The Causbys: chickens died when military planes flew over their yard. What is "your property"? Does the air space above it count?
Steamboat Bill and Steamboat Willie: copyright lasted 14 years, then 28, and then the life of the creator. Disney has so far maintained ownership of Mickey Mouse, but lobbying Congress. But... SBW owed "ideational debt" to SBB, and many of Disney's stories came from folk tales, legend, oral history. #scumbagDisney
Copyright Criminals
Who gets the credit, and the money? Money and art
"We're all turning into DJs"
Anthony Berman - entertainment lawyer/douchebag
people who used to be miffed by sampling found out how much money they could make on copyright
Cheap and easy -- say the older generation of people, opposed to sampling. It's absurd to say samplers are "instrumentalists"
Modern music producer/sampler/DJ:instrumentalist as photographer:painter
"all these other artists that I'm sampling... they're in my band!"
Sage Francis: modern music producer
"Funk is the DNA of hip-hop"
Digital sampling came in the 1980s - the equipment was cheaper, more people knew how to make it.
"Sample police" -- lawyers and bullshit
The Bomb Squad -- four musical masterminds, bringing in sounds
"reality record" -- what you hear back on the streets is what you hear on the record... and then you hear that on the streets!
"Nobody took hip-hop seriously until it started making a lot of money." The copyright holders realized they could profit by charging artists for sampling their tracks
De La Soul got in a lot of trouble for sampling -- and sued
Biz Markie and Gilbert O'Sullivan: made a parody of "Alone Again," G.O'S fules a huge law suit. AS IF MUSIC CAN BE ERASED PAHAH. The judge called it "Biblically incorrect."
They weren't trying to steal or take what wasn't "theirs" -- they were creating, vibing. It was an unwritten code of the hip-hop world. You can't copyright a sound.
Sampling clearance emerged as an industry. Put pressure on artists to be honest about samples from the beginning.
Now that creating includes asking for permission... the definition of musical creativity has changed. "It is cheaper to cover an entire song than to sample 3 seconds of it." If you change the words or recontextualize it, you're screwed.
Paying over $100,000 to sample one song! "Now you're telling me that my style is too expensive?"
No rapper ever thanked Clyde Subblefield "the original funky drummer" for his drum beats. No credit, no mention, no compensation. (besides Melissa Etheridge)
There aren't many original that make more money than the pieces they sample from.
CULTURE IS ABOUT COLLAGE -- FORGING THE BITS INTO SOMETHING STRONGER.
Danger Mouse' "The Gray Album" from 2004: mashup between The Beatles' White Album and Jay-Z's Black Album. One of the most successful albums of 2004, if it had been for sale. Nobody made a dime.
The people who make the technology do it so we can make music and create and move on. Wouldn't it be nice if we could just get on with it. The law may be too involved in, and an underground is growing because the "outlaws" cannot afford the lawsuits.
Subblefield says the credit is more important than the money.
"That's how society moves forward. It evolves from taking old things, and changing them."
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