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Mashed-Up Music
An unnamed reader submits: "The New York Times is running this article (also available here) about "mash-ups:" songs created by digitally synchronizing instrumental tracks with vocal tracks from two (or more) existing songs. Often the source songs are wildly disparate, and the result is frequently better sounding than you might first expect. Who knew that Christina Aguilera mixes well with The Strokes or that Nirvana and Destiny's Child make a good combo?" This is an interesting answer to arguments that online music sharing is nothing but theft.
How is it theft?
With "traditional" filesharing, you can argue that if you download Christina whats-her-name's latest album then you're not going to buy it and therefore Miss Aguilera is losing out on the 15 cents that the RIAA will begrudgingly pay her.
But the record companies are never going to release Christina Aguilera mixed with The Strokes, so who is losing anything? For there to be a theft, there has to be a loss.
Moulin Rouge featured a lot of very interesting repurposes and so called "mish mashes" of music. My favourite was the "Nirvana/Can-Can Techno Remix".
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
No, it's illegal distribution of a copyrighted work. Theft involves the removal of property from its owner. The lay term "intellectual property" isn't legally the same sort of thing as material property.
Leave aside wether it is theft or not, let me indicate why this activity is illegal.
Copyright. Copyright is a right given to the author to allow them to control how thier work is used, with the intention that (but not restricted to) the rights granted to them will promote production of further works.
There means that, if you wish to use an authors work , then you have to get thier permission. They can say no. It's that simple. Consider the GPL, which relies on copyright. It is not acceptable for a company to take GPL code, add a few bits, and then sell it on. The same applies to musical works.
Granted, there is the clause of fair use. However, fair use is inherently limited, either in scope (to a few friends prehaps), or in extent (a 5 second sample, or a shot quote from a book). With my understanding, fair use doesn _not_ extend to the works outlined above.
(Consider also, that there is more than just the perfromer, there is also the writer to be considered, in terms of claims to copyright).
Just because something has artistic merit, doesn't mean that distributing someone else's musical creations (albeit in an altered form) without permission is not theft. It's still theft. It's just artistic theft.
Well, I can't be sure if you're serious when you use the word "theft", but let's entertain that idea for a moment.
1. The original hasn't been touched (literally, the master tapes are intact at the studio), and "clean" originals can still be produced, so no theft has taken place.
2. The song has been combined with another song, creating a new and different work. So if someone downloads a copy they don't actually have the original songs. Hard for me to see that as theft.
3. The constitution says we must "promote progress", and suggests that exclusive rights to writings and discoveries is a way to do that. Since creating something new and interesting (both as entertainment [it sounds good] and as social commentary [MP3s are not evil]) must be part of progress, this activity seems to indicate that progress can be promoted without giving these authors exclusive rights over their writings in this particular case.
Now if someone started claiming he was affiliated with one of the artists, or claimed he WAS one of the artists, it would be fair to argue that he's taking away attention, business, and reputation that should rightfully go to the original artist. But that's another kettle o' fish altogether!
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Mashes are using tracks as if they were "object trouvés" (found objects) and blending them in an audio collage.
:-)
This is an accepted technique in the visual arts. It does not produce great art. Its not meant to. It borrows from others to juxtrapose and blend and possibly morph in order to communicate something beyond the original pieces.
Its should and most likely will be granted the same acceptance in audio art. The concept is identical. Its an audio collage, a reassemblage of sound tracks with tempo and/or frequency shifting to create a new wortk of art.
The "Art of Noise" originally used audio samples of any machinery whatsoever and frequency shifted them to achieve different notes, assigned them to a MIDI keyboard and "played" an electric drill or a dripping faucett (evident in some versions of "Paraniomia".) Nobody sued them then.
I know that the "RIAA Bitch" is probably livid about somebody daring to use any tracks without shelling out money to the RIAA but she'll just have to get over it, make deals with the minor artists who are doing it and try to co-opt them into the xxAA's system by finding somebody who is willing to put out CDs of the stuff.
Just wait until the technology advances enough and some kid using a Mac does the same thing with a couple of movie classics (peeling the set from one and the action from another and the characters from a third. Imagine Jet Li as Audrey Hepburn in the "Philadelphia Story" re-enacting the "Tombstone" shoot-out scene set in turn of the century Vienna in Freud's office.)
Jack Valenti or his xxAA successor should go absolutely ballistic.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I believe every geek in the world has mixed "Christina" with some "strokes" atleast once.
Okay, let's follow this logic using the print media.
I take Stephen King's Carrie and Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October, and and I "mash" it together so that it is arguably a new and different work.
The originals haven't been touched (literally, Stephen and Tom have the master manuscripts), and "clean" originals can still be published, so no plagiarism has taken place.
But has plagiarism occurred? I argue yes, and the definition of plagiarism certainly helps my argument: to commit literary theft : present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source.
Now, I submit that, if borrowing text is theft, then so is borrowing musical samples.
We can quibble over definitions, and the greater need of society, and your rights to do what you want with anything that you have purchased, but you are still a thief if you deprive me of anything that is rightfully mine, and this includes depriving me of profits from any of my creations.
If Stephen King and Tom Clancy want to have their works "mashed" together, then it is their right to decide whether this occurs, and their right to the resultant profits.
Ditto musical creations and musical artists.
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