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Looper's Delight
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It seems you guys are not exactly understanding what copyright law is all about. It's fairly different from things like patents, trademarks, or property ownership. Once you have published a work - made it publicly available - copyright goes into effect. It grants you LIMITED rights over how that work is subsequently used by others. It does not grant you absolute rights. Provisions are made in the law to allow others to reuse portions of that work for a variety of puposes, freely, and without requireing any permission from you, the owner. That's in the law, and has been for a very long time, and is a principle called Fair Use. If you don't like this law, that's fine, go lobby your elected officials to get it changed. I suspect you won't get very far though, because the idea of Fair Use is well developed and has a long history. The point of it is to encourage ongoing discourse and development of ideas and the creation of new works based on those ideas. This is widely applied in visual arts, print, academia, film, journalism, legal casework, and even internet forums. An example of fair use is right in front of you. Stephen used a portion of a published work of Motley's, verbatim, for the purpose of commenting on it. Motley had used another's published work before that, in his post, also verbatim. I'm now "sampling" both of you and reusing your work in this piece that I am about to publish. Somebody will undoubtedly reuse my creative work as a part of subsequent comments. In no case did anyone seek permission from the publisher of the various pieces before doing this. And they don't have to, because of Fair Use. Music is unusual in that Fair Use has not been much of an issue until recently, when sampling became widely available. Now that it is possible, there is a lot of resistance from the big-bucks people. Groups like the major record labels and the RIAA are trying to find ways around Fair Use, so that they can treat published works as property which they absolutely control. According to my understanding of the law, they don't have a right to do that. They do have a right to prevent things like counterfeit and piracy, which are different from Fair Use. That's what Negativland's point is all about, and why they pretty much go out of their way to get themselves sued over the issue. They believe that the issues should be tried in court in full public view, and that the copyright and fair use laws should be applied to music same as anywhere else. Oddly, nobody has dared to sue Negativland in quite a while..hmmm...... Also, this is not just a US issue, as most copyright laws from various countries are similar, and recognized internationally through trade treaties. kim At 01:03 PM 8/26/98 -0700, Stephen P. Goodman wrote: >I have to agree with ol' Motley, who said: > >>Sampling is fine, just be honest about it. Give >> credit to your >> sources and pay for using the original artist's work. > >Bravo! One of my recurring day-mares involves seeing a commercial and >realising that one of my Loops Of The Week is the background for it. At >least I copyright my work! And soon I'll have the first set of 366 >registered with BMI, though if you thought it was a pain to process the >paperwork for a collection of 9 or 10 songs... well! I have to submit >cassettes containing cuts, 30 seconds long each for every loop, for them >all >to be protected, if only in theory. Let's face it, I can't afford to >police >the airwaves myself, so firms like BMI and ASCAP can do it for me, if to >an >extent. > >Frankly, the whole bit with all-sampling pieces, is not much more to me >than >the musical equivalent of decoupage that I remember some kids used to do >in >Jr. High School, on their lunchboxes. One out of Six that did such >business >was actually interested in the Art of it - the rest used others' images >because they couldn't produce them on their own. It would seem to be the >same line I saw between people that can Really Draw, and those who learn >to >Draw. There IS a difference. > >There is no kind of defense as far as I'm concerned for stealing other >peoples' work in this way, either. Period. > >Stephen GoodmanÊ -Ê It's... The Loop Of The Week! >EarthLight StudiosÊ -Ê http://www.earthlight.net/Studios > > > ________________________________________________________ Kim Flint, MTS 408-752-9284 Chromatic Research kflint@chromatic.com http://www.chromatic.com