When The Kids Of Major Label Execs Get Accused Of Infringement...

from the oh-look-at-that dept

You may know the name Jimmy Iovine. He's the head of Interscope Records, one of Universal Music's most important subsidiaries (if not the most important one). Not surprisingly, Iovine has a bit of a history of being something of a copyright maximalist. A few years back, he specifically called out the evils of children infringing:

"Rip it, burn it--the last few years parents and children have been given a pass when they knew in their hearts that [what they were doing] was wrong," Iovine said.

Indeed, he seems to suggest that parents share some of the blame for their kids infringing:

"(Piracy) is hurting kids because kids are learning a disrespect for the basic relationship between creativity and ownership. It's hurting parents because they are in on the sham."

So, one would assume that Jimmy Iovine's kids are squeaky clean, right? Especially, say, if they were professional DJs whose websites indicate they're a part of the Interscope/Universal Music family, right? Yes, that's the website of DJ Eye -- also known as Jamie Iovine, son of Jimmy Iovine. Jamie actually has a really good reputation as a DJ but, like many DJs, he releases mixtapes/remixes/etc. And, recently, it appears, Jamie's Soundcloud account was shut down due to copyright infringement: If you can't see that, it says:

My soundcloud is temp disabled due to some copyright bullshit. Getting it cleared up and should be re activated soon

His account is now back but a recent remix has gone missing. It was a remix that included Will.I.Am (Interscope Artist) along with Jennifer Lopez and Mick Jagger (not on Interscope).

None of this is to suggest that Jamie did anything wrong here. In fact, it looks like he did something completely natural and certainly very common: remixed some music in a cool way. But the way copyright law often works, you can now get in lots of trouble and owe lots and lots of money for doing something completely natural. Perhaps his father will realize that these issues aren't always so black and white, and even if your children are brought up in a house where they're taught repeatedly just how totally awesome copyright law is, it doesn't mean they won't, someday, discover how copyright law limits them, and get accused of copyright infringement.

Filed Under: jennifer lopez, jimmy iovine, mick jagger, remix, will.i.am
Companies: interscope, universal music

Michael Jackson, Pirate Remixer

from the but-of-course dept

We always hear stories about how copyright has to be protected to "protect the artists," and yet time and time again we learn that some of the biggest name artists will often copy directly from each other without credit or payment. It's the way music is made. In James Boyle's excellent book, The Public Domain, there's a really fantastic chapter giving plenty of examples of this in practice. However, Rob Hyndman recently pointed us to another such example, found via Wikipedia, but backed up via its sources of course. The discussion? It's about where Michael Jackson's famous song Billie Jean came from. Turns out, Jackson himself admitted to copying the bass line directly from a Hall and Oates song:

According to Daryl Hall, when Jackson was recording “We Are the World,” Jackson approached him and admitted to lifting the bass line for "Billie Jean" from a Hall and Oates song (apparently referring to Hall’s "I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)" from the 1981 album Private Eyes): "Michael Jackson once said directly to me that he hoped I didn't mind that he copped that groove."

Of course, the really amusing part? Hall responded to Jackson... by telling him he had done the same thing himself to get that bassline in the first place! "It's something we all do," Hall later explained.

Indeed. And yet, under today's laws, it's still considered infringement, and we still hear people looking down on "remixing" or people who create works in this manner, by building on the works of others. And yet, this is one of the most successful pop songs of all time. And the bass was a big part of that. Elsewhere in the Wikipedia article, there's a discussion of how the producer of the song, Quincy Jones, hated the song, and specifically the bass line. Yet Jackson insisted that the bass line was the key to the song, and the two of them fought over it until Jackson won. And the bassline was completely copied.

It's stories like this that make us wonder how people can say with a straight face that copying something can't help to create something new.

Filed Under: bass line, billie jean, copying, copyright, daryl hall, hall & oates, michael jackson, music, remix

When We Copy, We Justify It; When Others Copy, We Vilify Them

from the everything-is-a-remix dept

We've written multiple times about Kirby Ferguson's excellent Everything is a Remix project that has produced three videos highlighting the problems and history of intellectual property and how copying and derivative works are a core element of culture and invention. He's now released the fourth and final installment in the series, and it's a great summary look at the general problems with intellectual property law today. The key theme is that the theory (treating ideas, inventions, content, etc. as a form of "property" -- in the minds of many copyright and patent system supporters) simply doesn't match up with reality (where almost everything is a derivative work of some sort). What the video does nicely is highlight the hypocrisy of it all. As he notes brilliantly, when we copy (and everyone does copy), we justify it. When others copy, however, suddenly we attack them and vilify them. A perfect recent example of this, by the way, was former NYT executive editor Bill Keller's bizarre defense of the NYT copying and posting a work covered by someone else's copyright, just days after his own column came out in support of greater legal enforcement of copyrights.

As he notes, this is psychologically understandable. It's all about "loss aversion." People feel a sense that they "own" something which they really do not -- and that's often boosted by the concepts of intellectual property that really spread the idea that you can, in fact, own an idea (and, yes, technically neither copyright nor patents apply directly to "ideas," but that's a nuance that most people fail to grasp when they see how content and inventions are considered "owned" under the laws of today).

The video then talks about the continued expansion of copyright laws, and the more nefarious effort to continue to ratchet things up through trade agreements like ACTA and TPP. But he also points out that this is somewhat ironic, since in its early years, the US refused to sign similar trade agreements, and was a "pirate nation" that ignored copyrights from around the globe.

The video doesn't just cover copyrights, but digs into patents as well -- with specific attention paid to broad software patents that do little to contribute any knowledge to the world, but instead take broad concepts and seek to lock them up for the purpose of suing and trying to extract settlements from those actually creating and innovating.

From there he breaks out the original purpose of both copyrights and patents under the US system. In both cases, they were about benefiting the public: to encourage learning or to promote the progress of "useful" arts (inventions). But when the laws fail to do that, then we should see the system as broken and seek to remedy it.

All in all, Ferguson's series is a great introduction to many of the issues we cover around here. I don't fully agree with everything in all of the videos -- and the latest one has a slight undertone suggesting that capitalism and markets in and of themselves are bad (which I think is conflating a few different issues). But overall the videos are fantastic -- and in terms of production quality, it seems like each one in the series is better than the previous one. He keeps maturing as a video maker, which is cool to see. Ferguson is now moving on to a new project, called This is Not a Conspiracy Theory, for which he's raising funds on Kickstarter, so check it out.

Filed Under: copying, copyright, everything is a remix, intellectual property, kirby ferguson, loss avoidance, patents, property, remix

Thomas Jefferson: Original Remixer

from the well,-at-least-it-was-public-domain dept

Thomas Jefferson, of course, was the author of the Declaration of Independence, our third President, and had tremendous influence on the early days of our country. While he did not write the Constitution, he was still hugely influential in what went into it. It's been noted plenty of times that Jefferson was extremely skeptical of the copyright/patent clause of the Constitution. He was among those who suggested that monopolies would almost always do more harm than good. He later relented, and indeed ran the first Patent Office, though even then he seemed to remain quite skeptical of the idea of ever locking up knowledge. Either way, Aaron DeOliveira points us to the news that Thomas Jefferson was a remix artist before such things were cool (he was always such a trendsetter). Apparently he literally cut up and remixed the bible, to create a version "he believed was a more coherent narrative and pasted them onto blank paper." Thomas Jefferson... a pirate?

Filed Under: remix, thomas jefferson

No Copyright Intended: The Coming Generation Who Intrinsically Assumes Remix & Sharing Makes Sense

from the the-modern-prohibition dept

A whole bunch of folks sent over Andy Baio's recent brilliant post entitled No Copyright Intended, after the exceptionally common phrase found all over YouTube, where uploaders (mostly young uploaders) declare that, or the slightly modified "no copyright infringement intended," with videos they post. These are almost always on videos of songs or remixes -- in other words, content that almost certainly does infringe on someone's copyright. But the key point is that young people today intrinsically recognize that this doesn't make sense -- and they assume that their non-commercial use and intent not to profit mean that it should be fine. Legally, it's not. But it's certainly important to recognize that very few young people seem to recognize or care about this:

How pervasive is it? There are about 489,000 YouTube videos that say "no copyright intended" or some variation, and about 664,000 videos have a "copyright disclaimer" citing the fair use provision in Section 107 of the Copyright Act.

As he notes, many kids really seem to hope that just explaining their intentions will ward off a takedown, even though so many takedowns are automated these days. But the key point that Baio makes is at the end, where he notes that "no amount of lawsuits or legal threats will change the fact that this behavior is considered normal..." And from there, he suggests that as this generation ages, and begins voting, the trend of ever more draconian copyright laws is going to start to look pretty silly:

Here's a thought experiment: Everyone over age 12 when YouTube launched in 2005 is now able to vote.

What happens when — and this is inevitable — a generation completely comfortable with remix culture becomes a majority of the electorate, instead of the fringe youth? What happens when they start getting elected to office? (Maybe "I downloaded but didn't share" will be the new "I smoked, but didn't inhale.")

Remix culture is the new Prohibition, with massive media companies as the lone voices calling for temperance. You can criminalize commonplace activities from law-abiding people, but eventually, something has to give.

We've been arguing the same thing for a while. We're often told that as these kids grow up and "learn" more about copyright they'll change their minds. I just don't see it. It may happen for a small percentage, but it's tough for these kids to deny reality. Sharing content, remixing content and building on content is so natural to them. The idea that it should be illegal simply makes no sense at all. No amount of "education" (even if it involves McGruff the Crime Dog) can fool people into believing that nonsense is reasonable.

Filed Under: copyright, culture, intentions, no copyright intended, prohibition, remix

After Watching This Video, Can Anyone Say That Remix Isn't An Act Of A Musician?

from the live-mashup dept

One thing we hear all the time from folks who dislike remixes or mashups aren't "real" music is that a computer isn't a real "instrument." However, when I see and hear artists like Girl Talk, Kutiman and Pogo, I can't see how anyone with any ounce of intellectual honesty can claim that these are not true musicians in every sense of the word. And yet, people still argue that they're not, saying that sitting at a computer cutting up sounds isn't the same thing as playing a real "instrument." But... I point out that if someone is sitting at an electronic keyboard and pressing the keys, all they're really doing is playing a sound created by someone else. Is that really all that different than mashing up sounds played by someone else? What if you take things a step further and program clips of other songs into a keyboard and have someone play it?

Step on up, Madeon. While it's not a keyboard directly but (perhaps more impressively) a Novation Launchpad, this 17-year-old recently released this incredible video of him mashing up 39 of his favorite songs into one song... live. I defy anyone to claim that what he's doing here is anything less than a musician playing a keyboard or guitar: Just like a musician, he's using an instrument and the sounds that it makes to create something new and wonderful.

Filed Under: culture, madeon, music, musicians, remix

We Need To Let Go Of The Idea That Our Creations Are Utterly Ours

from the they're-not-and-have-never-been dept

We've written about Kirby Ferguson's excellent Everything Is A Remix project, and the folks over at On The Media have a nice interview with Ferguson. The whole thing is worth a read (it's pretty short, actually), but there were two great quotes that I thought were worth highlighting. He's asked if he's "sympathetic" to copyright holders, and responds:

I'm sympathetic to most of them. It's natural in our culture to want to protect what you feel you worked hard for or invested in. Unfortunately, I don't think it's as natural to be aware of the innumerable ways we take from our culture in order to create these things. We need to let go of the idea that our creations are utterly ours. Creating something new entitles us to some rights, but not to perpetual monopoly, which is the direction we're headed in.

That bolded part is the key. People have a natural inclination to give themselves more credit for their own work, and diminish the contributions of everyone who came before them whose work was instrumental to their own. I definitely recognize the natural instincts there as well, but I agree with Ferguson that it's important, culturally, to get past that.

He's also asked where he'd like to see things go "culturally in terms of copyright and patent laws" and he answers:

I think we have to stop conceiving of remixing as a kind of theft. It's not theft, it's not piracy, it's a legitimate effort to make something new. That effort deserves some respect, if not for the results, then for the intent. So I think step one is to stop treating remixing as theft and bring the penalties for unauthorized remixing back down to earth.

This can't be said enough, even though it's rarely said at all. I've explained in the past how insulting it is for people to make criticisms like "create your own!" when they see amazing creative new works built by remixing the works of those who came before. If you can't respect amazing creations built off of others' work as being something amazing and new, then you lead a culturally deficient life.

Filed Under: culture, ideas, kirby ferguson, remix

Everything Is A Remix: The Invention Edition

from the innovation-is-a-process dept

We've discussed in the past Kirby Ferguson's excellent project Everything is a Remix, which tries to highlight how creativity is almost always derived from elsewhere. We wrote about the first two videos, which covered copyright issues, starting with music and then movies. His latest may be the best yet, as it focuses on inventions, in large part by retelling the Apple story, concerning how it built off the work at Xerox PARC (which in turn built off work at SRC and other places). We actually just talked about this story a few weeks ago, and this video definitely adds to that conversation: The key point, which critics will undoubtedly skip or gloss over, is that he's not just saying that copying is good. He's saying that copying is one part of the very important process of innovation. Copying is a component, but the important part is then taking that copy and doing more with it. At issue is that some people believe that it's better to do everything from scratch. But that's incredibly wasteful, inefficient and too often, limiting. Being able to build on the works of others, to transform them and combine them with other good ideas, that's where innovation comes from. We've pointed this out many times before. The iPhone was a wonderful innovation, but almost all of its technologies could be found elsewhere. It's just that Apple put them together in a brilliant and user-friendly package. The video shows that the same thing was true of the original Macintosh, which took ideas from elsewhere and put them together in a useful manner. And, as you look back through history you find that it's true of all sorts of revolutionary and transformative advances in progress, such as the Gutenberg printing press or Henry Ford's Model-T mass production setup:
Innovation is almost always about remixing. It's about taking ideas that are already out there, and transforming them and adding to them. And yet, our social and legal policies seem to deny this. They seem to be focused on the myth of "flash of genius," -- of an invention that is brand new and unique. And so we create a system like the patent system, which doesn't recognize the importance and value of building on the ideas of others in order to continue that process of innovation. And that's a shame, because it's holding back progress in dangerous ways. It's certainly not stopping progress, but what we lose from progress not going as fast as it could is tremendous.

Filed Under: computers, culture, innovation, invention, remix
Companies: apple, xerox

Kutiman Continues To Make Amazing New Music Via Musical Collage

from the who-owns-the-copyright? dept

We've written a few times in the past about the brilliant musician, Kutiman, who creates astounding musical works through what might be called musical collage -- taking bits and pieces he finds on YouTube and mixing them into something amazing and wonderful. From a copyright standpoint, what he's doing is almost certainly infringement, in some sense, under today's laws, though thankfully no one is challenging him on that (and Israel, where he's from, has decent fair use protections). He's now released his latest work, and while it's also a musical collage, it's quite different in nature. Rather than just pull clips from YouTube, he spent a couple months going around Jerusalem, interviewing various local musicians and asking them all to just improvise some music (all around the key of D), and then mixed it together into this amazing sounding song (and wonderful video), called Thru Jerusalem: I think we can safely say that this (as with his previous works) is really quite an incredible piece of musicianship -- but his works are created in a world that copyright law can't even comprehend, let alone predict. Can you even imagine trying to untangle the "copyright" question on such a song? Thankfully, it seems unlikely that such a question will directly come up with Kutiman's work, but it very well might come up with other musicians who do something similar or something else new and creative. And do we really want that? Do we want musicians having to worry about "the copyright question" as they create beautiful works such as this?

Filed Under: copyright, creativity, culture, kutiman, music, piracy, remix