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Court Rules Against Unlicensed Sampling
An anonymous reader writes "Looks like there is no room at all for *any* sampling of "commercially protected" music. According to the open and future-looking judges, 'Get a license or do not sample. We do not see this as stifling creativity in any significant way.'" As the article puts it, this includes "minor, unrecognisable snippets of music." The decision was in the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Bad news for drum n bass, gabber, etc..
So now John Cage's estate will be able to sue anyone who has any amount of silence in their music, since it could be argued that they'd sampled his piece 4' 33". OK, its a stretch, but with decisions like this, who knows?
OK, I admit that I'm not a fan of the the current "mix" and "sampled" genre of music, but to me, it seems like there's not a whole lot of artistic innovation in mixing together stuff that's already been created. Yes, some will slam me for that statement, but how about coming up with something brand new or evolutionary instead of rehashing and recycling old music?
Is anyone else getting tired of seeing the use of, or the slight modification of "retro" stuff being pawned off as "new"?
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
so if you sample a "C" note, and only a "C" note on a particular instrument, does that mean everyone who ever recorded a song with that note and that instrument gets to sue you since the actual original work is, by definition, unrecognizable?
I wonder what's going to happen to advertising, now.
Get off my launchpad!
And the court thinks this decision will not stile creativity? WTF!?!
This will just improve people adeptness at creating sounds and samples and sharing them.
Perhaps someone with motivation will pull together an audio oriented site for GPL samples, tracks and MP3's
Requests for vocal instruments would go like this, here are some lyrics, here is the backing, sing it.
Then you could rate musicians, singers, etc, or form virtual bands...
like band-camp, only without the flutes...
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Maybe I've missed something obvious here. If its minor and unrecognisable, how will the copyright owner know its happened?
Personally, I'm entirely behind the idea that if your sample is recognisable as someone else's song, then you've got to license it. If you can't tell, then you've obviously done something new with the sound and its fair game.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
The article mentions the sampling of a 3-note riff. While "Name that Tune" does indicate such things are recognizable in the right context, I fear this means any musician who happens to use a short riff that happened to be in some obscure song will suffer too.
I mean, if I do a guitar solo and it happens that 3 notes used several times sound like, oh, 'cat scratch fever' or 'smoke on the water' (same riff, by the way), am I violating ownership?
And this will kill jazz... no more nods to other works in solos?
Next up: any writer who uses 3 words in sequence that appeared in a previous writer's book is now violating that original author's intellectual property and will be sued.
Worse, the article's 'stolen' 3-note riff is only 6 pieces of information-- 3 pitches plus 3 rhythms. They'd downsampled and changed the rhythm, so we're saying anything that is _similar_ to a known bit is at risk.
While the article mentions they'd sampled, I worry that original recreation will be hit with the same law, i.e. getting a session guitarist to redo a riff in a different octave with different phrasing will be seen the same as 'sampling'.
A.
Oh, they've made it precisely difficult enough so that automatically suing every independent music creator is an easier route, and for the few who don't settle, let the courts prove them wrong if the independent artist finds they're somehow wealthy enough to fight with the RIAA's lawyers.
Naturally, the RIAA is fine with this.
Random and weird software I've written.
Use a computer to compose a song with all possible 3 note combinations in the popular note range, and then you have both copyrighted every 3 note combination, and broke all previous copyrights.
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Pootie Tang is the copyright holder to the silent track.
Marlin 0.6 Sample editor is out Great timing! :)
Imagine the young artists and DJs that we will never hear because they can't afford to clear the rights to release their first album. The idea that this high cost of entry into what are already accepted music genres won't stifle innovation is stupid. The field just got closed to those with money and attorneys.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
"I can name that song in three notes."
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
That fucker George Clinton is suing over a 15 YEAR OLD SONG? One that samples three notes, transposed and looped?
/. readers going "DUUUUUUUUUUH" right now).
/.
Wow, I didn't have any respect for him before. I certainly have even less now.
Apparently fair use doesn't exist anymore. (I can imagine some
To hell with them. It's getting to the point that, to fix the system, you'd have to abolish ALL copyright and start from scratch.
Or does anyone have any ideas to fix the system? Any ideas that are actually good? Thought so.
AND WHY THE FUCK IS THIS NOT FRONT PAGE? It's bad when you read something IN YOUR FUCKING LOCAL PAPER before seeing it on
The decision is binding only on federal courts in the 6th Circuit. Other courts may look at the decision as persuasive, but are not required to follow the precedent. The big decision, if the case goes that far, is the Supreme Court's ruling.
I know "when the levee breaks" by led zeppelin, and instantly recognize it from the first few milliseconds of the first kick drum. I can pick out samples from songs that are very short, and tell you where they came from.
In my own music, I recognize every note, inflection, accent etc.
Trust me, whats not recognizable to a judge or you, is recognizable to me, or most others who spend 2 months putting a song together. You get intimate with it.
If someone takes part of my song, and doesn't pay me, I would get a little upset. It's possible to spend two days of time, just getting a kick drum, and the associated compression, eq etc right. I shouldn't be paid for that when someone lifts it?
Come on. How would you like it if your boss just didn't pay you for 2 days of work. You'd get a little upset, especially if he made a few million dollars from it.
I have absolutely no mercy or compassion for music stealers, and that's exactly what they are.
l8,
AC
Would this ruling stifle those types of works, too?
Method of processing duck feet
Ok, I just wrote a song and have submitted a violation of the work. My song is every key on the piano played in staggered sequence. ANY SONG THAT INVOLVES A PIANO NOW VIOLATES MY WORK. Chords on the piano are a violation as they are several of MY samples overlapped. My fee is a mere 1 cent per sample. Thank you.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
I can't believe a judge used the term pirate instead of copyright violation. I guess I should be glad he didn't call it stealing. I thought lawyers were much more careful with using the correct words, especially judges in rulings.
'SBEMAIL!' is better than a goat!!
and what safeguards are in place to stop you or someone like you from saying "Oh yeah, that's mine" and the flurry of frivolous lawsuits?
||:|::
...but I think this is OK. Does anyone remember "Funky Cold Medina" by Tone-Loc? He basically ripped of "Jamie's Crying" by Van Halen and made a bundle of cash off of it. I remember reading an interview with Eddie Van Halen where Van Halen said he did not authorize the use of his song or got paid any royalties from it. Same with "Ice Ice Baby" by Vanilla Ice, although I think Vanilla Ice eventually had to pay royalties to Queen and David Bowie.
Now, I think a 5 second sample is OK, like what the Beastie Boys and Public Enemy used to do, but taking an instantly recognizable riff and using it repeatedly without authorization, making a ton of money off of it without paying royalties just seems wrong to me.
Come on people--this is f*cked up. Sampling a few seconds of somebody else's song, even if it *is* recognizable, and even if it is TheReallyHardPartThatTookYouTenYearsToMaster (c) is not a crime and should not require your permission.
There is a slippery slope here. What are we going to make illegal next? Collages?
J'aime mieux les méchants que les imbéciles, parce qu'ils se reposent. -- Alexandre Dumas
> If someone takes part of my song, and doesn't pay me, I would get a little upset.
> It's possible to spend two days of time, just getting a kick drum, and the associated compression, eq etc right.
> I shouldn't be paid for that when someone lifts it?
>
> Come on. How would you like it if your boss just didn't pay you for 2 days of work.
> You'd get a little upset, especially if he made a few million dollars from it.
When most people do "2 days of work", they get paid for "2 days of work". Once.
Yet some people think that it is their god-given right to be paid again and again for the same "2 days of work".
> I have absolutely no mercy or compassion for music stealers, and that's exactly what they are.
With this attitude, don't be surprised when others will have no mercy or compassion for you.
Can Wierd Al still parody it, using sample from it? Can I sample some music in a auditory report I do for a class?
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Some lawyers are, like other practitioners of other fields of work, quite skilled in their misuse of language. Consider the number of lawyers that use the phrase "intellectual property" which hurts us in at least two ways: it helps secure the validity of turning a commons into ownable chunks (by structuring the debate so we accept the property model before we've debated it), and tries to mash together a bunch of disparate laws as though they share more in common than they differ. I can understand why lawyers would do this; lawyers benefit from more lawsuits. The more things viewed as property, the more disputes there will be over ownership, license, and control of that "property". But at a recent community wireless conference, I heard one of the speakers say he wanted to do away with the term "commons" while he had no problem making his point in terms of "intellectual property". The conference was aiming to municipalize wireless access to the Internet, precisely the opposite of turning spectrum use into private property.
Digital Citizen
10. Speaking out of monotone
9. Playing any musical instrument which emmits notes(recognizeable or not.)
8. Singing along with the radio.
7. Playing our mp3's backward to get the message.
6. Listening to seashells, actually I think the shell gets sued for this, but we maybe called as a witness.
5. Makeing raindrop noises
4. Humming the tune of a popular commercial
3. Chewing with our mouth open
2. Singing the National Anthem
1. Singing in the shower
the problem here will be enforcement. The fact of the matter is, speaking as somebody with an *intimate* knowledge of sampling technology and techniques, that a sample used creatively enough is not recognizable. Most samples that I use are cut to ehll, processed through like 5 different effects, and then used melodically. There's no way that anybody will be able to tell where I got that sample from, what it was, or (most importantly) that I couldn't have re-created that .5 seconds of guitar drone myself. Much less prove it in court. They couldn't even perform a halfway convincing analysis of the sound without a complete master of the song.
They will never stop until somebody makes the
that our judges are smoking crack.
In all seriousness... I recently made a proof-of-concept audio CD which contained every possible 16 bit audio sample- arranged linearly, and then chaotically. I'm going to be rich!
http://siokaos.org/
If its minor and unrecognisable, wouldnt it match millions of songs?
..is the artist in question (evolution control committee.. good stuff..)
If it's that unrecognizeable and creative, why'd you need to sample it instead of making something new?
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
OK, I admit that I'm not a fan of the the current "mix" and "sampled" genre of music, but to me, it seems like there's not a whole lot of artistic innovation in mixing together stuff that's already been created.
I don't think you understand what people use samplers for on a day to day basis. My favourite sampler has less than a second of sampling time, and is limited to six unbalanced analogue channels of 12-bit mono.
With less than a second of shitty, crunchy audio, I obviously can't sample pop choruses with it, so what do I use it for? Individual drum hits, mainly, sampled from old funk drum solos or whatever. It's like a drum machine where I can choose the sounds, providing I don't mind them playing back with an evil crunchy patina.
I can understand the law wanting to stop people sampling recognisable choruses, basslines etc. That's fair enough, and there's no creativity being trampled on there IMO. But what about people like me who want to sample an unrecognisable distorted version of a half second kick drum hit for an original arrangement?
Have a listen to some of the original drum arrangements here that have been built out of literally two seconds of James Brown and a reonant filterbank and you'll get the idea. A good example on that page is Equinox - Acid Rain (Breakage Mix), at about 1:30 through the mp3.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
maybe what is needed is the musical equivalent of the GPL - artists can release collections of notes, chords, sounds, whole songs, etc under this and make them available for sampling.
this would be especially useful for someone eanting to program their keyboard with a range of sounds from >
After Mattel filed suit, Mattel and MCA employees traded barbs in the press. When an MCA spokeswoman noted that each album included a disclaimer saying that Barbie Girl was a "social commentary [that was] not created or approved by the makers of the doll," a Mattel representative responded by saying, "That's unacceptable. . . . It's akin to a bank robber handing a note of apology to a teller during a heist. [It n]either diminishes the severity of the crime, nor does it make it legal." He later characterized the song as a "theft" of "another company's property."
MCA filed a counterclaim for defamation based on the Mattel representative's use of the words "bank robber," "heist," "crime" and "theft." But all of these are variants of the invective most often hurled at accused infringers, namely "piracy." No one hearing this accusation understands intellectual property owners to be saying that infringers are nautical cutthroats with eyepatches and peg legs who board galleons to plunder cargo. In context, all these terms are nonactionable "rhetorical hyperbole," Gilbrook v. City of Westminster, 177 F.3d 839, 863 (9th Cir. 1999). The parties are advised to chill.
In addition to the last sentence (which I never thought I'd see in a legal brief), the interesting thing about this is that they consider "piracy" and "theft" of copyrights to be popular invective with no legal bearing (thus, not actionable as defamation because courts shouldn't consider such statements literally).
I've heard the 9th circuit is weird, though, and that other courts like to disagree with them. Seems to be weird in a good way...
So, the statute's structured to say "making derivative works is the copyright holder's right, and only those derivative works that satisfy A, B, and C are covered by this right." However, the appeals court appears to have read this to mean "If another work satisfies A, B, and C, it is a derivative work and therefore making it is an exclusive right of the copyright holder."
This is a transparent error in the court's reading the statute, particularly when they're establishing, as they explicitly state they are, a new rule of law.
I hope the defendants have clever lawyers and a taste for appeals!
Because a guitar strum is a sample, too.
One of the most useful skills for an artist (or, for that matter, any creative person) is the ability to interpret and re-purpose works created before.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Since almost all music is now digitally sampled, that would infer that even 'covering' a song during a concert would be in violation and get you fined.
Perhaps this is not the intent of the law ( but i would not put it past them, considering who is driving the inactment of it )
So if you did it via analog equipment, and only produced actual LP's... then you would be safe, in theory.
"after we shoot all the lawyers, the so-called entertainment industry needs to be #2"
---- Booth was a patriot ----