The contestant? Alina Valuiska. The song? “TGIF — Thank God it’s Friday”. The violation? Copyright infringement.

Yes, that’s right folks. Junior Eurovision 2015 may be a contest for kids, but it is subject to some very adult rules. Today NTU announced that it has had to disqualify young Alina because the content of her song is not wholly original. The song’s authors — Pretty Lights and Anna Vakha — appear to have drawn some of the material from their back catalogue. As NTU said in a statement sent to wiwibloggs: “The music coincides with the music of the song ‘So Bright feat. Eligh’ written by Pretty Lights from the album ‘A Color Map of the Sun’ (2013).”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0eo7ci-nlE

As all you JESC fans know, this is in direct violation of paragraph 5 of the official guidelines for the National Selection for JESC 2015, which are published on the official NTU web site. They state that the compositions (lyrics and music) must not have been commercially released and made available to the public before 1 May 2015, and a child is the only rightsholder or co-owner of the rights of the song.

As you can hear below, the song’s start is identical to that of TGIF.

The jurors for this year’s contest (pictured at top) clearly have good ears: it was they who detected the copyright infringement. So three cheers for the composer and producer Mykhailo Nekrasov, actress and director Ruslana Pysanka, choreographer Anzhela Kopotia and the young singer Anastasiya Petryk.

Last year NTU disqualified a contestant whose song was actually a cover of a song from the popular series Hannah Montana.

Ukraine’s national selection will take place on August 22 at the beach complex Olmeca Plage.

Follow all of our Junior Eurovision news here

 

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Charles
Charles
8 years ago

Ukraine and its classic issues with songs being replaced or disqualified for whatever reason … can’t they just do things the proper way?

mawnck
mawnck
8 years ago

This article needs a correction. There was no copyright infringement here. Pretty Lights wrote the first song and is quite entitled to reuse and recycle it as he/she/they see fit. A “copyright infringement” would be an actual illegal act, and I don’t think you want to be accusing people of committing crimes when they didn’t.

It *IS* against the JESC rule, and NTU was right to disqualify the song, but that rule has nothing to do with copyright.

#MarioVision
#MarioVision
8 years ago

Really pity 4 her…
Ukraine’s NF is on 11 days..
I have listened a couple candidate songs already..
Well i really dunno if 2015 will be the year of Ukraine in Junior Vision..
We will see how it goes..

jr esc nl
jr esc nl
8 years ago

can we already hear the other ukrainian songs for the national final?