Don't Waste Culture, Recycle Art

Eddan Katz writes "Stepping up the copyright battle on behalf of artists, EFF is hosting an event tonight called Digital Mix at the Black Box in Oakland. Between laptop music, hip hop, and illegal art films, speakers will talk about the Creative Commons sampling license and EFF's "Let the Music Play" campaign."

Comments

Hmm...

[cultobill]

Not the most helpful EFF page I've seen. "Yeah, party. Here's who is coming"

The Box site, however:
On July 25th, from 8pm till 2am, the Electronic Frontier Foundation will host a night of music, art, and conversation to celebrate digital culture. Hosted at the Oakland Box in downtown Oakland, this special BayFF will bring up-and-coming artists of electronica, digital film, and illegal art together with leaders from the cyber-rights movement. Lawsuits and legislation have become the weapons of choice for dealing with file-sharing and cultural recycling("sampling"); come out and discover what all the hype is about. Between laptop music, hip hop, and industrial performances, you will hear from people who are fighting to protect new forms of expression and cultural distribution from the attacks of the entertainment industry. This is an all-ages event.

Re:What is an illigal art film?

[mkro]

Basically, it means using images/music/trademarks without permission to make a new, standalone movie.

Check out http://www.illegal-art.org/video/ for some good examples. Some are crap, some are funny, but I found in particular "Spin" a bit interesting.

Re:What is an illigal art film?

[cybercyph]

illegal art is art that, according to this site, has sparked a law suit. examples are parodies of corporate logos, uses of trade marked charecters (like mickey or spiderman or barbie), and the like

Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Dwnloads

[MichaelCrawford]

You can avoid being sued or arrested if you download legal music instead of getting your tunes from the p2p networks. You also don't need to deal with Digital Rights Management.

Many unsigned and independent musicians provide free downloads of their music on their websites as a way to attract more fans. Here's some from my friend Oliver Brown for example. Many such musicians, while relatively unknown, are as good as any major label band and certainly an improvement over the pablum they serve up on ClearChannel.

You can find many more examples in my new article:

• Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads

The article also explores some of the historical and legal issues behind copyright, and suggests steps the file traders can take to make file sharing legal.

If you're a musician who offers downloads of your music, I can link to your band's website from the article if you give my article a reciprocal link. Please follow the instructions given here

And yes I have been posting this to Slashdot repeatedly for several days, because I think it's important for people to understand there's a way to get quality, free music without breaking any laws, while at the same time benefiting the many talented, hardworking musicians who aren't signed with a major label.

Re:On behalf of the artists?

[meta-monkey]

Well, I've checked your posting history, and it doesn't appear you're a troll, so I'll just assume you're uninformed.

Creative Commons is like an open source art advocate. They do NOT promote copyright infringement. What they do is provide you with licenses you can attach to your art which give other artists select rights to use your art. For example, they have a license that allows others to use your work so long as they attribute it to you. Or they can use it for only non-commercial purposes. Or they can use it, but just can't edit it. Or they can't prevent other people from editing it after they do. Or any combination thereof. Essentially, it's the GPL for art.

Now, if you don't want somebody using your art without your permission, then don't use a Creative Commons license. Stick with plain old copyright, and charge for your art. If, however, you'd like people to be able to use it to create works of their own, and share those works with others, then, by all means, check out Creative Commons.

There are in fact legal p2p networks

[MichaelCrawford]

The problem with most p2p networks is that you don't know the legality of what you're getting. If you download a song from an artist you've never heard of, how do you know they gave their permission for their file to be on the network?

But there are p2p networks for downloading legal music. Some of them use digital signatures to authenticate the legality of the files. Here's the ones I've found so far:

• Furthur Network
• konspire[2b]
• Monotonik's BitTorrents - zip files with ~300 MB of MP3s

I talk about all of these in my article.

Free as in Free Speech Art

[jeremie_z_]

take a look at this Free Art License based on the GPL, but aimed at covering the Copyleft distribution terms of any artform.

it's the only one to make a difference between an original artwork and its copies, which may seem irellevant applied to digital art, but allows "real" physical artworks to be used and reused as GPLed code.

here is the Free Art License,the translation of the original License Art Libre
and the website in french.

the license is in perpetual evolution.and more and more people use it.

i can't resist to some autopromotional example of FALed works with my own personnal website ;)

njoy'n'share!

That's what libel is for

[jcsehak]

Your reply is a very smart one, basically showing the one instance that can make a sampled riff detrimental to a performer's character.

But think about it a bit further. Isn't that what libel suits are for? If I used a bit of a U2 song in my own nazi song (we're talking for instance here, I damn sure don't write nazi songs), and it made it seem like Bono was speaking in favor of nazis, I could rightfully be sued for libel. On the other hand, I believe I should be able to a simple guitar riff in a pro-nazi song, and it should be perfectly legal.

Yes, it sucks. But I think you have to take the bad with the good. Just like I think people have a right to say "You stupid kike" (though if you get your ass kicked, don't come crying to me), I also think that if you're making an artistic statement, you should be free to do so without getting sued. Even if you're a racist rat bastard.

One caveat: I believe that an advertisement is, by definition, not an artistic statement. Advertisers should have no rights, except what the artists give (sell) them. After thinking about it for a long while (really), I believe that propaganda is a form of advertisement. So while sampling should be perfectly legal, using part of my song in a pro-nazi (for instance) song should be considered propaganda, and thereby, illegal. Yeah, it's a slippery slope, but that's what juries are for, right? Does that make sense? What do you think?