[Ed. note: Too many beans were spilled! This post has been updated to keep people out of hot water. Homicidols Dot Com regrets the error.]

For those of you who haven’t been hiding under a professional boulder like me, you’re probably aware of a certain alleged case of musical plagiarism that hit loudol last week. Effectively, fans of the most recently crowned Queen of the Scene and Therefore Official Oshi of Homicidols Dot Com Saki of Guso Drop and 2& fame noticed that a recently debuted unit called Kaiju by Me’s new single had a certain striking similarity to 2&’s “Machigai Darake”.

Now, I’m a generous sort. I tend to believe that people, until proven otherwise, go about their business in good faith and with good intentions. I was somewhat incredulous when I first heard of the plagiarism. This, I thought, must be one of those everybody’s-right situations: Maybe the song’s kind of a rip-off, but not consciously so, or not deliberately consciously so, like not Vanilla Ice adding a little hitch to a vintage Queen bass line and pretending like it’s something new, more that someone had a tune in their head and wound up writing it and then it turned out that there was a great reason that the tune was in their head (they used to listen to the song a lot!) and whoopsie daisy, well now the ship has sailed, let’s all move on with our lives.

Except no omg holy shit this is some of the worst plagiarism I’ve heard since Led Zeppelin. Check this out:

vs.

YOU DECIDE!

I mean, come on, they’re practically identical, the original of course being much better because Saki.

Anyway, hot mess, and clearly not one that is likely to be resolved to the satisfaction of anybody except Kaiju by Me’s producer. Theft in art is real and it sucks, especially when royalties might be involved, but (and I hate to project my own screwed-up country’s screwed-up relations of law and property and power onto any other, but) are the stakes high enough for anybody? I’m sure that Saki could entertain a lawsuit, at what cost? I doubt that anybody involved wants to get into protracted legal business. Even if Kaiju management were to privately acknowledge that the song is a rip-off, they’d probably make the same calculation as me — bringing a suit is basically a bluff because you can’t afford to fight for long, either.

Or maybe I’m wrong! I just woke up from a three-day nap, perhaps the entire affair has been decided and now all parties are financially whole and happy. This being the (s) extremely just world that it is (/s), it simply must be the case!

At least Saki seems to be making the best of it: