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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."
If the art they are showing is truly illegal this seems a fantastic way to get thrown in the clink. If its not then this becomes the work of meerly pretentious posers.
If I buy your album, sample 30 seconds of one song, and release my own album featuring your sample, how exactly are you hurt? Were you planning on recording my album at some point and now I've stolen future sales from you? Do you honestly think someone will say "eh, why should I buy that album when I can get 30 seconds of it by buying this one?"
As an artist I would be fucking happy if someone out there found inspiration in my work. Believe it or not art did exist before copyright. Copyright just makes it so people end up making art for the wrong reasons.
KLF sampled stage noise from a live album by The Doors. The Freestylers sampled a small riff by Van Halen, but got no permission to use it or Van Halen wanted too much money - no big deal, they replaced the riff and still got a #1 hit. BTW, the illegal mix can be found on the net. Fact of the matter is, even without a sampler, lots of music just sounds cloned, OTOH, ingenious use of samples can fabricate completely new music - but you can't produce music that way because today you'd need to find out about a gazillion copyright ownerships and get all the permissions and negotiate with every artist, label, lawyer and whatnot who owns a fraction of a copyright (copyrights are frequently distributed amongst several parties due to contracts). So basically that's why such art is illegal - it can't be produced legally for a reasonable amount of money. You want to get asked for permission every time somebody wants to sample you? What about a system where artists can pool their music, making it available for sampling, and get a fraction of the profit of the derived art; much like the way broadcasting fees are collected and distributed. Not that i think it'll happen; once people are famous enough to actually get sampled, they will like to play power games and "control" how their beautiful music can be used. And i think that usually the influence of a certain sample on the chart success of a song is vastly overestimated by the owner of the sample. Due to vanity, probably.
Or SOME TYPES of artists. Since the "right" to sample is frequently just one artist infringing on the "right" of another artist to protect their artistic work.
Protect it from what? No harm is done to an artist when another samples his song. There is literally no bad that can come of it. Clearing samples is nothing more than one more way for major labels to squeeze some more money out of the industry.
Using samples is an art form. Back in the day, when things like "Paul's Boutique" came out, it was this fresh new way of making music. And it got squashed by the labels. NOT the artists, mind you. The labels. Because they said, "Woah, waitaminnit. We could be charging people for this and making serious bank." Never once, and I can pretty much guarantee this, never once did an exec say "I feel this depreciates the integrity of the original work." Because a) it doesn't, and b) it's free advertising (assuming the samples were credited). So why would they throw away free advertising? They found a better business model that conflicted with it - sample clearance.
Tycho from Penny Arcade talked about this, in regard to the whole American Greetings fiasco. He said:
"I can't even express concepts without leveraging some organization's coveted intellectual property. In the case of the now infamous strip, it wouldn't have made sense to use anything but a commonly known product. So now that these Goddamn characters and concepts and products are completely intrinsic to our language and thought processes, they are, in fact, inextricable, they can effectively police speech."
Sonofabitch, he's right. They can now police fucking speech. They pour loads of cash into ad campaigns to make their products, services, songs, an inextricable part of the American vernacular, and then they tell you what you can do with them.
Fuck that. If you don't want someone sampling your song - if it's that precious to you - don't release it to the public. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Well, you can now, but it's fucked up.
Clearing samples is not all that hard, it's done all the time.
TheAwfulTruth, you ignorant slut. Do you have any idea how goddam expensive it is to clear a sample? No, of course you don't. And you obviously have no clue how much of a pain in the ass it is. Remember Odelay? The grammy-winning album by Beck? I read an interview with him, he said something to the effect of "clearing samples was such a headache on that album, I don't think I'll ever sample again." And that's a guy with a MAJOR label behind him, funding him.
Please, don't try to tell me that it's every Joe's right to use my music for their own personal gain.
Their own personal gain? So if sampling was made legal, and all the sudden that fresh new art form that was squashed by nothing but greedy corporations, exploded onto the scene again, and wave after wave of innivative music came into existence, the only people it would benefit would be the artists? Yeah, because no one actually listens to music, and just enjoys it.
c-hack.com |
Uh... exactly. Someone sampling your rift (sic) doesn't in any way harm you. If anything it will make the listener curious as to where that killer beat came from and cause him/her to seek out the original.
Just because you think you're the first person in history to play six notes in a particular sequence (and btw, you're wrong) doesn't mean that everyone else needs to give you cash just to make music. If that were the case the "inventor" of the I, V, IV chord pattern would need to be paid fees by 95% of the musicians out there.
songs with rifts have problems... you mean riffs
Why should the fruit of your creativity and your labor be used without your permission to promote people, ideas and movements you loath?
Why not? Remember when Jefferson said that creative works were like fire? Able to be spread, and to illuminate the originator equally as much as later persons who partake of it.
This argument is pretty foolish. It isn't for the artist to control such matters any more than it should be possible for Ford to tell people that they mustn't sell used cars to Jews in respect for Henry Ford's antisemitism. Anyone should be able to use art. If it couldn't, the usefulness of copyrights would plummet so dramatically that to grant them would be utter folly.
Please consider an author's Moral Rights under the Berne Convention
I don't believe that they exist. I certainly do not and never will respect them or adhere to them unless by coincidence I personally desire to what what the artist wanted me to do anyway.
And there is definitely no REASON for moral rights to exist. It's tripe. Please, tell me why _I_ should (as a person, or as an artist; I'm both) respect an artist's desire for moral rights. What's in it for me?
Ultimately, I feel that if enough people want to sample, they should be able to do so legally as much as they please. Perhaps some touchy artists will be upset with this and abandon their labors. If they do, but the world is better off for being able to sample than it was with those artists, then I would be happy to be rid of them. Only where the world is better off the other way would I accept a ban on sampling. And it still might seem suspicious to me.
What artists want is pretty irrelevant IMO. I don't really pay it any mind. Especially given how hostile many artists are to the society that must be sweet-talked into generously granting a copyright at its leisure. It's the right policy to adopt, again both as a person and as an artist.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
First of all, there are more than two sides to this story. Why do so many assume this fight is between the "I should get all my music for free" crowd and "everyone is infringing the RIAA's rights, so the RIAA should be allowed complete control over the internet and all computers!"
I can't even see where the EFF is saying people should take music for free. At least not in the linked urls. Their "Let the Music Play" page says: "The problem is that there is no adequate system in place that allows music lovers access to their favorite music while compensating artists and copyright holders."
The Digital mix party mostly seems to be about introducing new artists and sampling with the Creative Commons license. There appears to be some "illegal art" crap, though I don't see where it says what kind--the guy might just be using company logos to make a political point. Though I found this statement at illegal-art.org interesting:
I don't really care if some piker doesn't want me to sample his work. Fine, I won't use it except to respond to his comments and demonstrate how stupid he is. In fact, this is one of the major reasons we have fair use.[1] If you're not allowed to quote excerpts or show samples of a work, it is quite difficult to comment on it.
There are plenty of people creating, you just don't want to see it. Why don't you walk out of the RIAA's castle for a few minutes. Maybe you'll learn something.
Uh oh. I just sampled part of your post in my reply. Does this mean I should be arrested?
[1] Real fair use, not the "nothing is fair use" stance of the RIAA nor the "everything is fair use" stance of warez hounds.