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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?"
Why is this news? Everyone knows that hip-hop is unoriginal to start with.
People please. There's a double-standard. Try to keep up with these things.
C'mon, he ripped off his name from a brand of outdoor clothing. Does ripping off a demoscene song surprise anyone?
FFS keep this quiet!.... The RIAA (regular readers of /. I'm sure) will take notice and somehow manage to construct a legal argument meaning Timberlake gets to sue the Finnish artist for more than than the GDP of Finland. 7th Dimensional Copyright Theory or something.
Wouldn't be the first time.
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
It's not stealing. It's "sampling." At least that's how they usually justify it...
The producer's name is Timbaland and he is one of the hottest names in American music these days.
timbaland? who the hell is that?
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
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True, sampling without permission outside a context of parody is wrong. But what if I steal and I don't know I'm stealing? How could George Harrison have caught himself and stopped himself from ripping off "He's So Fine", written by Ronald Mack and popularized by The Chiffons, when writing "My Sweet Lord"? See Cryptomnesia.
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.
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Please listen to what's behind the links before posting the first thing that comes to mind. It's not just a similarity - much less simple influence. It's an exact match all the way from the melody down to the bass and drum lines and the synth samples.
One hell of a coincidence if you ask me.
I agree. Life isn't fair. However, when a musician uses a sample (For example Moby, or Paul Oakenfold), they do have to list where the copyrighted sample comes from. Most of that stolen work you refer to is for hobbyist who don't make millions on a track, therefore you don't notice it as much. Timberland thought he could save a few pennies by putting his name on it because some Fin isn't going to make a racket. I guess he was wrong.
[J]
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.
This is new?
The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. -Anais Nin
Do we support this behavior (DJ Danger Mouse) or do we not (the example above)???
Being an online-posting musician myself -- what rights do I have if this should ever happen to me?
Don't worry. It won't.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Anyway, they're not going to get anywhere bitching to Geffen. No corporation is going to admit wrongdoing if they aren't forced to. Spreading the info on the web is good for their cause but really, "Tempest" has to get a good lawyer.
Keep in mind the only thing you can go after in the music industry is rights and roylaties. You won't get a big cash payout if an indie band steals your melody or worse, if another amateur slaps his name on your song. All you can do is make a fuss and possibly ruin their credibility. This would even go for a major label act with an album that doesn't sell-- if there's no money to be had there's not much you can do.
Now, Furtado's album will probably sell millions, so "Tempest" has a shot at getting the publishing rights for the song. But to get this resolved he will have to get a competent entertainment lawyer who will work on a (large) commision. Then, if they settle or he wins, he may be able to get the writer credit (or shared credit) on subsequent pressings of the song and all or part of the roylaties-- not on the album, but the song itself (so a fraction of the album.. a small fraction if it is not a hit.) And when I say roylaties, I'm not talking gross sales but instead what Timbaland's cut would have been.
Again, unless the song itself is a top-ten hit, I would not expect a big payday from this.
Basilisk Digital
according to many critics, not worthy to be grouped under the umbrella term "intellectual property".
They are not deeds to land (real property), nor are they tangible or tradeable items (personal property), but rather artificial monopolies granted upon otherwise entirely reproducible things. Grouping them together makes exactly as much sense as grouping the right to pump oil from the ground with an installed air-conditioner (real property) or a certificate of stock with a turkey sandwich (personal property).
GNU doth protest too much. It's a perfectly valid term, and wasting time protesting common sense instead of explaining the differences between copyrights et al just makes you (or GNU) seem unhinged.
Name a type of music that has been more influential in the last 30 years..
Music from the Demoscene, apparently.
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.*
name a type of music that's beat hasn't changed in the last 30 years.
it was fine in the begining but using the same baseline from a disco song from 30 years ago only twisted and distorted and passing it off as "music" can't really be considered music.
I'm not denying that rappers can rap really well but I can't stand the "music" they use for it, don't get me started on emo lyrics or the scream metal stuff either (where they figure it's ok to just constently scream into the mic and pass it off as a talent).
Hmm...
0: Pop.
1: Metal.
2: Alternative
3: "Movie Classical"
4: Country
5: Disco
6: Rap.
There's six for you. "Hip-Hop" is just a bastard child of rap and pop. (Rap would be a higher on that list if i ranked on "size of influence.")
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)
Rock, jazz, classical.. hell even techno! Oh.. sorry.. being Slashdot I thought you meant for folks with IQs above say 110-120 or so. If you're talking about the "mildly retarded" range (i.e. can install a fart cannnon muffler without killing himself approximately 60% of the time), then yes, hip hop.
My main gripe about all of this is this:
Excuse me? INFAMOUS? Look bitches, even I knew the SID was the shizzle despite that I was an Atari 800 owner! Have some respect!
Lifting and rearranging (i.e. "stealing") a tune is not sampling. If the Timbaland recording is the first published use of the song, and the use is unauthorized, then it is copyright infringement plain and simple. If it is not the first published use of the song, then there are two possibilities: a) the re-recording is a "cover" of the original, essentially similar to it, in which case compulsory licensing applies (and royalties are paid to the copyright holder at a rate defined by statute), or b) the re-recording is different enough that it is a derivative work, in which case compulsory licensing does not apply and once again it is simple copyright infringement. The copyright holder can force a halt to the infringement; what damages might be obtained in court, I don't know - the law isn't simple.
This is US law - I don't know what country's laws would actually apply in this case.
Dimmu Borgir, a Norwegian Black Metal group, ripped a song from the Amiga game "Agony", composed by Tim Wright. The original was a beautiful piano piece that you could listen to in the title screen. The band stole the melody and used it in the song "Sorgens Kammer" ("The Chamber of Sorrow" in Norwegian).
They never acknowledged the ripoff, simply substituting the song with another one in the album. Pathetic.
Hack your mind out of its sandbox.
Giving credit does not remove the requirement to get permission; it just tells the world who is going to sue you.
If you don't give credit, you're lying about your song's authorship. If you do, you're just doing what every composer has done throughout history: building on the work of those who came before you.Building on a public domain built by previous composers was possible until legislatures around the world extended copyright term to exceed the human life span.
. . .sing the Marine Hymn (Halls of Montezuma) to the tune of "Oh, My Darling Clementine." Just hum a few bars and see how well it fits. . .
.over Pachelbel's cello ground.
. .
KFG
Sample to your hearts content without permission, if you have a winner, then you pay for the license. It looks like Timbaland just forgot the last part. If the song never gets released and popular, no harm no foul right? But if you have a winner you'll be able and happy to pay for the license, so it is a no brainer to sample without permission, until you want to release it. Of course this only seems to work for those with the ability to make money off a release (big record labels), independent musicians without the exposure and protection of a big label probably won't be able to pay off the copyright holder anyway.
But Tempest is right, there is no way this'd be worth it to fight. For example Talib Kweli recently violated Ben Kweller's copyright (or more likely his label's copyright) from the song "In Other Words". Kweller replied at the end episode 7 of his youtube show One Minute Pop Song. If a fairly well known artist, Ben Kweller, can't fight it, someone like Tempest has pretty poor chances.
Home sampling is probably fair use, but certainly using a sample on a record is not. If Timbaland samples Tempest at home, I think that is great. If Timbaland wants to include it on an album, there has to be some kind of recourse for the little guy covering such obvious infringement. You know if Tempest released an album (even just on the internet) sampling Timbaland the RIAA would be all over it with Lawyers. Remember The Grey Album?
I've really enjoyed a lot of the Popcap games available for PDAs, especially since a lot of their optional background music seems eerily familiar from my downloaded mod files (many are available from Nectarine radio nowadays: http://www.demoscene.net/ )
m l
OK, so it actually turns out that a lot of Future Crew's tracks were commissioned by Popcap:
http://www.futurecrew.org/skaven/music_tracker.ht
In any case, it's nice to see demoscene music used appropriately by folks with any decency.
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
"Hip-Hop" is just a bastard child of rap and pop.
Wrong. Hip-hop is an all-encompassing culture, a movement started in New York City by inner city Hispanics and African Americans. Hip-hop traditionally consists of 4 "elements": DJ'ing (originally the backbone of hip-hop culture), Emceeing (rapping), Breakdancing, and Graffiti.
Originally, rap was the combination of an emcee rhyming over a DJ's beat. An emcee's job was originally to get the crowd more into the music the DJ was playing, hence the title (derived from MC, or Master of Ceremonies).
Through the late 90's, rap was simply called rap. Somewhere along the way, around the transition from the "jiggy era" to the Cash Money dominated southern sound of the mainstream, fans of underground rap music and conscious early 90's rap started referring to anything that was not mainstream as "hip-hop music", in an effort to differentiate "good" rap from "bad" rap"
Only recently have radio stations and music channels that typically play mainstream style rap referred to the music that they play as "hip-hop". This has prompted many people to revert to referring to the music they like as "rap" in backlash, to express their disappointment to the direction popular rap artists have taken musically (focusing more on simple beats and rhymes in efforts to appeal to pop crowds and club scenes).
"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
Boy, if you ever thought a large number of /. commenters were flat out stupid (as opposed to ones who just disagree with you), following that link to YouTube will certainly make you feel much better about /. commenters!
Relevant xkcd
Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, Janne Suni's attorney would certainly want you to believe that his client wrote "Acid Jazzed Evening" ten years ago. And they make a good case. Hell, I almost felt pity myself! But, ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, I have one final thing I want you to consider. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it; that does not make sense!
Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of two-foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense! Look at me. I'm a lawyer defending a major record company, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca! Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense! None of this makes sense! And so you have to remember, when you're in that jury room deliberatin' and conjugatin' the Emancipation Proclamation, [approaches and softens] does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests.
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.
The demo scene is soooo old. It springs from the 286 and earlier. At that point in time the only license that was imposed was the honor system, enforceable only by defamation. I have countless mods/s3ms/xms that have comments/descriptions griping about people that ripped samples or patterns, and that was all that they could do. Now rights are a much more legally enforced thing. Artists in the demo-scene haven't (in many circles) really buckled down and started choosing licenses because legal issues weren't an issue for their role models. A few have had the wisdom to specify licenses for their works, but it's not really a norm yet :-\ I wish they didn't need to. The honor system is my favorite system, but it's seriously flawed because it actually assumes people will be honorable.
In 1991, near when SoundScan was instituted, the Billboard Top 200 was rejiggered so that albums over four years old would no longer be listed. The reason was that if they had continued to be listed, they would have blocked new albums from entering the chart.
If albums over four years old could still be listed in the Top 100 and Top 200 charts, then those charts would be full of rock albums. Of course, the rock albums would mostly be over four years old, but still, they'd be there.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
Tell me about it. And just last week I noticed that one Slashdotter supported the Democrats but another Slashdotter supported the Republicans. And the week before that I saw two Slashdotters who disagreed over climate change. It's as if Slashdotters have started having differences of opinion all of a sudden. I'm sure that's never happened before. About a year ago we all said and thought exactly the same things.
SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
The trance song "Kernkaft 400" by Zombie Nation was a major hit in Europe in the late 90s, and quite obviously sampled from a Commodore 64 song. They were eventually forced to share writing credit with the original musician, David Whittaker, and pay a share of their royalties accordingly. I hope this ends up the same way.
"The good die first." "Most of us are morally ambiguous, which explains our random dying patterns." --- MST3K
You mistakenly put a link to Outkast in your 2% talent.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you only need a license if you plan to let others use your work in some way, shape or form? You are protected by Copyright law without a license and there are no exceptions. Licenses provide any general exceptions you want to give.
Demoscene people generally have a very small set of people they even want to hear their music. There's some live events and a few websites and that's it.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
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)
Frank Zappa. You want guitar before EVH, look no further. If you like guitar, check him out. He was a guitar hero long before EVH. I'm not knocking EVH's influence or popularity, but he certainly wasn't the first; just one in a line of great guitarists who help define rock.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Nelly Furtado's a freaking Portugese CANADIAN. Where did they get Australian from?? /Canadian
Most of us can barely find Canada on the map even though it's our 51st state; let alone figure out where some small island in the Pacific is located so we naturally assume anyone that speaks English and is from the Pacific is Australian. But at least we know Lisboa is Australa's capital; and if you look closely enough at a map of Europe you can find Australia nestled between germany and Hungary.
What I find odd is that her last name is Furtado - that doesn't sound very Australian since they speak English, not Spanish.
Obrigado for playing.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
"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?
Not to go too far OT, but Hip hop and Rap are actually the same thing as far as the actual pop-cultural relation to them are concerned. To be technical, Hip Hop refers to the entire culture, including things one might not generally think of such as fashion and speach. We used to refer to the four elements of hip hop: graffiti, breakdancing, DJing, and MCing (a.k.a. rapping), which in its early forms was actually subservient to DJing. Nowadays, MCing has moved overwhelmingly to the forefront, as the other elements have become more diluted, diversified, and hybridized (beatboxing could be seen as a more recently formalized and popularized hybrid of MCing and DJing, though it's generally been around for almost as long as hip hop itself). Now Hip Hop dance includes a lot more than just breakdancing, graffiti is much less popular (probably because it's not quite so marketable being illegal in nature).
Since Rap has taken such a dominant role, nowadays whenever someone says "hip hop" they're generally talking about Rap, but to refer to the two things as though they were different musical genres is a fallacy. People think that the subject matter of the songs determines the genre (rap being the sole property of gangster rappers, and all other forms falling under some other umbrella of "hip hop"). In truth, they're all hip hop, and rapping is what they all do. It's just a matter of what they rap about that determines the subgenre (gangster, etc.).
I find the people who try to argue that Hip Hop and Rap are different are generally people who don't listen to it much, or only listen to 3 or 4 artists and then declare themselves expert.
What you have listed there are not musical genres in order of their influence, but probably more in order of your own personal preference or encounterance (which is self-select no doubt, and very much anecdotal). You get outside of the US and Germany, and you'll find Metal drops off the list fairly quickly (and even within those countries, I doubt you'd ever find it that high on any list). Country barely has an influence the farther in any direction you go from midwestern or Southern America before you even hit the borders, much less outside the country. Disco, come on, really? And whatever "Movie Classical" is. But, you go anywhere in the world from as far back as the mid to early 90's, and hip hop was already ubiquitous, from the American brand that gets exported in abundance to the various local flavors that grew up on their own. We're talking from France to Japan to Zimbabwe here I might add.
But listing music in order of influence is also kind of fallacious, since all music is generally organic, and all genres have influenced and been influenced by others. If Disco has a great influence on modern hip hop, and hip hop is very popular, is it fair to say that Disco is the genre that's truly influential or hip hop itself? What if you could say the same for any other musical genre's influence on hip hop and vice-versa? Hip hop, at its very roots, is an assimilator, and has been growing due to its ability to absorb other musical genre's influences into itself seamlessly. From the earliest DJs mixing and remixing established Pop, Disco, and R&B tracks on turntables, to the modern mashups, this has always been a core element of Hip Hop.
Quite frankly, the competition of "my genre of choice is more popular/influential than yours" is a bit ridiculous, because it's not like popularity is the sole legitimizer of an art form. In most cases, it means the destruction of creativity in favor of formulaic nonsense and posers taking over and steering the future of the genre, which is what has happened to most of modern popular hip-hop. One should be happy while their genre or artist of choice remains in relative obscurity, because that is the place where they can enjoy the most creativity; even if it means other more popular and successful performers end up sampling or outright stealing their work.
Dusty Bottoms: "What does that mean, 'in-famous'?"
Ned Nederlander: "Oh, Dusty. In-famous is when you're MORE than famous. This man El Guapo, he's not just famous, he's IN-famous."
Lucky Day: "100,000 pesos to perform with this El Guapo, who's probably the biggest actor to come out of Mexico!"
Dusty Bottoms: "Wow, in-famous? In-famous?"
That certainly used to be the case - that's what a producer like Phil Spector did. But these days, particularly for rap/hip-hop music, the producer often has a large creative input in 'writing the tune'. In this instance, the song is credited to Nelly Furtado, Timothy Clayton, Nate Hills (aka Danja) and Tim Mosley (aka Timbaland). Danja and Timbaland are also the producers.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
No, that's correct. They only have 2% talent.