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RE: Fwd: FNV-RIAA IS CRACKING DOWN



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