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 Message Boards » » Illegal Art: Intellectual property/free expression Page 1 [2], Prev  
marko
Tom Joad
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12/20/2010 3:44:10 PM

TreeTwista10
minisoldr
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i see nobody has mentioned how much of a bitch Chuck D is when it comes to this

12/20/2010 4:51:46 PM

screentest
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Quote :
" "Technology giveth and it taketh away, and the industry knows this," Chuck D said. "The horseshoe makers probably got upset at the train manufacturers because (the new industry) took away their transport dominance, just as the train manufacturers probably got mad at the airline industry."

"I think this expands artistry and it's about adjustment," he said.

"As an artist representing an 80-year period of black musicianship, I never felt that my copyrights were protected anyway," Chuck D said. "I've been spending most of my career ducking lawyers, accountants and business executives who have basically been more blasphemous than file sharers and P2P. I trust the consumer more than I trust the people who have been at the helm of these companies.

"The record industry is hypocritical and the domination has to be shared. P2P to me means 'power to the people,'" Chuck D said. "And let's get this to a balance, and that's what we're talking about."



Chuck D doesn't sound like much of a bitch to me

12/20/2010 4:57:36 PM

TreeTwista10
minisoldr
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then why did he sue DJ Premier for sampling his voice

12/20/2010 5:25:23 PM

screentest
All American
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didn't know he did.

so is he a hypocrite, or has he seen the error of ways?

and fyi, I'd rather listen to Step In the Arena than any Public Enemy album.

12/20/2010 6:18:02 PM

Kris
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^going off a fellow musician for not following the rules is different than going after numerous file sharers.

Quote :
"pretty much all media; movies, games, music, and tv, have been going downhill in terms of originality and quality as of late"


So now we judge theft and morality by how good some guy on the internet thinks it is?

Quote :
"Information should be free"


Some information should be free, but the creators should always have the right to charge for it.

Quote :
"If I paint the painting or if I push the button on my computer to make a copy of a song, I'm still producing something new that looks/sounds like the old one"


But one YOU made, the other you didn't.

Quote :
"You define theft by loss."


I'd argue that you define it by permission. If I give you something, I "lose" it, but I'll bet you'll agree that there's a big difference between being given something and stealing it.

12/20/2010 6:29:58 PM

AndyMac
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Quote :
"pretty much all media; movies, games, music, and tv, have been going downhill in terms of originality and quality as of late. i'm all for cutting out the profits involved and cut all the people* who are in it for the money out of the system; so they'll quit cluttering the cultural landscape with shit they came up with following a focus-group analysis.



*this includes not only producers, marketers, businessmen, etc but even creatives. if a lack of monetary payback is what's keeping you from exploring your passion then it isn't that much of a passion and frankly i'm not interested in anything you produced with payback in mind"


Yeah! And I don't want people to operate on me if they expect to be paid for it! Only people who just love surgery and are willing to do it for nothing for me!

Seriously though, you think this stuff is bad now, lets see how much creativity drops when nobody gets paid for doing it (and thus can't afford to spend most of their time/effort on it)

12/20/2010 9:02:42 PM

TreeTwista10
minisoldr
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Chuck D sued Primo for using his voice in The Ten Crack Commandments...in fairness to Chuck D, he asked Primo to remove the sample because he didn't want his voice associated with a song that glorified selling drugs

Fair enough

However, Chuck D brought this up to Preem on a tour, and they were gonna take care of it, no problems, when the tour ended...but thats not how it happened, and Chuck D ended up getting like $90k out of it

Its just hypocritical to me that someone in hip hop, a genre that relies so much on sampling the music that the producers and artists grew up on, would sue arguably the best deejay in hiphop history for giving him tribute

They since squashed it...but that never sat right with me...and I too prefer Gangstarr to PE

12/20/2010 9:20:13 PM

spöokyjon

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Also Chuck D is super in favor of reparations, so he's kind of a retard.

12/20/2010 11:58:03 PM

McDanger
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Quote :
"Some information should be free, but the creators should always have the right to charge for it."


This is different than publishers decreasing the utility of our entire planet by slowing down and restricting the flow of information

Creators of something have a right to be compensated for their creation; most people have no beef with that.

Quote :
"Yeah! And I don't want people to operate on me if they expect to be paid for it! Only people who just love surgery and are willing to do it for nothing for me!

Seriously though, you think this stuff is bad now, lets see how much creativity drops when nobody gets paid for doing it (and thus can't afford to spend most of their time/effort on it)"


Nobody's suggesting art should be free. Nice bullshit analogy too by the way

[Edited on December 21, 2010 at 10:13 AM. Reason : .]

12/21/2010 10:09:31 AM

d357r0y3r
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The point being made in that second quote is that the reason quality has been going down in music/art/movies is because there isn't enough profit to be made. Now, if you actually believe music and movies have been getting worse across the board, you're just a dumbass, so that's one thing.

The primary idea there, though - that people will not create art if there's no profit potential (which there always will be, even if recordings are free) - shows a lack of understanding about how good art is created. If you sit down to write a song, or paint a painting, or make a sculpture, the worst attitude to have is, "fuck what I like...what does everyone else want?" That's not dedication, it's insincere.

12/21/2010 11:03:38 AM

nutsmackr
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That's not the point we've been making, but good try.

12/21/2010 11:08:16 AM

d357r0y3r
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Yes, it is. Your argument is "artists should be compensated for their work." it's not even an argument, it's just what you keep saying repeatedly. Nevermind that they are compensated for their performances...you think they should get royalties everytime anyone listens to a recording of them.

12/21/2010 11:11:56 AM

nutsmackr
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Quote :
"The primary idea there, though - that people will not create art if there's no profit potential (which there always will be, even if recordings are free) - shows a lack of understanding about how good art is created. If you sit down to write a song, or paint a painting, or make a sculpture, the worst attitude to have is, "fuck what I like...what does everyone else want?" That's not dedication, it's insincere.
"


Again, this is so far out of left field it isn't even remotely related to what any of us are arguing.

Quote :
"Nevermind that they are compensated for their performances...you think they should get royalties everytime anyone listens to a recording of them."


Why shouldn't they get played every time their song is played on the radio, or on tv, or via internet streaming?

[Edited on December 21, 2010 at 11:15 AM. Reason : .]

12/21/2010 11:13:59 AM

AndyMac
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Quote :
"Nobody's suggesting art should be free. Nice bullshit analogy too by the way"


Then what do you mean by "information should be free"

Quote :
"The point being made in that second quote is that the reason quality has been going down in music/art/movies is because there isn't enough profit to be made. Now, if you actually believe music and movies have been getting worse across the board, you're just a dumbass, so that's one thing."


If you're talking to me, I don't think that at all. Just responding to Str8Foolish

Quote :
"The primary idea there, though - that people will not create art if there's no profit potential (which there always will be, even if recordings are free) - shows a lack of understanding about how good art is created. If you sit down to write a song, or paint a painting, or make a sculpture, the worst attitude to have is, "fuck what I like...what does everyone else want?" That's not dedication, it's insincere."


It's so interesting you used painting, sculpting, and music as your only examples of art, since those are the art forms that were around before profits existed and will obviously never die. Those art forms are also either completely done by a single motivated person (painting and sculpting) or by people who still have profit potential in a world with no copyright laws (musicians touring).

You still haven't addressed how modern television, movies, and video games would be made.

12/21/2010 11:40:06 AM

nutsmackr
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Quote :
"It's so interesting you used painting, sculpting, and music as your only examples of art, since those are the art forms that were around before profits existed and will obviously never die. Those art forms are also either completely done by a single motivated person (painting and sculpting) or by people who still have profit potential in a world with no copyright laws (musicians touring)"


except all of these forms of art existed solely due to the largesse of wealthy patrons. Remove the patrons and it wouldn't have existed.

12/21/2010 11:42:29 AM

AndyMac
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If you're talking about elaborate art that took months to make I agree, The sistine chapel wouldn't exist if nobody paid Michelangelo for it, along with most great art.

But painting, sculpting, and music has been around since before society.

12/21/2010 11:46:33 AM

nutsmackr
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Quote :
"But painting, sculpting, and music has been around since before society.
"


Outside of proto-art you will be hardpressed to point to a single instance in which a patron was not the source of income for the artist, unless the artist came from wealth him or herself.

12/21/2010 11:52:39 AM

d357r0y3r
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Quote :
"Again, this is so far out of left field it isn't even remotely related to what any of us are arguing."


It's very closely related. The point was that art suffers when there's little profit to be made. Haven't you argued in this very thread that musicians must be compensated, or it would not exist?

Quote :
"Why shouldn't they get played every time their song is played on the radio, or on tv, or via internet streaming?"


Why should they? I don't get paid when I whistle a song in public. Maybe I created that song. Maybe I labored for hours writing that melody that I'm now whistling. You're hearing it, why shouldn't you have to pay whatever price I say you have to pay? I should be compensated for my work.

Quote :
"It's so interesting you used painting, sculpting, and music as your only examples of art, since those are the art forms that were around before profits existed and will obviously never die. Those art forms are also either completely done by a single motivated person (painting and sculpting) or by people who still have profit potential in a world with no copyright laws (musicians touring).

You still haven't addressed how modern television, movies, and video games would be made."


For one, television, movies, and video games require a good deal of production. For any of those three things, there are probably a bunch of workers that require payment. Video games could easily thrive in a no-copyright environment. Software designers, if they want to keep secrets, should find better encryption methods, and as more gaming shifts to online multiplayer, pirating can be prevented by requiring username/login.

I suspect the television and movie industry would look vastly different without copyrights. Right now, absurd amounts of money are dumped into big budget films, resulting in visually appealing, mindless explosion fests that are instantly forgotten. Certainly, a lot of profit is being made there, but I think Hollywood/cable television is aiding in the dumbing down of the American people. How many people are going to Youtube and Hulu for entertainment, these days?

Quote :
"except all of these forms of art existed solely due to the largesse of wealthy patrons. Remove the patrons and it wouldn't have existed."


That's just straight up wrong. Have you ever heard of a thing called punk music? Do you think wealthy patrons were the ones propping up Crass and Charged GBH?

12/21/2010 12:04:22 PM

nutsmackr
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Quote :
"It's very closely related. The point was that art suffers when there's little profit to be made. Haven't you argued in this very thread that musicians must be compensated, or it would not exist?"


Yes, I have argued musicians must be compensated, but that is 100% different then this nonsense: "If you sit down to write a song, or paint a painting, or make a sculpture, the worst attitude to have is, "fuck what I like...what does everyone else want?" That's not dedication, it's insincere."


Quote :
"Why should they? I don't get paid when I whistle a song in public. Maybe I created that song. Maybe I labored for hours writing that melody that I'm now whistling. You're hearing it, why shouldn't you have to pay whatever price I say you have to pay? I should be compensated for my work."


strawman

Quote :
"That's just straight up wrong. Have you ever heard of a thing called punk music? Do you think wealthy patrons were the ones propping up Crass and Charged GBH?"


Jesus Christ, my statement about patrons was in response to his claim that art, music, etc always existed even without copyrights. fuck me you are retarded.

I still like that in your world Brian Wilson wouldn't receive compensation but Bruce Johnston would.

[Edited on December 21, 2010 at 12:10 PM. Reason : .]

12/21/2010 12:09:30 PM

d357r0y3r
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Quote :
"Yes, I have argued musicians must be compensated, but that is 100% different then this nonsense: "If you sit down to write a song, or paint a painting, or make a sculpture, the worst attitude to have is, "fuck what I like...what does everyone else want?" That's not dedication, it's insincere.""


It's only nonsense to you because the point went over your head. If profit motive is driving you to make music, then you are necessarily thinking about what will appeal to other people. You'd be viewing music art as a product to be packaged and sold. It's not self expression anymore, at that point. That's why I say it's insincere. If art is created with the intention of making money, I think the quality of that art will decrease. That's why I bring up bands like Nickelback. That music was created to be sold to the masses, and you can hear that. Are you honestly unable to see the connection between what you're saying (artists should receive money when their recordings are listened to) and what I'm saying (monetary incentives make music as a whole worse off), or are you just going to continue digging your heels in?

Quote :
"strawman"


Do you even know what that is?

Quote :
"Jesus Christ, my statement about patrons was in response to his claim that art, music, etc always existed even without copyrights. fuck me you are retarded."


Your response was worthless, then. Art existed without copyrights and without "wealthy patrons."

12/21/2010 2:30:30 PM

nutsmackr
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Quote :
"It's only nonsense to you because the point went over your head. If profit motive is driving you to make music, then you are necessarily thinking about what will appeal to other people. You'd be viewing music art as a product to be packaged and sold. It's not self expression anymore, at that point. That's why I say it's insincere. If art is created with the intention of making money, I think the quality of that art will decrease. That's why I bring up bands like Nickelback. That music was created to be sold to the masses, and you can hear that. Are you honestly unable to see the connection between what you're saying (artists should receive money when their recordings are listened to) and what I'm saying (monetary incentives make music as a whole worse off), or are you just going to continue digging your heels in?

"


No one said a goddamn word about profit motive being behind their intent to make music. No one is takling about that, except for you. You are introducing a canard to this discussion.

I and others, are arguing that artists should be compensated for their work. this includes being paid when their songs are played on the radio, tv, or via the internet, or through album sales, etc.

Quote :
"Do you even know what that is?"


Yes I do. Your question about whisting a tune is a strawman to the discussion

Quote :
"Your response was worthless, then. Art existed without copyrights and without "wealthy patrons.""


Why is this? Because you said so?

Beethoven would not exist without a patron, Milton would not exist without a patron, Bach would not exist without a Patron, Donne would not exist without a patron. Michaelangelo, da Vinci, Rembrandt, the lists go on and on and on.

It is evident you are completely clueless.

I still think it is funny that in your world, Bruce Johnston would be better compensated than Brian Wilson (who wouldn't be compensated at all).

12/21/2010 2:46:32 PM

rbrthwrd
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patronage goes back as far as art does

12/21/2010 3:02:57 PM

AndyMac
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Quote :
"For one, television, movies, and video games require a good deal of production. For any of those three things, there are probably a bunch of workers that require payment. Video games could easily thrive in a no-copyright environment. Software designers, if they want to keep secrets, should find better encryption methods, and as more gaming shifts to online multiplayer, pirating can be prevented by requiring username/login.[quote]

How exactly would video games thrive? Only MMO's from now on? Being an MMO is not conducive to quality storytelling.

[quote]I suspect the television and movie industry would look vastly different without copyrights. Right now, absurd amounts of money are dumped into big budget films, resulting in visually appealing, mindless explosion fests that are instantly forgotten. Certainly, a lot of profit is being made there, but I think Hollywood/cable television is aiding in the dumbing down of the American people. How many people are going to Youtube and Hulu for entertainment, these days?"


Good or bad, mindless or brilliant, movies require a lot of money to make. Better movies require more money than crappy movies (genre dependent).

Hulu (and Youtube now to an extent) is ad-driven. With no copyrights I could take the stuff on those sites, put them on my own site with no ads, or only enough ads to cover server costs and make a small profit for myself with no concern with covering production costs.

12/21/2010 5:06:11 PM

Kris
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The points being argued here are irrelevant to whether it's stealing or morally wrong to take something without permission. It doesn't matter if the would make money some other way. It doesn't matter if it would make the art better or worse in your opinion. It doesn't even matter how hard it is to make it. None of those impact whether it's stealing, or whether it's moral.

12/21/2010 5:49:59 PM

AndyMac
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Obviously I'm not arguing the same things you are. The OP doesn't have much to do with piracy so I'm not arguing about piracy in the current legal environment.

12/21/2010 6:14:50 PM

Kris
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Then perhaps I don't understand, you're asking about how the world would turn out if we allowed stealing for this specific type of property? Or whether it's morally right to do so?

12/21/2010 6:21:08 PM

AndyMac
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Some people seem to be against copyright laws in general, I'm arguing that without copyright laws, the entertainment industry would be destroyed, and high quality movies, TV, and games would practically disappear.

Without copyright laws movie theaters could just download the latest movies (let's use True Grit as an example) and show them, reducing ticket prices but paying absolutely nothing back to the distributor and keeping all profits themselves. Paramount wouldn't have any legal recourse.

My argument doesn't have anything to do with morals.

12/21/2010 9:09:07 PM

indy
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Quote :
"Copyrights and Copywrongs

Interview with Siva Vaidhyanathan

By Carrie McLaren | Issue #20

Thomas Jefferson would have loved Napster," Siva Vaidhyanathan has argued. And we’re inclined to trust him on this, because he has been tracking copyright law since its dawn.

Vaidhyanathan is the author of the excellent book Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity (New York University Press, 2001) and is assistant professor of Culture and Communication at New York University. I talked to him this past summer. --Carrie McLaren


....."

http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/20/siva_vaidhyanathan.html

12/22/2010 12:34:57 PM

screentest
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Quote :
"the entertainment industry would be destroyed"


and this is a bad thing?


Quote :
"high quality movies, TV, and games would practically disappear"


depends on how you define quality.

12/22/2010 1:17:34 PM

AndyMac
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How do you define quality that doesn't require profit?

12/23/2010 2:57:11 PM

indy
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^
Straw-man. (Stupid troll.)



Quote :
"RiP: A remix manifesto."

http://ripremix.com/

12/23/2010 5:01:51 PM

AndyMac
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^ Where's the download button or bittorrent link? All I see is some junk trying to get me to pay for that movie. Information should be free right?

12/23/2010 9:22:59 PM

indy
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^
lol


http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2010/12/24/04
http://audio.wnyc.org/otm/otm122410d.mp3
Quote :
"They Say That I Stole This
December 24, 2010

Twenty years ago a series of lawsuits criminalized the hip-hop sampling of artists like Hank Shocklee and Public Enemy. And yet, two decades later, artists like Girl Talk have found success breaking those same sampling laws. OTM producer Jamie York talks to Girl Talk, Shocklee and Duke Law professor James Boyle about two decades of sampling - on both sides of the law.

--------

Last month, Gregg Gillis released his fifth album under his musical alias, Girl Talk, but “album” is an antiquated and imprecise term, to say the least. The music he released is available for free as one 71-minute song built out of 372 samples of other well-known pop songs.

It is a single epic mash-up, and it’s no less than 372 lawsuits waiting to happen, because Gillis doesn't pay for or legally clear his raw material, his samples. Instead, he’s built a career out of his skills as a musical collage artist at a legal crossroads where nobody, including him, knows for sure why he hasn't been sued.

OTM producer Jamie York investigated this question last year and brought us this story.

JAMIE YORK: Gregg Gillis is now a professional musician. After years of being a Pittsburgh biomedical researcher by day and a deejay by night, he’s quit his day job and turned to deejaying full time, well, not exactly deejaying. Gillis, using the moniker Girl Talk, both performs and records songs that are built from the raw material of top 40 music. He’s sampling. Gregg Gillis.

GREGG GILLIS: I basically take preexisting pop songs and I cut them up and rearrange them and collage them together and try to manipulate them in a way that it becomes something new, try to make new pop out of old pop.

[MUSIC UP AND UNDER]

MAN [RAPPING]:

Play your part.

MAN: ?Me Jones -? MAN: ?My business….

GREGG GILLIS: It starts off with drums from Roy Orbison’s Pretty Woman. Then you would hear a verse from a UGK song.

MALE SINGER: Money on the dresser, drive a compressor.

GREGG GILLIS: And then you would hear a bass line from Spencer Davis Group.

[MAN SINGING/MUSIC]

And then you would hear drums that I program myself with, with drum machines, and you would hear handclaps that come from an Afrika Bambaataa song.

[SINGING/SINGING UP AND UNDER]]

So it’s kind of like that, enough to get a pace of 300 songs in like 50 minutes or so.

[MUSI UP AND INDER]

JAMIE YORK: Gillis would be the first person to admit he isn't doing anything radically new. He’s just doing it as well as anyone out there.

JAMES BOYLE: I think you could say that a generation that had grown up playing with samples was eventually going to find its master impresario.

[MUSIC CONTINUES/UP AND UNDER]

JAMIE YORK: James Boyle is a law professor at Duke.

JAMES BOYLE: What he did was kind of different in that he was doing it, first of all, from a laptop, so there’s just something so wonderfully sweet and nerdy about watching a sweaty guy with his shirt off playing at the track pad of a laptop with a complicated music sampling program on it, while hordes of screaming women besiege him from the sides. I think this is every nerd’s dream come true.

So Gillis, I think, moves this to the next step, able to just tickle the ears of his listeners. They're like, oh, I love that beat, and then something else would come, and they're, like wow, they're really the same; they fit together. That was really the key to the success of the art form and made him really this extraordinary success, first, I think, largely on college campuses and then way beyond it.

[SONG/UP AND UNDER]

JAMIE YORK: Skills aside, part of the enormous attention the media has paid to Gillis is because he may very well be breaking the law, a law that was supposed to be established around sampling nearly 20 years ago. To explain why he takes the risk, we go where Gillis first got his taste for sampling.

GREGG GILLIS: I grew up listening to a lot of hip-hop, so it’s like if you listen to Public Enemy, Bomb Squad Production, you hear hundreds of samples kind of coming and going, and I like that whole aesthetics, like a dense wall of rhythm. And it just has this energy to it.

MALE SINGER: ?Here come the drums!

[SONG/UP AND UNDER]

JAMIE YORK: Gillis is paying tribute to Hank Shocklee, the founder and leader of the so-called Bomb Squad, which created the music for the rap group Public Enemy. What you’re hearing now is a song called Can't Truss It and it's, what? After 20 years of listening to it, I think it’s made up of samples from James Brown, Sly and the Family Stone, the Lafayette Afro Rock Band, Slave, George Clinton, Run-DMC and a trove of things unknown.

Hip-hop had begun with a deejay and two turntables playing the funkiest parts of records, the break beats, and had evolved by the late '80s to this, a kind of sonic architecture built piecemeal out of hundreds of carefully mined bits of sound.

[SONG]

It’s a Saturday night in October in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, and Hank Shocklee is deejaying an art opening. Twenty years after producing Can't Truss It, he’s not exactly sure what’s in it, or he’s not telling. But what he was trying to do couldn't be clearer."

1/5/2011 12:08:25 PM

indy
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cont'
Quote :
"HANK SHOCKLEE: And one of the reasons why we sample is because we want to get that natural vibe that was originally recorded in a record. You could rerecord those things but you won't get the exact vibe, because you’re talking about a time where people was recording records a totally different way than they do today. So we're sampling records from the '70s, and we're looking for just a bit, a snatch, of something that we could sit there and go, okay, this thing’s edgy, it’s dark. What is it communicating?

[MUSIC]

We will find something in a Tony Bennett record, Charley Pride. If it’s Turkish music we'll find something. You might find a kick and a snare, and it may have come from a classical record. You truncate what you want and then you turn it into whatever, taking a car door slam, and that will become a snare.

JAMIE YORK: Then, in the midst of his heyday with Public Enemy, Shocklee was told that what he was doing was suddenly illegal.

HANK SHOCKLEE: As guys started becoming more and more blatant with the sampling and the records started selling, selling more and more, the producers and writers and publishers started demanding royalties. And then it became a business.

JAMIE YORK: In 1989 the group De La Soul were sued by the Turtles for a lengthy sample. They settled out of court.

[BIZ MARKIE SINGING ALONE AGAIN]]

In 1991, hip-hop artist Biz Markie was successfully sued for this song, Alone Again, by Gilbert O’Sullivan, for the use of his song, Alone Again, Naturally.

[GILBERT O'SULLIVAN SINGING ALONE AGAIN, NATURALLY]

It’s fair to say that Biz Markie was one of the blatant guys that Shocklee just referred to. He rapped over a whole song. samplers like Shocklee suffered the consequences.


The effect of these cases was devastating, especially for a community of hip-hop artists just getting their first taste of success.

Duke Law Professor James Boyle says the Biz Markie case, in particular, was a sloppy solution to a complex problem.

[GILBERT O'SULLIVAN CONTINUES SINGING]

JAMES BOYLE: The case was decided by a judge who actually ended up never really referring to the Copyright Act at all. In fact, he’d referred to the, the Old Testament and “Thou shalt not steal,” rather than to the rather more complex and nuanced framework of the Copyright Act in assessing it. It was very poorly reasoned, if it was reasoned at all. But, the thing that the judge said in the end is, you know, basically this stuff is theft, period, end of story.

[ALONE AGAIN, NATURALLY IN BACKGROUND]

JAMIE YORK: Copyright law, as complex as it is, makes allowances for artistic borrowing, a doctrine known as fair use. Are you using the borrowed bit commercially? If so, did you transform it in some way? Did you take a sizeable portion of the original, the heart of it, and will your use have an effect on the market for the original song? These are the legal questions designed to be applied to music sampling, and yet, astoundingly:

JAMES BOYLE: We really have never had a rich fair use discussion about sampling and hip-hop inside a courtroom, which is remarkable. Instead, we just have a set of industry practices of people paying licenses pretty much for any amount of the work, no matter how trivial.

JAMIE YORK: Jazz, to use just one example from an older artistic tradition, samples too, but seems legally immune. Perhaps all hip-hop needs is time.

JAMES BOYLE: This is a form of music that is very familiar to a generation, none of whom are federal district court judges. If Gregg Gillis were now being inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame and you had 50-something people talking about “the golden days of the sampling revolution” on NPR, then I think we'd be in great shape because the judges would say, oh, this is a great American cultural form.

JAMIE YORK: That time though is something Hank Shocklee’s not going to get back. Twenty years of clearance culture took the rainbow palette of an audio artist like Shocklee. This is How to Kill a Radio Consultant, from 1991 -

[PUBLIC ENEMY SINGING]:

Pusher of the button ?Talkin' loud ain't sayin' nuttin' ?The mack of the format gettin' fat ?It ain't funny 'cause my neighborhood ?Is flowin' money ?Thank God 4 the …

[HE GOT GAME UP AND UNDER]

- and reduced him to monochrome, a single expensive color, courtesy of a well-known song, because that’s all they could afford.

[PUBLIC ENEMY SINGING]:

What is game, who got game, where’s the game in life?

Twenty years after first being deemed llegal, hip-hop sampling thrives underground. Fueled by digital technology and the internet, there have been a few notable successes among this latest generation, Gregg Gillis, who you heard at the start of this piece –

[MUSIC]

- and especially 2004’s DJ Danger Mouse, who created what he called The Grey Album, a mix of Jay-Z’s Black Album and the Beatles’ White Album.

[JAY Z & THE BEATLES]

They say they never really miss you 'til you dead or you gone ?So on that note I'm leavin after this song…

The Grey Album made Danger Mouse a star. Never commercially released, it leaked far and wide, making a number of year-end top 10 lists and offering major labels an object lesson in how not to stop samplers. I asked at the beginning why Gregg Gillis hasn't been sued, yet. In fact, Danger Mouse may be why. James Boyle:

[JAY Z & THE BEATLES UP AND UNDER]

JAMES BOYLE: There is the story that the labels learned from DJ Danger Mouse and don't want to risk creating the Che Guevara of the digital sampling age, the lost hero to which all of us will offer reverence and thus make him even more popular.

Another story is, they're going, mmmm, this is really interesting. Let's let him run, a bit, and when we finally see how things are playing out, then we'll figure out a way of getting a revenue stream out of this.

A third story is they realize it’s actually fair use and they don't want a bad precedent brought against them. And then a fourth one is that they are gibbering in terror and are so scared by this new phenomena that they're incapable of rational action of any kind, and so are caught in a kind of fugue state, as the digital music scene develops.

JAMIE YORK: So which is it?

JAMES BOYLE: If you went around the music industry and asked people, why haven't you sued him, you would get all of those answers.

[JAY Z & THE BEATLES]

JAMIE YORK: Boyle and Shocklee and Gillis are all quick to point out that they're not anti-copyright. They'd love a world in which paying for samples is simple and fair, but that’s not the world they've got. The cost and risk of sampling has fundamentally changed a whole genre of music, and yet, Gregg Gillis is likely playing his hundreds of samples somewhere tonight, probably shirtless [LAUGHS], probably for adoring women, and he’s going to keep claiming fair use. He doesn't know why he hasn't been sued, but he’s decided to embrace that riddle of his career, that the more successful he gets, the more attention he’s paid and the more likely he is to be a legal target.

Maybe he'll be the first to make the fair use argument in court, but with the ranks of samplers swelling every day, he certainly won't be the last. For On the Media, I'm Jamie York.

And here’s Pennsylvania Congressman Mike Doyle on the House floor in 2007: [MASH-UP SONG/GREG GILLIS/UP AND UNDER]

MIKE DOYLE: Mr. Chairman, I want to tell you a little story of a local guy done good. His name’s Gregg Gillis. And by day he’s a biomedical engineer in Pittsburgh. At night he deejays under the name Girl Talk. His latest mash-up record made the Top Albums of 2006 list from Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and Spin Magazine, amongst others.

His shtick, as The Chicago Tribune wrote about him, is quote, “based on the notion that some sampling of copyrighted material, especially when manipulated and re-contextualized into a new art form, is legit and deserves to be heard.”

[GIRL TALK/NOTORIUS B.I.G./ELTON JOHN/UP AND UNDER]"

1/5/2011 12:09:37 PM

indy
All American
3624 Posts
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Copy_Bad_Copy

1/6/2011 4:15:33 PM

indy
All American
3624 Posts
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Any of you listen to Gregg Gillis, aka "Girl Talk"??

It's pretty good.



Also, I thought this would get some response:

Quote :
"Copyrights and Copywrongs

Interview with Siva Vaidhyanathan

By Carrie McLaren | Issue #20

Thomas Jefferson would have loved [the original] Napster," Siva Vaidhyanathan has argued. And we’re inclined to trust him on this, because he has been tracking copyright law since its dawn.

Vaidhyanathan is the author of the excellent book Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity (New York University Press, 2001) and is assistant professor of Culture and Communication at New York University. I talked to him this past summer. --Carrie McLaren


....."

http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/20/siva_vaidhyanathan.html

1/27/2011 3:32:01 PM

indy
All American
3624 Posts
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I'll keep bumping this until some of you post thoughtful and relevant responses to all points not yet addressed thoroughly.




2/28/2011 11:18:32 AM

marko
Tom Joad
72828 Posts
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i thought this thread

message_topic.aspx?topic=614427

could use a buddy

6/19/2011 10:09:01 AM

adultswim
Suspended
8379 Posts
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I feel like this is relevant. ICE tries to extradite a UK citizen for violating US copyright law. What?

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110617/04014414727/why-is-justice-department-pretending-us-copyright-laws-apply-uk.shtml

Quote :
"We already mentioned the attempt by the US to extradite Richard O'Dwyer, a UK student who ran TVShack.net and TVShack.cc, both of which were seized by ICE. Unfortunately, most of the press reports out of the UK lacked details, and I wasn't even entirely sure that an actual attempt at extradition had been made, or if there was just fear on the part of the O'Dwyer family. After some digging, however, it appears that this is absolutely the case. The Justice Department, out of the Southern District of NY -- the same DOJ offices that have been involved in the ICE seizures -- and ICE, via the US embassy in London, made the request to extradite O'Dwyer. I've now heard that from three separate sources. I also called the folks in the press office at the US Attorneys' office in SDNY to see if they were willing to respond to questions about the attempted extradition, and the answer is they don't want to talk about it at all. I believe the two quotes were "there is nothing in the public record we can comment on" and "there is no additional guidance we can give you," though they did offer to send me the press release they sent out when they helped seize the TVShack domains."


And another example of US courts trying a foreigner for copyright laws:

https://torrentfreak.com/canadian-bittorrent-user-fined-60000-by-u-s-court-110615

Quote :
"A new dimension was just added to the ongoing stream of BitTorrent lawsuits in the U.S. A Canadian BitTorrent user has been ordered to pay $60,000 by a U.S. District Court judge. The Calgary resident, who did not defend himself, was ordered to pay the damages for sharing two films on an adult-oriented BitTorrent tracker."

6/19/2011 12:56:28 PM

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