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Did Producer Timbaland Steal From the Demoscene?
gloom writes "In 2000 the Finnish demoscene musician Janne Suni (also known as 'Tempest') won the Oldskool Music Competition at the Assembly demoparty with his four-channel Amiga .MOD entitled 'Acid Jazzed Evening.' A Commodore 64 musician called 'grg' remade the song on the C64 (using the infamous SID soundchip); it is this that was stolen. The producer's name is Timbaland and he is one of the hottest names in American music these days. The track in question is called 'Do it' and it is featured on the Nelly Furtado album 'Loose' on the Geffen label. Getting nowhere with Geffen, the demoscene has now risen to the aid of Tempest, first by creating a stir at SomethingAwful (files downloadable from the forum), then at Digg.com, then on YouTube, with a video demonstrating the blatant ripoff. Being an online-posting musician myself — what rights do I have if this should ever happen to me, and what can be done to raise awareness about such things?"
There's a big difference between downloading a song, and ripping off someone elses work, passing it off as your own, and making money off it, which is what this fucker Timbaland has done. It's not piracy. Piracy is when you download Nelly Furtado's album.
Outright theft is when someones work is stolen and passed off as your own FOR PROFIT.
And it's also a great example of the disparity in the legal system. This guy has been completely ripped off, and basically can't afford to take it to court, because Geffen are richer than him.
One world, under a dollar, with justice for none except the corporations.
A quick browse of the Wikipedia webpage on sampling shows a number of cases where artists have been sued for sampling, so the best thing is to get yourself a lawyer who will direct you towards a good license that allows you to share your work non-commercially. If someone violates that license, you can then get that lawyer to go after them. The history of sampling cases seems to show that artists will pay you off so they don't risk a trial.
And that finnish artist...she should bring Timbaland to court in Finland. She definitely has a case against him, especially since she has prior art to back up her case.
My Sysadmin Blog
I'll give you between 10 and 30 years ago, but hip-hop has been 2% talent and 98% wannabe posers for the last decade.
Do we support this behavior (DJ Danger Mouse) or do we not (the example above)???
Basilisk Digital
Name a type of music that has been more influential in the last 30 years..
... Define "influential" ...
Well
If you consider music sales Rock music is more popular than Rap, Hip-Hop, R&B and Urban combined. If you look at critical acclaim Rap music has only been receiving critical acclaim and awards (outside of specific genre awards) in the past 5 or so years.
And what does it matter if a musical style has been "influential" if the initial argument was that it was unoriginal? You can be very generic (and even steal other people's ideas) and still be "influential".
See, that would be an acceptable answer if the label Timbaland is signed to didn't go around suing people. But the major labels and their artists can't come out against piracy while coming worse infringements themselves.*
80's rock, hair metal, grunge, to name a few.
Hell, I'd wager that Van Halen (both the band and Eddie Van Halen himself) have been at least as influencial to the music industry as most rap/hip-hop artists out today combined. They not only brought about the beginnings of rock and metal in the 80's, popularizing guitar heroes like no one before, but Eddie redefined how to play the guitar (yes, many, if not most of his popular techniques have been used before, but he popularized them like no other) and redefined the guitar itself (not many people before him put humbuckers in Strats, and he helped develop the Floyd Rose vibrato bridge)
There are two definitions of steal that seem appropriate to this discussion
Now the first definition is what you're applying to downloading, but a lot of people have problems calling 'Downloading' 'Stealing' because the owner of the music does not lose possession of the property and you (typically) have been given permission to obtain the music through other channels; you can tape music off of the radio for personal use and most albums will have (at least locally) been played on the radio when they're released.
The second definition is directly related to what has been claimed that timbaland has done.
There is room for debate on the download and no room for debate on the Timbaland situation.
Maybe we should just rewrite copyright law. "It is illegal to use media without permission from the original author, that is, unless the one doing the plaguarising is someone whom Slashdot user swordgeek doesn't like."
Basilisk Digital
You probably just don't have the right ear for it. If it was only the intro then I'd be dismissing it. It's not an exact copy and I'd bet you could find a few thousand pieces of music with those notes in there - it even sounded familiar to me! The melody is what is so interesting. It seriously sounds like the exact tune playing in the background - the notes are the same and even the drum beat (though it's a pretty common beat) seems to be the same.
I'd have to listen to proper high-quality versions of both to decide whether I think it's a true forgery though. If there's more of the original in the supposed forgery then that would be more evidence, but note how the tune in the intro could be easily derived from the melody - I would only put the intro being there as a minor evidence boost.
"Second, if it is not immoral for producers to "steal," then why on earth should any consumer feel guilty for taking it back?"
Ummm... because two wrongs don't make a right?
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
That's the thing about the demo scene: it's not about royalties or profit, it's about the art. When someone rips that off and starts charging others for it (without so much as even giving you credit for all your work), it's completely against everything the work was originally composed for. It's like you get a gift for your kids and some jerk steals it from you, re-wraps it, and sells it to your brother as the perfect gift for his nieces/nephews.
Seriously, it's two thousand goddamn seven, the "What is this X the article speaks of?" thing is OVER. You're on the fucking Internet, go to Google or Wikipedia and do five seconds of research. </rant>
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
"Ummm... because two wrongs don't make a right?"
It's the "consumers" (i. e. "the people") who granted the music companies their copyrights anyway. If they're not going to abide by the terms of the agreement, why shouldn't the people be allowed to revoke their copyright privileges?