RE: Fwd: FNV-RIAA IS CRACKING DOWN

["Stephen P. Goodman" <sgoodman@earthlight.net>]

Kim Flint [mailto:kflint@chromatic.com] put forth:

> 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... 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.

I think that's a real stretch though, and not a good example.  For 
instance,
none of us are at any point contracted to produce anything for this
newsletter, and as a consequence the Fair Use principle only applies to the
free exchange here.  It can be easily argued that the purpose of inclusion
of each other's writings is to reply to it in a concise and contextually
accurate manner, to say nothing of being just understood.

On the other hand, If someone went and got paid to perform a piece whereby
sections of this newsletter were read aloud, that would muddy up this
argument a good deal.  And this distinction, I think, is the basic seed of
the sampling problem with respect to copyright.

> 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.

I think it is not a matter of "big bucks vs. us" by any stretch of the
imagination.  The aspect of companies with big bucks being able to afford
long, drawn-out court cases is probably more the deciding element, to say
nothing of visibility of the process.  I as a composer find it incredibly
encouraging to know that I indeed do have the same rights on this level as,
say, WB.

But at the same time, another mentioned by someone else was intriguing to
me, and may reveal a core distinction in the way sectors of this conflict
think of Their Situation.  However, modification in any way of an original
signal or image or anything else does Not make that modified result an
Original Work.  It is more a "treatment" than that, insofar as the modified
item was more than just an element of the result.

Here's a hopefully better example.  I take Robert Plant's
"meh-meh-meh-meh-meh-meh..." from the "Dazed and Confused" track from Zep's
live album, run it through a flange, a fuzz box, my Quadraverb, and record
it into CoolEdit Pro, whereby I reverse it, now rendering it nearly
unrecognizable to all but the most adept.  I assign several seconds of this
result to one of the RAM banks on my sound card, and use it in several
compositions, which I post on the Internet, and put on a CD for sale.

Everything is still fairly grey in this regard, all the way up until the
point where money changes hands, and (even more emphatically) I make a
PROFIT from the work.  At this point, I owe the folks who own that 
recording
of "Dazed and Confused", at least.  This doesn't even go into performance
rights.

By the way, this one on getting permission.  A fellow who's been in the
publishing biz here is one of my PC clients, and early on, when I was
looking for the permission to use a monologue from an old film for 
inclusion
on a track of mine, told me to not just go for the right to use it in the
recording, but get the performance rights at the same time.  Spoken word
recordings, and most film soundtracks, are not handled by the same kind of
honchos as recorded music.  Some of this stuff is actually exchanged on the
basis of a handshake, and a combination "thanks for asking" from the owner,
and acknowledgement of the kind permission to use it, from the artist.

It turned out that the performance rights were gratis in my case, mainly
because I asked about them at the time, so they didn't have to write up any
more paperwork.  Pretty informal in comparison with what I'd expected.  And
a lot less scary too!

Stephen GoodmanÊ -Ê It's... The Loop Of The Week!
EarthLight StudiosÊ -Ê http://www.earthlight.net/Studios