver dams?

GREG HOOD: Well I was kind of reluctant to to come to that conclusion is because for one thing I didn't like to see them in tidal marshes. And so I just had to see them repeatedly and just convince myself it couldn't be anything else. And then there was the clincher and I just finished the work for the day I was walking back towards the boat and I was walking down the channel and the water was about, it was about thigh deep and a beaver was swimming towards me. And I just stopped and I had my hands full of things I was trying to put them down and grabbed my camera before the beaver noticed me and unfortunately noticed me before I could get to the camera and it turned around swam the other direction, but that was pretty exciting. The beaver got within about I would say about three meters of me.

JESSICA LINZEY: The conclusion saltwater beavers are actually a thing. Back in Tulalip, Molly's colleague wildlife biologist David Bailey has offered to take me into the tidal marshes where he's met saltwater beavers of his own. I really have so much here and I don't have any work kayaking there. It's low tide, I'm wearing chest waders and I've waterproof my microphones and recorders with duct tape. David seems born for this kind of fieldwork. It's a hot day and he regrets leaving his cap on the dash the pickup a trucker hat with a drawing of a beaver below the words. Beaver Hunter. Still he is nothing but dimples out here and his boyish enthusiasm and sense of wonder at everything we see birds in order. It's infectious. We've paddled 20 minutes of the estuary. When we finally pull our kayaks back through the mud and pick our way into the brush. David was out here tracking birds when he first came across these little tidal creeks. We're now jumping across channels made by beavers. Then he found some unusual dams.

DAVID BAILEY: And then, but then they have these structures that we're looking at here, which is like the world's smallest dam. That's pretty much right.

JESSICA LINZEY: Most of these dams aren't even knee height. At high tide they disappear entirely. They're built low to keep the power of the tides from breaking them apart. And when David realized what he was looking at he thought these are beavers with intention. They've settled here.

[Clip running through brambles]

JESSICA LINZEY: As he leads me towards the lodge, I keep getting hung up on brambles and falling into channels I can't see because of how thick the brush is. David jokes that this is why no one knows anything about these beavers.

DAVID BAILEY: The lodge is over there and this would be kind of like the front door, the porch to it all I guess. Different ways of accessing that lodge.

JESSICA LINZEY: The lodge David is pointing out has multiple entrances as all beaver lodges do. But here are the entrances are different heights again to accommodate changes in tidal floods. It's all seasonal scrub and shrub out here. Not much in the way of the usual Beaver building material trees like Alder and Willow and you see that in this large parts of it are actually alive with spring growth suggesting there would be lots to chew on in the summer. But David he can't imagine how these beavers could possibly have had enough to eat in the wintertime and when he first discovered all of this. David was as surprised as Greg had been. He still is.

DAVID BAILEY: It's definitely crazy. It's definitely eye opening that like me as a beaver like if I was trying to be a beaver and live out here I don't think I would you know do this. You know it doesn't make any sense.

JESSICA LINZEY: David's now standing on top of the lodge bouncing gently. He's hoping for a snore or a grunt from the beavers that he believes are sleeping inside.

DAVID BAILEY: Sometimes the same year you can hear them actually moaning like the the kits and stuff will go. And it's hard for me to hear it most of time but like when we. How is the Beavers at the fish hatchery where before relocation you can go, they'll moan and stuff which is a sound that I feel like most people don't ever get to hear or even think that they make. So if you were out here a night or something you might be able to hear them actually gnawing on a tree and the sound of them you know just like them [imitates beaver sound] Now I feel like I'm a beaver.

JESSICA LINZEY: I meet Greg Hood the next day. He's agreed to take me out into the Skagit River Delta to where he first ran into that beaver in the intertidal zone.

[Sound of boat]

JESSICA LINZEY: We're in a boat with an outboard motor aptly named the Beaver Tail. And by now Greg's changed out of his Crocs sandals ,which he'd been wearing with socks, despite it being almost 30 degrees out. Now he stands behind me at the back of the boat in rubber boots. He's careful not to run us into any shallows if the tide retreats. He looks like an overgrown boy scout in his camouflage hip waders and straw hat. And we pull up to a channel drop anchor and Greg produces a map from his tan vest.

GREG HOOD: We came down we came down this channel, passed this inlet.

JESSICA LINZEY: It's been many years since Greg's been back here. There is no money for intertidal beaver research, so there is no reason for him to visit. He's not sure what we'll find. But within minutes we come across our first dam and Greg is beaming.

GREG HOOD: Look at that. I feel happy to see them.

JESSICA LINZEY: Everyone else I've spoken with seems to think it's weird that beavers have established colonies out here in the tidal marsh, so I put the question to Greg.

JESSICA LINZEY: Do you think it's insane that they're here?

GREG HOOD: No I think it's very sensible that they're here. I think.

JESSICA LINZEY: It looks very much like the area I visited with David just the day before, but maybe I'm wrong because Greg sees nothing but virtue in this habitat and he tells me that maybe beavers have always built lodges and dams in intertidal zones but in changing the landscape as dramatically as we have we're now suffering some kind of collective ecological amnesia.

GREG HOOD: And so for that reason we don't. People aren't used to looking for them and they don't. And they haven't looked for them in these areas. But it's a great habitat for beaver. Of course the other issue for beavers the reason they're building them in these title systems. Is because the tide goes down and beaver don't like to walk. They like to swim.

JESSICA LINZEY: But unlike Greg, Tulalip biologists Molly Alves and David Bailey do have some concerns about what all of this may mean for the health of these animals.

MOLLY ALVES: I think that those beavers are probably, yeah I don't know, not going to thrive certainly. Like it's perplexing.

JESSICA LINZEY: And while some beavers are clearly trying to make a go of it in these environs we know that saltwater is actually poisonous to them. I take the question of beavers living in intertidal zones to Breanne Glinnum, the senior animal care supervisor at the Critter Care Wildlife Society and Rehab Centre in Langley, B.C..

BREANNE GLINNUM: I think that's really insane. I find that really insane.

JESSICA LINZEY: And this is coming from a woman who's seen beavers do a lot of strange things like the time she got a call about a beaver in Delta, B.C., down by the port.

BREANNE GLINNUM: There was like a yard bin.

JESSICA LINZEY: And under that yard bin was a beaver. Breanne was called in to relocate it.

BREANNE GLINNUM: We spent five and a half hours wading through this ice cold disgusting puddle trying to catch this Beaver and I just belly flopped onto the Beaver. It was gross. I don't know why this Beaver chose to live there but he did. But again he was a 2 year old trying to find his own body of water and he chose this puddle.

JESSICA LINZEY: And that is what most scientists I've spoken with actually think is going on here. Beavers kick their kids out of the family home at 2 years old. They swim off in search of their own territory and not knowing how dangerous saltwater can be to them. They can get themselves into trouble and end up in Breanne's clinic.

BREANNE GLINNUM: So some of them are coming in just a little bit dehydrated. We give them fluids. Others are coming in completely disorientated walking like they're intoxicated some of them aren't even walking at all. They're cold and then we put them on heat. Some of them just as they warm up. They pass away on their own.

JESSICA LINZEY: Breanne says that in a two month stretch last year critter care picked up 13 sick beavers. More than half of which were suffering saltwater poisoning. She's been watching those numbers climb year over year and she figures it's because of decreasing freshwater habitat. She can only guess how those Washington State beavers have survived as long as they have.

BREANNE GLINNUM: Are they acting like they're completely normal or are they swimming in straight lines or if maybe there's some kind of strange evolution going on with them.

JESSICA LINZEY: For his part David Bailey, the wildlife biologist, believes the beavers he's been tracking in Tulalip are not the ones to be concerned about.

DAVID BAILEY: I worry about beavers that are I hear about like at the port of Everett. Like literally out in the sound and I'm like where you're going and where have you come from. It's beavers that are just carving out some little tension run off of. The city and you're just like well how are you even surviving and you're really not providing a of ecological benefits either.

BRIGETTE BROUILLARD: The beavers David is describing here are the ones Nick Page encounters all the time through his work as an ecologist with the City of Vancouver.

NICK PAGE: They kind of, they seek out new habitat so they would have moved down.

BRIGETTE BROUILLARD: He's the guy I mentioned earlier. The one that thinks the beaver should be on our quarter, not the lowly nickel.

NICK PAGE: In these patches of habitat they have like we're looking in this park here and it's tiny.

JESSICA LINZEY: I mean the wetlands like I've met him in a little park in the city's Olympic Village on the banks of False Creek. It seems to bring back a memory for him about a particularly resourceful beaver.

NICK PAGE: Mowing down of course some nights rose bushes or something and I'm lik oh God, you know these are the emails about the next day about all the damage they're being done, but at one point the beaver was trying to pull the stick at it had eaten out of the patch of roses and it was stuck and so I was trying to help the beaver remove its branches and we're having like this tug of war. So you're like these things are so used to people. Like they are really within a metre of you. You know there's dogs and people and bikes around and they're just like whatever.

JESSICA LINZEY: Half a block to the east of where we're standing is a forest of condo towers and directly in front of us a beaver lodge.

NICK PAGE: So what we're looking at is this mound of vegetation it's just a mound of sticks and mud that's accumulated over time that the beavers have brought in from different places. And you know not only are there sticks, but I see two by fours and there's some bird walks.

JESSICA LINZEY: Nick says yeah he was surprised when the beavers first appeared here five or so years ago but he says it's indicative of how beavers adapt to wherever they end up. This particular colony travels between the five parks that line the south side of False Creek. They eat from each of the parks. They keep homes in each and Vancouver is not unique in this. Nick sees it happening in coastal cities all over the world.

NICK PAGE: You know we are re learning what beavers do and these these habitats. It speaks to that maybe you don't always understand what they really need or what they tolerate or what they can adapt to.

JESSICA LINZEY: Adaptation is one thing but.

NICK PAGE: One of the sort of challenges now is where do beavers go next? What happens when the next generation comes along and there's no new habitats for them to colonize.

JESSICA LINZEY: And as you've likely gleaned from Nick's earlier story about the beaver and the rosebush at times it also pains him to see what these beavers are doing with this habitat.

NICK PAGE: You have to think of that where those sticks came from though. That's like all the park vegetation and all the trees and things like that. Oh no beavers, can you give me a break sometimes.

JESSICA LINZEY: Back in La Conner, Washington, Greg Hood the accidental beaver guy sees an unexpected and potentially huge impact beavers are having in this intertidal landscape.

GREG HOOD: The beavers are about quadrupling, tripling to quadrupling. The potential numbers of fish that are growing in these in the tidal marshes.

JESSICA LINZEY: Did you catch that? These beavers are helping fish, baybe not on purpose, but the way I understand it Greg's telling me that these intertidal beaver dams are creating ponds that are protecting the very fish we worry most about like the endangered chinook salmon.

GREG HOOD: Another kind of bird that you see that preys on juvenile salmon would be Kingfisher and those are gonna be you know diving in deep water. They're not going to dive in these little shallow tidal channels. So these are potential predation refuges for juvenile salmon and beaver are providing that for them.

JESSICA LINZEY: For his part biologist David Bailey isn't quite as ready to give the beavers as much of a hot tip as Greg is.

DAVID BAILEY: I go back and forth between giving beavers too much credit and not enough because it's like in one sense it's like it's just a fever. It's just like a rodent. It's just like driven. I just feel like I just need to find food. I seem to protect myself with water and build a dam. But the lodge and then other times they're building these impressive impressive landscapes these impressive structures and so it's like man maybe they are like they know what they're doing. But I think more than anything they're just like I just need to get to that tree over there and I need to build that little factory for myself to get over there.

JESSICA LINZEY: Whatever their differences, David and Greg agree. Nobody's interested in funding research into this phenomenon of the saltwater beaver. David figures that's because there's other wildlife people are more invested in it.

DAVID BAILEY: It's a lot different than fish. So that's why I feel like if if Greg can find a way to do it and related to fish people would be all in for that.

JESSICA LINZEY: Breanne Glinnum may not want to eat them but she is very fond of them.

BREANNE GLINNUM: They have really little ears for how big they are. .They're really weird looking creatures in all honesty. Yeah their ears are really cute. I always get caught up on them whenever I'm examining them the interns always make fun of me because I'll just be like looking at their feet making sure their feet are okay and then I always have to like poke their ear.

JESSICA LINZEY: Cute ears aside Greg says we should care for a whole bunch of reasons.

GREG HOOD: It's a symbol of a forgotten landscape. A lot people I think assume even professional know habitat managers tend to assume that we know everything about these habitats and in fact we don't. And so how can you manage wisely if you don't really know what you're doing right. Discovering the beaver is a reminder of that. Discovering tidal beaver of our ignorance and that we still have a lot to learn.

JESSICA LINZEY: Brigette Brouillard of Kentucky's Second Chances Wildlife Centre told me that she sure learned a lot about beavers living with Justin Beaver as you would over these last two years. Even so, I had one more question for her.

JESSICA LINZEY: Have you ever heard of saltwater beavers?

BRIGETTE BROUILLARD: I am not familiar with them.

JESSICA LINZEY: So you have in your wildlife centre, I mean I know Kentucky is inland, so you're not going to have coastal beavers wash up, but you've never heard of the saltwater beaver?

BRIGETTE BROUILLARD: No. I will do my research on that. That's amazing.

JESSICA LINZEY: Amazing. So says the woman who lives with the beaver.

LL: The documentary, A Salty Tail, was produced by The Current's Jessica Linzey and our documentary editor Joan Weber. It first aired in June. Take a look at some of Jessica's photos on our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. Well that is our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q, when Sheryl Crow joins Tom Power to talk about her new album, Threads. And remember you can always take The Current with you to go on the CBC Radio app. It is free from the App Store or Google Play. And just a note that I'll be with you hosting The Current for the next couple of months through the federal election, which is already shaping up to be very interesting. A permanent host of the program will be announced later this fall.

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Sept. 2, 2019 episode transcript

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