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I don't know if stolen is exatly the right word. It's an old Public Enemy track. I think Duran Duran also covered it at some point in the mid 90's.

Remember how cool those collapsing credit card company buildings looked at the end of Fight Club? Well, the personal info copyright violators have flipped the script on us. They're profiting mightily, while trashing our identities. Time to fight the power.

you're thinking of Flava Flav of Public Enemy

As much as I prefer the correct -our spelling, you have to go with the Cold Lamper for the final word.

I always thought that if I was a musician, all my music would be GPL:

Public Enemy has been doing stuff like this. Revolverlution was kind of open source. They released some tracks on the net, with some other hooks that artists could use in remixes. (ftp source repository). People sent them remixes (patches) and they put the best ones on the album.

They're one of the biggest samplers of music, and one of the most sampled. They had a song Caught, Can I Get A Witness where they're in a fake court over a sample (and I wanted to be the first with that link, somebody else beat me to it, I modded him up for it too). They has some issues with a record being released, couldn't get it on disc so they released as MP3s. Label hated that, so they broke with their label and went on to AtomicPop where the album was downloadable for $8 (tho AtomicPop has since died).

As for the issue of whether sampling should be legal, I say yes. Check out the Beastie Boys album Paul's Boutique to hear sampling as an art form at it's peak.

Paul's Boutique is good, but Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back is excellent. It is a perfect example of how hip-hop sampling can be an artistic collage of hundreds of different samples, as opposed to the mainstream rap process of "looping", or playing someone else's track (be it guitar, bass, drum or entire song) and rapping over it. Check out PE's site here.

There is also a great issue of Stay Free Magazine (The Copyright Issue) that covers many different angles of art and copyright. It contains a brilliant interview with Public Enemy's Chuck D as well as some good articles on the public domain, Disney and the Sonny Bono Copyright extenstion act. The issue as a whole is essential reading for all those concerned with intellectual property and intellectual freedom, and I highly recommend it.

First of all, whether or not an observer can tell how many matches are in a matchbox is immaterial--nay, completely unrelated to the fact that there is a particular number of matches in the box, a precise number that can be determined.

Secondly, time needs not be exact for most people most of the time, but perhaps you can recognize that there are certain applications, especially scientific and technological, for which a measure of exactitude is quite necessary.

Thirdly, I would venture to say that the society depicted in 1984 would rather that people be unable to tell what time it was.

Lastly, all these fitful worries are meaningless, because my man Flavor Flav always knows what time it is. Word.

Well, kinda anyway. It was called Revolverlution. They put some tracks out, including the title track and a lot of other old loop tracks that you could sample and mix. There was some deadline, and at the end, Chuck D. and Flav listened to all the tracks and took a couple of them on the album. Not a bad disk, worth getting. If for no other reason the track "Gotta Give The Peeps What They Need" was banned from MTV for the the words "free Mumia and H. Rap Brown". MTV said no, too political. PE said no editing, it goes out as is. Then MTV said "well, if you cut out the word 'free' then it's cool". Chuck said you gotta be crazy telling a black man he can't use the word free, and it never will get aired.

They're very comfortable with the online stuff. They released their previous 2 albums online. They had a remix album called "Bring the Noise 2000". Def Jam didn't want to release it, didn't think there was a market. So Chuck and Flav said "hey we did the work already, let them hear the music" and released it on MP3, some server somewhere. Def Jam said no, said "even though we're not gonna release it, we OWN you, and you can't release it". Chuck got pissed, didn't like being owned by anyone, pulled the tracks (though a lot of people including me already had the tracks) and released the song "Swindler's Lust" with some pretty harsh elbows thrown at Russel Simmon's chest. This track and a few others got compiled to "There's a Poison Going On" which was released on MP3. Was $8 for a download, $10 if you wanted them to send you a disk - Chuck autographed those. Problem is, this was released on AtomicPop.com, which has since gone under. Was weird having an album you could get from Chuck and Flav for $8 (or like mine, for $10 with autograph) with all the money going to the artists, being sold at Virgin Megastore for $17.99, with maybe a buck going to them. No autograph even, such a gyp.

Check out http://www.BringTheNoise.com/ for some of the history and some live rap feeds. http://www.PublicEnemy.com/ well, for Public Enemy.

I got so much trouble on my mind
I refuse to lose
Here's your ticket
Hear the drummer get wicked
The crew to you to push the back to Black
Attack so I sat and japped
Then slapped the Mac(Intosh)
Now I'm ready to mike it
(You know I like it)

It's written exactly like that in the liner notes too.

FWIW, Chuck D has gone around helping indie rapper set up Mac-based ProTools studios for quite some time.

"Who gives a fuck about a goddamn Grammy?"
- Public Enemy, Terminator X to the Edge of Panic, 1988

"Caught, now in court 'cuz I stole a beat, this is a samplin' sport [ ... ] ?" - Public Enemy, "Caught, can I get a witness?", 1988.

("Caught" was specifically about RIAA lawsuits and the sampling controversy of the early 90s. Way to go, RIAA, your policies on sampling nearly killed rap and early electronica/techno in its tracks. How much of your revenue stream do you owe to those genres now? And how much do you get from gouging people who still try to sample?)

Side note to Chuck D - if you ever this, working the guitar riff from KMFDM's "Godlike" into "She Watch Channel Zero" was one of the weirdest, and coolest, things I've ever heard. Loved it.

> This is what I see happening if this bill gets passed:
>
> -Widespread civil disobeience to the degree that somehow, sometime, they finally take notice.

"Chillin' in my crib, cold video-dubbin',
FBI warnin', huh, don't mean nothin',
They call that shit a crime, yo, that shit's a joke
Hit 'record' on my dope remote."
- Ice-T, ca. 1990.

>- A wide and growing division of artists from the mainstream, where the Net finally becomes a mainstream place to purchase music or a secondary "rogue" recording industry develops that is more sympathetic to consumers rights and wants. I'm not a huge rap fan, but I have to admit they've known about RIAA and MPAA from Day One.

Agreed on both your outcomes. Is it any wonder why Chuck D kicks the ass of RIAA every chance he gets to testify?

Do we really need to carry this much tecnology? My thought that is that its too much for one unit to handle. The batteries probably leak every now and then. I want my watch to tell me the time when I look at it. The should be no battery - the winding mechanism was good enough for my grandfather and should last as long as possible: several lifetimes. It should be accurate to within 2 minutes a day. If I want the day-of-week/date/alarm/extreme accuracy/stopwatch/hourly chime, I'll get a calander, a wind-up clock, a chronograph, a stopwatch, and a grandfather clock. And dammit, if I wanted something on my wrist, I'll go buy a bracelet.

I thought Swindler's Lust had a good hook to it. And besides being a good song, it was cool that PE offered it as a free mp3 download from their official web site, at a time when everyone else was getting their panties in a bunch over that new "internet mp3 thing" that was "stealing money from the artists". Besides, it was a good enough pun on "Schindler's List" to get the Anti-Defamation League to denounce them. Waahh!

http://www.publicenemy.com/lyrics/lyrics/911-is-a- joke.php

Here's a history of his Pro-Napster views.

Here's a history of his Pro-Napster views.

(Torvalds) also says that record labels are reacting so vigorously to Napster not out of concern for artists but because they are threatened by new technology. "And then they have the gall to use the holy word 'copyright' to try to maintain their slipping control," Torvalds says. "That, I consider to be immoral. Go, Metallica. Die, RIAA."

I think this is a very interesting comparison - these artists are established, and they're using copyright law to their advantage, which it's tough to fault them for. But no one involved in the lawsuit seems to be addressing the question of whether this system of distribution is healthy for artists and music as a *whole*; instead, a few rock stars are complaining that they're getting robbed. Well, yes, they probably are, under current law. But maybe they should take a step back and recognize that the primary beneficiaries of the system they're defending are the RIAA, and NOT the artists. Bearing that in mind, they should maybe think real hard about whether they want to do their part to continue propping up the system.

I'd like to think that Limp Bizkit, Chuck D, and some others are doing it for that reason.

-brennan

If anyone is interested, the actual lyrics to the song can be found here.

Anyway, my interpretation of the lyrics is that Chuck D is sick of industry moguls in general making huge profits through unfair recording contracts with black musicians.

The Anti-Defamation Leagues's press release detailing their concerns can be found here.

http://www.publicenemy.com/