Court Rules Against Unlicensed Sampling 84
An anonymous reader writes "Looks like there is no room at all for *any* sampling of "commercially protected" music. According to the open and future-looking judges, 'Get a license or do not sample. We do not see this as stifling creativity in any significant way.'" As the article puts it, this includes "minor, unrecognisable snippets of music." The decision was in the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Uh.. (Score:2)
Re:Uh.. (Score:1)
Bad news for those annoying-as-hell drum n bass MCs who all sound the same. I'd imagine they'd get sued to hell by all of Jamaica.
I should know, I was a drum n bass DJ. :P
On another note, looks like half the jungle records I own are now in violation of this law, then again I live in Canada so it's not so bad.
Cage (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Cage (Score:1)
Anybody looking for mod points wanna post the info?
Re:Cage (Score:3, Informative)
The root of the matter was that the person in question credited Cage in the liner notes. If that had not been done, the lawsuit would never have happened.
Re:Cage (Score:2)
Re:Cage (Score:1, Funny)
But his (blood-sucking bastard) estate did inherit the rights.
GPL (Score:1)
this would be especially useful for someone eanting to program their keyboard with a range of sounds from >
Maybe this will foster some more "creativity" (Score:3, Insightful)
Is anyone else getting tired of seeing the use of, or the slight modification of "retro" stuff being pawned off as "new"?
Re:Maybe this will foster some more "creativity" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Maybe this will foster some more "creativity" (Score:5, Informative)
Me? I've spent many many years getting the proper texture and tone out of my fingers and guitars. The subtle click of using my left hand fingernails versus the softer tip pull, the slowly muted resonating strings when I play an open chord and cup the edge of my palm against the open strings... all of this is a unique work.
People are talking about using this to copyright "silence" or a "c note". That's not what this is about. All too often the things sampled are trumpet bits or riffs that the musicians spent their entire lives to get to. For each song I write, I spend hours looking for a good melody, then more hours to find just the right way to play it (listen to the early takes of the Beatles' Strawberry Fields Forever), and then throw away 9 out of 10 songs. The few I keep, I work at until they are "in" my fingers.
To directly address your question, I can pull a popular theme (I have, working a Zappa riff into a song about a guy stuck in the 70s), but that's entirely different than sampling a Zappa song and using it.
I'm not saying that people who work with samples are not musicians and that they do not create unique works. But, just as I'm allowed to perform a cover song but I can't take a song and perform it with different lyrics (unless it is protected parody or satire) without permission by the original author, the court has determined that you can't sample works without permission.
That's fine. Dolly Parton had to get permission to change the lyrics of her version of Stairway to Heaven and now a person wishing to use the crunchy intro note to Aqualung as a sample has to get permission.
--
Evan
Re:Maybe this will foster some more "creativity" (Score:2)
I'm just peeved by the lack of "innovation"--artists relying on
Re:Maybe this will foster some more "creativity" (Score:2)
Re:Maybe this will foster some more "creativity" (Score:2)
Re:Maybe this will foster some more "creativity" (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:Maybe this will foster some more "creativity" (Score:3, Insightful)
Speaking strictly in the context of contemporary (that is to say, scalar rather than modal) Western music... Put it this way. There's twelve notes. TWELVE. Period. Given the constraints of a four minute pop song, I think the obvious answer to your question is B. Seriously. There is no chord progression, no melody, no riff that is completely original, that has never been thought of before. They are possible mathemat
Re:Maybe this will foster some more "creativity" (Score:2)
Re:Maybe this will foster some more "creativity" (Score:2)
It's also more of a musical reference, rather than part of the song. Similar to a song in which I have the lyric "Until you answered yes and no / about the damn shampoo", which is a clear reference to Mamet's _Sexual Perversity in Chicago_
Re:Maybe this will foster some more "creativity" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Maybe this will foster some more "creativity" (Score:1)
Hes so "good" at scratching vinyl that he has been banned from almost(?) every local, regional, internationl, or worldwide competition there is.
He often plays several samples at once while makeing a scratched album sound like its "singing" to the beats.
Ive listened to some of the samples( unscratched ) that he uses and have been left wondering where the voices come from.
Re:Maybe this will foster some more "creativity" (Score:1)
T.S. Eliot makes constant allusions to other works in his poetry. It's part of what his poetry is trying to say: that our artists and cultural zeitgeist as a whole don't have the resources to make truly original or meaningful art. The best we can do is try to reorganize and reinterpret what *used* to be meaningful.
Then again, maybe I'm wrong and Dante Alligheri, William Shakespeare, Andrew Marvell and God (Author of the printed book that is stolen most of
Re:Maybe this will foster some more "creativity" (Score:2)
T.S. Eliot makes constant allusions to other works in his poetry. It's part of what his poetry is trying to say: that our artists and cultural zeitgeist as a whole don't have the resources to make truly original or meaningful art. The best we can do is try to reorganize and reinterpret what *used* to be meaningful.
Then again, maybe I'm wrong and Dante Alligheri, William Shakespeare, Andrew Marvell and God (Author of the printed book that is stolen most often)'s
Sampling in the real world (Score:2)
I don't think you understand what people use samplers for on a day to day basis. My favourite sampler [soundonsound.com] has less than a second of sampling time, and is limited to six unbalanced analogue channels of 12-bit mono.
With less than a second of shitty, crunchy audio, I obviously can't sample pop choruse
Re:Maybe this will foster some more "creativity" (Score:2)
Music is communication. You only want it new because you've heard it all your life on radio and television which are one way communication-challenged media. Talk radio and talk TV (frankly TV talk shows are even worse because the only communication encouraged is adversarial) aren't much better.
What's missing in these media is songs that evolve greatly when one
Whole lotta payouts (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Whole lotta payouts (Score:1, Informative)
When you play a C on your saxophone, and record the note, it's yours. If you record yourself playing someone elses music, and the recording contains a recognizable portion of the composition, and you sell it, you need to pay a royalty on the sheet music.
You are allowed to record yourself playing music then sell it, scott free, as long as you wrote the music, or
Re:Whole lotta payouts (Score:2)
Re:Whole lotta payouts (Score:2)
Maybe if it's from an acoustic guitar. After all, The Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows" is just a C chord played over and over again.
Guitar tabs here [guitaretab.com].
-jdm
Re:Whole lotta payouts (Score:2)
Dude, you are so wrong. There's definately a B flat in there as well.
So the 8 second rule is gone? (Score:3, Interesting)
Fair Use is dead! (Score:1)
Good news! open source sound (Score:2)
Perhaps someone with motivation will pull together an audio oriented site for GPL samples, tracks and MP3's
Requests for vocal instruments would go like this, here are some lyrics, here is the backing, sing it.
Then you could rate musicians, singers, etc, or form virtual bands...
like band-camp, only without the flutes...
"minor, unrecognisable snippets of music" banned? (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I'm entirely behind the idea that if your sample is recognisable as someone else's song, then you've got to license it. If you can't tell, then you've obviously done something new with the sound and its fair game.
Re:"minor, unrecognisable snippets of music" banne (Score:3, Insightful)
Naturally, the RIAA is fine with this.
Re:"minor, unrecognisable snippets of music" banne (Score:1)
Re:"minor, unrecognisable snippets of music" banne (Score:3, Insightful)
> It's possible to spend two days of time, just getting a kick drum, and the associated compression, eq etc right.
> I shouldn't be paid for that when someone lifts it?
>
> Come on. How would you like it if your boss just didn't pay you for 2 days of work.
> You'd get a little upset, especially if he made a few million dollars from it.
When most people do "2 days of work", they get paid for "2 days of work". On
Re:"minor, unrecognisable snippets of music" banne (Score:2)
what of reinvention of 3-note riffs? (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, if I do a guitar solo and it happens that 3 notes used several times sound like, oh, 'cat scratch fever' or 'smoke on the water' (same riff, by the way), am I violating ownership?
And this will kill jazz... no more nods to other works in solos?
Next up: any writer who uses 3 words in sequence that appeared in a previous writer's book is now violating that original author's intellectual property and will be sued.
Worse, the article's 'stolen' 3-note riff is only 6 pieces of information-- 3 pitches plus 3 rhythms. They'd downsampled and changed the rhythm, so we're saying anything that is _similar_ to a known bit is at risk.
While the article mentions they'd sampled, I worry that original recreation will be hit with the same law, i.e. getting a session guitarist to redo a riff in a different octave with different phrasing will be seen the same as 'sampling'.
Well, as Jimmy B said (Score:2)
Re:what of reinvention of 3-note riffs? (Score:2, Informative)
But Ted Nugent still used his own little fingers and his own guitar to copy Ritchie Blackmore; he didn't record 'Smoke on the Water', change the rhythm and called it a 'new song'.
People can still rip off 'Eruption' and 'Foxy Lady' all they want; they just can't tweak the _recording_ of 'Foxy Lady', call it an original co
Re:what of reinvention of 3-note riffs? (Score:4, Informative)
You obviously don't know jack about how sampling/scratching/etc actually works and is used in music, do you? Perhaps you should educate yourself [scratchmovie.com] before making such statements.
For the record, you're right, "just tweaking the recording of Foxy Lady" should be licensed, but it seems pretty obvious that "even unrecognizable snippets" goes way beyond ruling against "just tweaking".
Re:what of reinvention of 3-note riffs? (Score:5, Informative)
While the article mentions they'd sampled, I worry that original recreation will be hit with the same law, i.e. getting a session guitarist to redo a riff in a different octave with different phrasing will be seen the same as 'sampling'.
Not necessarily, at least not from this ruling.
Copyright in music is a complex subject, there are different things in a song that are copyrightable and copyrighted, and the courts address them all separately.
First, the author of the music has a copyright. Think sheet music here, not anything you can listen to. The law gives the songwriter control over performances and over "mechanical reproduction", which originally meant production and distribution of player piano reels, but now covers production and distribution of CDs as well.
Next, the author of the lyrics has a copyright. This author also has control over performances and mechanical reproduction. In addition, copyright gives him some protection over the content of the words, so any "story" content, including characters and plot may have some protection, just like authors of books do (this is much harder to enforce, though, which is a good thing).
Finally, a recording artist who records a song has a copyright on the recording... completely separate from the copyrights on the lyrics and the music.
Oh, and I think the producer, sound engineer, etc. also technically hold part of the copyright on the recording, although in pratice the engineer is usually paid a flat fee and gives up his copyright (so no royalties).
Under copyright law, any copying and distribution of someone's copyrighted work requires a license, unless it falls under the provisions of Fair Use.
In the case of infringement on the recording copyright, enforcement is very simple, because the material is 100% infringing, even if it's been layered on top of other original music. This is what this court found, and it's no surprise (particularly given the existence of compulsory licensing, more on that below). Also, infringement on recordings has criminal remedies that go well beyond the simple civil damages available for the other two.
For lyrics, it's also pretty easy to enforce the copyright, especially if the copy is word for word and the words aren't something trivial like "Oooh yeah baby". But you can only recover damages.
For music, it's pretty hard to enforce the copyright, unless you just play a big section of a song. A small snippet of a tune may be recognizable, but the courts rarely find infringement. It's a good idea to check with an attorney before publishing in a significant way, though.
Note that all of this does not really constrain musical creativity, much. Why? Because if you don't publish your music, no one will care, and they won't be able to get much from you in damages anyway, and if you do publish your music commercially you can afford to pay for licenses.
Due to something called "compulsory licensing", the copyright holders *have* to license it to you, too. They can't decide they don't like what you're doing with it, or anything like that. In fact, you don't even have to ask permission... just send them a check after you publish. The amount of the check is defined by the law as well; there are statutory rates for music, lyrics and recordings, and the prices are quite low. If you want to negotiate a lower price, you can approach the copyright holder and do so.
The only situation I can think of that the system doesn't work well for is a musician who gives away his music for free, say over the web. The law doesn't cover this situation because it's new. Even ten years ago it wasn't really practical to give music away for free on a large scale, because publishing involved the production of physical objects with a per-unit cost and was therefore expensive. Since publishing was expensive, the incremental cost of a few compulsory licenses increased the cost by a manageable amount. Thanks to new distribution technologies, the c
Re:what of reinvention of 3-note riffs? (Score:3, Informative)
compulsory licensing only works with playing someone else's work, not in publishing rights. You can't release a Beatles best of and just pay them compulsory licensing for their tracks.
Now, it would be a great idea in sampling, but you still need permission. The prime example is The Verve and Bittersweet Symphony. They asked the Rolling Stones for permission to use the small orchestral sample (which was pretty obscure - I doubt anyone's going to find it if they look.) and were refused.
They used
Re:what of reinvention of 3-note riffs? (Score:2)
My mistake. I thougth compulsory licensing existed for samples as well as music and lyrics.
Re:what of reinvention of 3-note riffs? (Score:3, Informative)
Well, no, because you're out a hubcap. More accurately, if I see your hubcap, take a photo of it, and win a photo contest with that photo, do you deserve half the prize?
I'd say, no. Even if you'd modded your car with custom hubcaps, because I'd a) only used a portion of your mods and b) presented it within a new work.
The work is not the hubcap, even though it wouldn't be the same work without the hubcap
3 notes (Score:2)
Re:3 notes (Score:2)
A better approach, that would not only not infringe on every existing copyright, but actually invalidate them (at least, in relation to any given three notes)...
Search through pre-copyright-era works for an instance of all possible three-note sequences. Poof, you have just proven any song not only has prior art, but has NON-COPYRIGHTED (ie, in the public domain) prior art.
Since you can't just re-release a
Re:3 notes (Score:2)
in other news (Score:2)
Just asking to be made fun of... (Score:4, Funny)
Imagine the young artists and DJs that we will never hear because they can't afford to clear the rights to release their first album. The idea that this high cost of entry into what are already accepted music genres won't stifle innovation is stupid. The field just got closed to those with money and attorneys.
Re:Just asking to be made fun of... (Score:3, Insightful)
Where to start with your bit of ignorance... With modern technology, your idea of an "instrument" is dated. Turntables can be used as a distinct instrument (even a melodic one - go listen to Fungo Mungo or Mr. Bungle). Most sampling is actually done with keyboard equipment which are fully considered musical instruments. Sound design, song srtucture, arranging and recording/mixdown are considered ver
15 year old song?!?!? (Score:1, Informative)
Wow, I didn't have any respect for him before. I certainly have even less now.
Apparently fair use doesn't exist anymore. (I can imagine some
To hell with them. It's getting to the point that, to fix the system, you'd have to abolish ALL copyright and start from scratch.
Or does anyone have any ideas to fix the system? Any ideas that are actually good?
Re:15 year old song?!?!? (Score:4, Insightful)
and no, fair use doesn't apply to sampling. That's what they're saying. And frankly, if you look at what fair use is, it shouldn't.
Now I like The Grey Album and the Avalanches and much of the meta-art genre, but under current laws this is the correct implementation.
This is a legislative problem and only solved with a ballot or a gun.
Re:15 year old song?!?!? (Score:2)
You just got yourself on TWO government watch lists.
-
Re:15 year old song?!?!? (Score:1)
Re:15 year old song?!?!? (Score:2)
Huh? You mean if the rappers sampling Clinton hadn't been allowed to, all the people who have bought their records would have gone and bought a GC album? Can I have some of that when you're done smoking it?
Let's face it, if George hadn't been sampled and elevated by the rediscovery of his work through
Binding Authority only in the 6th Circuit (Score:4, Informative)
Is this only for music? (Score:2)
Would this ruling stifle those types of works, too?
Re:Is this only for music? (Score:2)
Easy (Score:2)
Pirate (Score:2, Interesting)
I can't believe a judge used the term pirate instead of copyright violation. I guess I should be glad he didn't call it stealing. I thought lawyers were much more careful with using the correct words, especially judges in rulings.
Language can shape and reveal our views. (Score:2)
Some lawyers are, like other practitioners of other fields of work, quite skilled in their misuse of language. Consider the number of lawyers that use the phrase "intellectual property" which hurts us in at least two ways: it helps secure the validity of turning a commons into ownable chunks (by structuring the debate so we accept the property model before we've debated it), and tries to mash together a bunch of disparate laws as though they share more in common than they differ. I can understand why lawy
Not in the 9th circuit (Score:2)
After Mattel filed suit, Mattel and MCA employees traded barbs in the press. When an MCA spokeswoman noted that each album included a disclaimer saying that Barbie Girl was a "social commentary [that was] not created or approved by the makers of the doll," a Mattel representative responded by saying, "That's unacceptable. . . . It's akin to a bank robber handing a note of apology to a teller during a heist. [It n]either diminishes the severity of the crim
I might be in the minority here... (Score:2, Insightful)
Now, I think a 5 second sample is OK, like what the Beastie
Re:I might be in the minority here... (Score:1, Funny)
Under Pressure = DUM-DA-DA-DA-DUM-DA-DUM
Ice, Ice Baby = DA-DUM-DA-DA-DA-DUM-DA-DUM
I'm sure I didn't explain it as well as Mr. Ice did. It was one of the funniest things I have ever heard.
What's next? Collages? (Score:3, Interesting)
Come on people--this is f*cked up. Sampling a few seconds of somebody else's song, even if it *is* recognizable, and even if it is TheReallyHardPartThatTookYouTenYearsToMaster (c) is not a crime and should not require your permission.
There is a slippery slope here. What are we going to make illegal next? Collages?
What about traditional fair use? (Score:2)
Re:What about traditional fair use? (Score:1)
For one thing, "Weird Al" Yankovic doesn't sample; he covers. For another thing, his record label gets permission from the original songs' songwriters because unlike independent recording artists, a label affiliated with one of the majors is big enough to negotiate with the incumbent publishers.
Top 10 things we will soon be sued for... (Score:2, Funny)
9. Playing any musical instrument which emmits notes(recognizeable or not.)
8. Singing along with the radio.
7. Playing our mp3's backward to get the message.
6. Listening to seashells, actually I think the shell gets sued for this, but we maybe called as a witness.
5. Makeing raindrop noises
4. Humming the tune of a popular commercial
3. Chewing with our mouth open
2. Singing the National Anthem
1. Singing in the shower
completely impractical... (Score:4, Informative)
Hmmm... (Score:2, Troll)
If it's that unrecognizeable and creative, why'd you need to sample it instead of making something new?
Quick answer (Score:3, Informative)
One of the most useful skills for an artist (or, for that matter, any creative person) is the ability to interpret and re-purpose works created before.
Wow (Score:1)
Read the 6th circuit's opinion... (Score:1)
So, the statute's structured to say "making derivative works is the copyright holder's right, and only those derivative works that satisfy A, B, and C are cove
Most everything is 'sampled' these days... (Score:2)
Perhaps this is not the intent of the law ( but i would not put it past them, considering who is driving the inactment of it )
So if you did it via analog equipment, and only produced actual LP's... then you would be safe, in theory.
"after we shoot all the lawyers, the so-called entertainment industry needs to be #2"