And you're still confusing references with repetition. Copying a building exactly is indeed a stupid, which is why no one does it.

Copying music closely is less stupid, which is why you can find cover bands in pubs all over the planet, and tribute bands who make a reasonable if not very interesting living reproducing familiar music for nostalgic audiences.

Those experiences certainly have a financial value, even if they're not necessarily at the creative cutting edge.

If there wer no original creative source for them to copy, that financial value wouldn't exist, which suggests there may in fact be rather more happening than a rancid and out of date attempt to copy the sheet music business model.

The Jackie O pill box hat is a silly argument, because it's a mass produced item of clothing, set in a market with a very different culture - fashion is based almost exclusively on top down imitation of celebrity for the sake of it, with no other content - and a very different business model.

No one is going to create a new music culture until people start being more realistic about what makes music valuable. Currently we have an idiotic industry on one side which believes that it's all about a product which might as well be indistinguishable from sandwiches or machine bolts as far as the execs are concerned, and equally idiotic freetards on the other who believe that copying files and using them as the background to a shaky Youtube video of someone having a painful accident makes them heroes of the imminent Open Cultural Revolution.

Neither side understands what music is, what it's for, or why paying musicians to be original might be a good idea.

Until that changes music will continue to be boring - which it surely is at the moment - and we'll entertain ourselves with exciting stories about lawsuits rather than exciting and original creativity.