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>From the SonicNet "music news of the world" website today (http://www.addict.com/MNOTW/hifi/) comes this interesting article on the Negativland/RIAA dispute. Since reprinting the entire article here would be violating Addicted to Noise copyrights, I'll just use some excerpts. :-) The whole article should be available at this link: http://rl.sonicnet.com/news/article3.jhtml;$sessionid$VKFA1CYAABS23UID1AKCFE Q?index=1 (hopefully this won't start the whole debate all over again. :-) ********************************************* 09/02/98 03:09 SonicNet Music News reports: In a surprising response to a furor raised by underground collage band Negativland, the group's fans and its supporters, the Recording Industry Association of America announced on Tuesday that it had agreed to amend its CD Plant Guidelines to account for the existence of "fair use" material on CDs. [snip] The decision to amend the plant guidelines was an about-face for the R.I.A.A., which had previously criticized Negativland for questioning the original guidelines. [snip] "Unfortunately, Negativland, and many of you, believe that our CD Plant Good Business Practices -- formalized earlier this year into specific guidelines for CD plants to recognize pirated product -- has had the unintended effect of prejudicing the group's ability to get their album pressed," the release continued. "As an organization that has worked tirelessly to protect freedom of expression, we are gravely concerned about this perception. Our objective in issuing the CD Plant Guidelines has been to stop piracy, not artistic expression. Accordingly, the R.I.A.A. has amended its CD Plant Guidelines in response to your concerns." As a result, for the first time in nearly a month, Negativland's co-leader Mark Hosler had nothing negative to say about the R.I.A.A. "I'm amazed. It's a really incredible thing," Hosler said Tuesday night of the memo, issued after the music industry trade organization received an unspecified amount of e-mail and letters from irate Negativland fans. [snip] "This is really the first time they've acknowledged that 'fair use' is a gray area in the copyright law," said a giddy Hosler in response to the R.I.A.A. amendment. Negativland have long professed their belief that their collage-like appropriation of copyright-protected material is covered under a 'fair use' provision of copyright law that protects their "transformative" works of art. "The fact that an organization that represents the major labels is coming out and saying it's not a black-and-white issue, as far as Negativland is concerned, is unprecedented," added Hosler. According to the amended R.I.A.A. guidelines, "some recordings presented for manufacture may contain -- as part of an artist's work -- identifiable 'samples' or small pieces of other artists' well-known songs. In some instances, this sampling may qualify as 'fair use' under copyright law, and in other instances, it may constitute copyright infringement. There are no hard and fast rules in this area and judgments on both 'fair use' and indemnification must be made on a case-by-case basis." [snip] ****************************************** ________________________________________________________ Kim Flint, MTS 408-752-9284 Chromatic Research kflint@chromatic.com http://www.chromatic.com