Tag Archives: copyright

Make a new thing from that old thing

Music, Pals, Video, , , ,

Here’s the big argument why copyright should be off by default: the world makes more interesting things when sharing is on by default.

First up is Kutiman, who took the little demos that folks upload to youtube and turned it into a whole album, called Thru You.

PLEASE go check out the rest of that album.

The opposite side of that is fans love doing remixes and covers of the musicians they love. Then they share those covers. That is how culture is supposed to work. Sometimes the artists freak out and try to stop that sharing. Some artists say thank you. Some artists do even better and actually make a transformative work out what their fans did. I don’t know of anyone who has done this better than Gotye with Somebodies:

For more, watch Everything is a Remix.Here’s episode one.

Everything is a Remix Part 1 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.

 

— Whoops! I’ve been trying to do a music video Monday thing – looks like I scheduled this post for the wrong day.

Movie Review: Copyright Criminals

Movie, Music, Pals, Reviews, , , , , ,

Copyright Criminals Boxed Set CoverSaw Copyright Criminals on Netflix Monday night while cooking up a mushroom risotto. Isn’t that the best time to watch a documentary, while you are waiting for something to boil or stirring occaisionally? Anyway, it’s a great great hip hop history, looking at the ways that copyright and remix culture intersect. You get interviews with all sorts of great turntabilists and producers like Public Enemy, De La Soul, and EL-P, but then you also get the side of guys who made the beats in the beginning like George Clinton and Clyde “Funky Drummer” Stubbelfield.

It turns out that if you cover a song, you are in the clear. Just don’t change any lyrics, you’re legally ok. However, if you lift a guitar riff, distort it and change the tempo or stutter it, then you’re a copyright criminal and you can’t make any cash off your music. There is a really good bit where the head of Tommy Boy and De La Soul are interviewed, discussing how the legal implications of sampling definitely changed the music they were making. Samples became more distorted to hide their origins, some songs are abandoned just because you can’t hope to clear the rights to a popular track. It’s strange to think of all the ghost songs floating out there that were smothered in their cradles before they could be heard or developed.

One last bit of the movie I really loved were the visual breakdowns of remix and mashup songs. Nothing makes it clearer how much actual artistry is happening than seeing the interleaving, distortions and tweaks in all the clips visually.