1.  Is this the best forum to ask?
 
2. In the recent Gaye vs. Williams case, which copyright law did they use to make their claim?
 
3. Would this apply to the Gaye suit?
Subject Matter and Scope of Copyright102 (b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.
(ref: http://copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html)
 
4. Is it illegal to create music "in the style of" a particular artist or group, like the Beach Boys emulating Jan and Dean?  Or was the above mentioned suit just a matter of borrowing "elements" of a particular song to make their song sound similar?
 
5. If I create a song "in the style of" a famous artist (where a listener might mistake me for the famous guy though my song is original to me), do I need to do anything to not get sued after selling a 1,000,000 records?
 
6. On another note... there is a law that states: "you CANNOT play a recording of the music or lyrics in public--even if you own the CD".  How do DJs get around this?
(ref: http://www.pdinfo.com/copyright-law/copyright-and-public-domain.php)

1: Yes
 
2: US Copyright Law
 
3: No. you can not protect the process
 
4: No. You can not copyright a style
 
5: No. See #4. Even if you intentionally try to sound like the artist in question..... No. that's not copyrightable
 
6. Yes.  US Copyright law.  Unless you pay the public performance royalties. All public performances of a copyrighted song are supposed to pay the royalties due for a public performance of the copyrighted material. The operative word there is "are supposed to pay".
 
Public domain generally means old songs or ones specifically placed by their authors into the PD, and the so called "fair use" part of the law doesn't apply to 99.9% of the instances where people think it does. Fair use is generally reserved for educational use in a classroom by a teacher using the song in a classroom lesson.
 
A book that used to be available...and might still be is called: This Business of Music.  It's a quasi legal-tome on the biz. Some dry reading but it covers the Copyright Law as it applies to most situations.
 
That's the answers in a nut shell. The explanations for each could be many paragraphs in length each.

Thanks GH! Is it OK if I dress up like said famous guy so listeners think I'm really him while playing my original-but sounds-like-his songs too? Hmmm. That might bring up a whole different set of laws...
 
"This Business of Music"
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/this-business-of-music-10th-edition-m-william-krasilovsky/1008370721?ean=9780823077236
 
http://www.amazon.com/Business-Marketing-Promotion-Revised-Updated/dp/0823077292

soens
Thanks GH! Is it OK if I dress up like said famous guy so listeners think I'm really him while playing my original-but sounds-like-his songs too? Hmmm. That might bring up a whole different set of laws...

What you do in the privacy of your bedroom is nothing to do with us...

https://books.google.com/books?id=FetCwyUjdFwC&pg=PA135&lpg=PA135&dq=elvis+sound+copyrighted?&source=bl&ots=AgZiGM8yoL&sig=-9PGZaUN5ig1mY-3M9UYchJ9U10&hl=en&sa=X&ei=zOtVVauGKoGcsAWvroGwDw&ved=0CDgQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=elvis%20sound%20copyrighted%3F&f=false
 

You could look at this another way..... There are so many laws on the books now that no matter what you are doing you're probably breaking one of them at any given moment.
 
Embrace the felon in you.

soens
Thanks GH! Is it OK if I dress up like said famous guy so listeners think I'm really him while playing my original-but sounds-like-his songs too? Hmmm. That might bring up a whole different set of laws...

 
Your own songs are protected under the copyright you own in them. The use of another's likeness is not a copyright issue at all. This falls under a hodgepodge of various state laws that have been used to  claim a right to the ownership, or the right to the exploitation, of one's person or identity or appearance. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights
 
 

soens
 3. Would this apply to the Gaye suit?
Subject Matter and Scope of Copyright102 (b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.
(ref: http://copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html)
 
6. On another note... there is a law that states: "you CANNOT play a recording of the music or lyrics in public--even if you own the CD".  How do DJs get around this?
(ref: http://www.pdinfo.com/copyright-law/copyright-and-public-domain.php)

3. Section 102 B is intended primarily to make it clear that Copyright is not to be used to protect an invention that is subject to Patent law. The finding in the Gaye suit was that there was a straight up copying of the protected musical work in which Gaye owned the copyright. There has been a lot of confusion in the press, and apparently in the jury as well, that what was infringed was somehow the style of the work. It was not. To reach the verdict that it reached, the jury was supposed to determine that a significant portion of the infringing song was identical to the Gaye song so that it represented copying without permission. Had I been on the jury, I would have voted differently. Had there been enough jurors like me, the suit would have failed.
 
6. US law is a bit more nuanced than prohibiting public play of music. Otherwise the guy with the ear-killer car stereo driving past my house would owe someone money. There are specific criteria for when public play does not infringe. 17 USC § 110 (5)(B) . The DJ's, for the most part, do not get around the performance rights issue at all--the rights are licensed and paid for. Typically the venue where the DJ plays, is charged a monthly fee for the right to play publicly play the works of the artists they represent by one of the performance rights organizations. Artists who do not contract with a PRO are effectively barred from collecting for play at public venues, not because they do not have a statutory right to claim payment, but because the mechanism for individually locating every public venue playing their works is impossibly complex. The venue would have a similarly complex task to determine if every performance on their premises was actually covered by a particular PRO license. The courts would be very unlikely to entertain claims by an unrepresented artist, and thus enmesh themselves in literally millions of lawsuits, when they can simply say you should have signed up with ASCAP, BMI, or SoundExchange.