the only upside is it will further inspire artists who sample to look for recordings from countries not yet in the WTO or in our copyright treaties, or not paying attention to them (Bollywood, anyone?) which will make for more interesting samples..

And for those wanting to get involved in civil disobedience:

Downhill battle is teaming up with musician and artist Michael Bell-Smith to offer this response to last week’s ruling:

3 Notes and Runnin’ – http://www.downhillbattle.org/3notes/

The project is an open call for 30 second songs made entirely and exclusively (but not necessarily recognizably) out of the 1.5 second Funkadelic sample that was the focus of the court case.

What’s the damage? Let’s see–$50/month for DSL, double that for overhead. $100/month would make one cent of that cost prorated equal to 241 seconds. That’s six minutes. In the hypothetical above, involving a buck, you’d have to have a ten-hour session to cost that.

Now, the joker here is specifying otherwise harmless use, so I’m not taking into account whether the owner of the access point is being sufficiently slowed down by the free rider to be harmed (not a back-of-envelope [okay, I used bc] calculation).

That aside, though, am I out to lunch or making sense?

The first delasoul album got them some trouble due to unlicensed samples; the second one was all cleared and finicky documented – this ruling will not stop sampling (that was in the 80ies.)

In other news, I have also seen a dvd anthology of amateur video fail, because it was not possible to get at the reproduction rights of used musical tracks (some publishers did not care to answer requests then, some tracks rights holders could not be identified.)

Public performance of copyrighted music is actually made easier than mechanical reproduction: as the collecting societies operate in near monopoly and claim all the worlds repertoire – they gladly collect for performances of works, they dont manage – you are not pressed to ask any questions.

This ruling won’t keep P-Diddy from putting out records as his label can pay for what he uses.

If a label can’t afford to clear the samples on a record, and faces crippling legal repercussions if they release uncleared material, then they won’t put it out. The people affected by heavy enforcement of this ruling would be the independents; local and unsigned acts on smaller labels simply struggling to break even on their releases. Throw in untold thousands of dallars in clearing costs and their output ceases.

This would most definately have a stifling effect on creativity in music.

Rubbish.

For thousands of years, poets and other writers of literary works have “sampled” one another. It’s called allusion. Check out a really good, high-quality, well-footnoted and cross-referenced dictionary of quotations some day.

Well, it seems it was certainly recognisable to the artist. Repainting a stolen bicycle so it is not recognisable to the owner, doesn’t absolve the thief of the theft.

There is a difference between inspiration and imitation, the court simply helped to draw a brighter line between the two.

It is particularly ironic that hip-hop artists – many of whom complain that others are riding on their originality –

“You know some of those n-a’s is so deceptive, using my styles like a contraceptive.” – Snoop Dogg

can’t seem to do the math that they are doing the same thing to others.

hopefully, this ruling with spur artists to make an effort and think of something original – and end the dreadful cycle of hip-hop mediocrisy.