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Roger Waters album blocked in Italy over artwork plagiarism claim
By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 20 June 2017
A court in Milan has reportedly issued an injunction blocking the sale of Roger Waters’ new album ‘Is This The Life We Really Want?’ based on the allegation its artwork infringes the copyright of Italian artist Emilio Isgrò.
The cover of the new LP, which was released by Sony Music label Columbia earlier this month, features a body of text that has been heavily redacted, so that the only words appearing are those of the record’s title. Isgrò – famous in art circles for his use of the so called ‘erasure technique’ – reckons that the cover art constitutes copyright infringement.
The artist is quoted by local media as saying that, while he admires Waters as a musician, the artwork on his new record “is a blatant plagiarism of my works”.
According to Italian newspaper La Repubblica, a tribunal in Milan has now blocked sales of ‘Is This The Life We Really Want?’ in Italy, in both physical and digital form, pending a hearing on 27 Jun.
