You believe that Satriani did Coldplay's job for them? Even if they might not have heard the song?
What about all the other examples posted here with similar melodies? Is Satriani infringing any of those? Many predate his song. Did Billy Joel do Satriani's work for him?
(1) Let's take a case where, for the sake of argument, there are no significant changes and a derivative isn't "something new," whatever that means. For the sake of argument, let's say that putting new words over the Day Tripper riff is not original. (a) Who would even care about the derivative song if it didn't add value in some way, if it wasn't somehow original? (b) If no one cares about it... what's the harm being done to the Beatles? Sure, it might be terrible or useless, but should that get the law involved?
"That's just the way it goes": right now that a publisher can deny your request to create a song using Bonham licks, you as an artist need someone else's permission to create, but does that have to be how it goes? What benefit is the system providing?
(2) I was focusing on this particular example to make a broader point. Where do you define the limits for ownership? You have to get the permission of a publisher to use Bonham's licks, but you can just fill out some forms and pay the royalties if you wanted to cover an entire song. And, to take the Beatles riff and reverse it and change the phrasing isn't considered infringement. It's not clear to me what should be considered infringement, what should require permission and what should simply require that royalties be paid. The system seems to be a real patchwork, rather than anything well thought out.
It's not clear legally when you've created something "new." I'm pretty sure that people aren't listened to Rihanna's song in place of Dibango's.
Anyone stating, you should be able to STEAL, yes steal any part of anyone's song to make into your "own" without consent or payment... clearly has never written anything. End of story.
Copyright infringement isn't stealing, it's copyright infringement. Stealing removes the object in question from the possession of the owner.
That's just the way it goes. You can't be angry. An artist dreams up something, out of thin air. They should be able to decide HOW, WHEN and at what cost (if any) it should be used.
Do you honestly believe an artist "dreams up something, out of thin air?" Where do you think the chant that Dibango used comes from? Art doesn't come from thin air. It's a reflection of society and experience and inspiration.
The main problem with your entire comment is the limits of ownership. Jackson and Rihanna aren't even saying the same thing that Dibango did, and the music is entirely different. Is that the same? If so, how different does it have to be? How many words, notes, etc... It's not as simple as you make it out to be.
Once you trace things back up the chain of inspiration, you can have many "owners," many variations on the expression of an idea (or even transformative expressions)... and even after you establish the "owners," you're still faced with the question of what ownership means. Who owns an expression of an idea is not as obvious as the question of who owns a physical thing.
What do you think the extent of ownership is on a 10 syllable chant in a song?
To add one more point to all the other great replies... even if you insist on requiring permission, it's a bit silly that someone like Rihanna goes and asks permission from the owners of the song she was borrowing from, but still has to have the legal means to handle a half million euro lawsuit in case someone, somewhere further down the chain of rights gets offended.
How is an emerging artist (i.e. someone who isn't rich) even supposed to begin to play that game? With this system, culture is only accessible to the rich; it's a €500,000 risk to use a phrase from a popular song, even if you try to get the rights.
Maybe someone here can explain this to me - I offer you something for sale (in this case, music). You, on the other hand, have a way to get it without paying the price that I request. Subsequently, you ignore my request for payment and help yourself to the thing that I am offering only because you can do it without being caught.
Notice that the explanation you give sounds a lot like a description of competition. Getting something from somewhere else isn't stealing. If it involves unauthorized copying, however, it may be copyright infringement. You still have the thing you were trying to sell. If it were stolen, you wouldn't have it anymore.
No matter how you rationalize it, this is stealing. period.
Re: Re: Re: Here is a new business model for songwriters
I'm pretty sure that's covered in "sell service to write song" -- part of selling involves networking and marketing and building up those relationships and making a sale. No?
Sure, it's extremely simplified. But I don't think it's inaccurate.
You don't offer anyother other model than a simplistic - you can make it touring.
If artists like Trent Reznor and Issa and Coulton etc. can make money with new business models (which may or may not involve touring), then they will have the money to pay session musicians and songwriters. Most session musicians, at least, get paid for their time anyways. If artists can make money who need to hire songwriters and session musicians, then songwriters and session musicians can get hired. If artists aren't making money, they might want to reconsider basing their business models on copyright.
What's wrong with paying for what is done.
I think you're confusing royalties and salaries. Copyright pays people for what they've already done, whereas a salaray pays someone to do work.
Otherwise, I'm calling up Gibson, Martin and Godin (who made the guitars I use), Roland, Korg, Marshall, MacKie, Sonar, Neumann, Roland, Dell, Apple and all the people that sold me software and hardware for new free gear.
You seem confused. Do you pay Godin every time you play their guitar? My guess is no, yet copyright demands that a songwriter gets paid every time someone uses their song.
Making a one-time purchase to acquire something or have it created (where it's a guitar, or a new song you've commissioned for your new film) is quite different from having to pay every time you use something.
That's why people are increasingly paying less attention to copyright law. You simply can't use a computer and not run afoul of it.
Copyright law isn't becoming increasing irrelevant because people are being "doctrinaire," but rather, Mike is simply explaining why it's becoming irrelevant.
You are completely mistaking an explanation for the cause. Mike's ideas are powerful, but not that powerful as to change the nature of economics and digital goods!
The model that songwriters have followed in the past few decades is quite a recent phenomenon. Even going back as far as the 1950s, you can see other examples like the Brill Building which involve a ton of scarcities that could be monetized without copyright. Not to say that the Brill Building is the future or ideal model, but things have already changed a lot in the last century.
Also, it's important to note that commissioned works don't mean only writing songs for other recording artists. A lot of songwriters I know make quite a bit of their money writing original compositions for film and television.
I got into this sort of debate with a local songwriter last summer and he kept coming back to the point that "if artists aren't making money from their music, how are they supposed to have the money to pay session musicians or songwriters?" Once you realize that the premise of the question is false (artists are making money, with the right type of business model), then it seems clear that so long as artists need the services of songwriters or session musicians, there will be a market there.
Plus... some artists embrace the economic aspect without embracing free culture. For example, Trent Reznor is a shining example of these business models in practice, but he uses a CC BY-NC-SA license, which still remains some rights given to him by copyright (e.g. he can collect performance royalties for radio airplay, people can't sell his music).
I admit that the non-performing songwriter is a bit of a tricky case for me too, but if there's a demand for the service there will be a market and there will be some way that someone will figure out to make it work. The efforts of all these "protectors" of songwriters to insist that that way must involve copyright is doing songwriters everywhere a real disservice.
From the BBC article, the Labour party was at least under the impression that it had support from the Lib Dems before they took a strong stand against it. (Brown: "Recently that support that we believed we had from the main opposition party was withdrawn.") Maybe it was a mistake for Labour to believe that? But it certainly seems like mysociety.org's campaign played a role in generating awareness and contributing to the back down.
But, like I mentioned, it played a role, but I'd be surprised if it were the only factor.
Thanks for the comment. But... seriously? Same "contours?" Satriani is wailing on an electric and Martin is using his voice. There are three notes that are identical (3/42). How is that even enough to have "starting" or "ending" contours?
And what about all the other songs people have pointed it in the comments? Is Satriani's song not a blatant case of plagiarism (of Doves or Cat Stevens or Billy Joel...) by your logic?
That's what bugs me so much. I can't bring myself to become a member of SOCAN (Canadian equivalent), but everyone else in the business expects that anyone who takes their music seriously is going to be a SOCAN member.
One important scarcity is content creation. Personally, I don't think I've heard of (m)any software examples yet, but I think there's got to be a way. We've seen some examples in the music business. Some bands have been getting fans to pay them to create a new album. Pay $x towards the new album, and when we hit $y we'll be able to pull it off, and everyone who contributed will get something-cool.
If a developer makes a really good game that lots of people like, there must be a way to capitalize on the demand for more content for that developer.
That's admittedly a vague, high level answer, but I think there are business models that could put the idea into practice. I think it'll take some experimenting to figure out what they are.
An iPod can hold, what, 40,000 songs? Sure, that's easy, spent a thousand bucks on a computer, $50/month on broadband, $200 for an iPod and $40,000 to fill the iPod. Wait...
Or, let's be conserative: song are available as low as $0.69 on iTunes, let's cut that in half -- $20,000 (which is like $5 per CD assuming 10 songs per CD).
Then and again, maybe there is reason for the RIAA to rethink its approach after all...
Well, there are some scarcities involved. The games come with the instrument controllers. Though, they do charge for infinite goods (doesn't it cost money to download new songs?).
Which part of "increases" sales did you miss? (assuming this Anonymous Coward is the author of this comment)
There's a difference between value and price, or value in general versus monetary value.
I'm not sure what you're arguing here... The labels are over-valuing their music's role in the video games, but the exposure from the video games for their music is valuable insofar as it increases sales and insofar as it grows a fan base (like Metallica apparently noticed).
What's the contradiction? I think you're just muddling the meaning of the word value and confusing a whole bunch of valuable things involved...
It's not that tempo or key changes make something different, but by playing the two songs side by side it makes it seem as if Coldplay might have had Satriani's song playing in the background while they were recording or something, like they simply layered theirs over his and then muted the track.
The tempo/key change is relevant in that, when vying for people's opinion, it's not as simple as playing the two recordings side by side to get them to flow seamlessly together, someone put quite a bit of effort into making them match up.
It's relevant in terms of how people form their opinion on the similarity, even if it's irrelevant in the actual lawsuit.
Good point, though I don't think it's right. He's released it under CC -NC license so that other people can only remix non-commercially, but he is making plenty of cash. He's doing the whole pay-what-you-want thing to sell his remixes through his website. He's just restricting other people's usage to the noncommercial realm (fair use aside), but he's more than happy to make commercial use himself, so I doubt it has that much of an effect on deterring lawsuits.
On the post: Joe Satriani Sues Coldplay For Copyright Infringement
Re: copyrights
You believe that Satriani did Coldplay's job for them? Even if they might not have heard the song?
What about all the other examples posted here with similar melodies? Is Satriani infringing any of those? Many predate his song. Did Billy Joel do Satriani's work for him?
On the post: Michael Jackson and Rihanna Both Get Sued Over a 1972 Tune
Re:
(1) Let's take a case where, for the sake of argument, there are no significant changes and a derivative isn't "something new," whatever that means. For the sake of argument, let's say that putting new words over the Day Tripper riff is not original. (a) Who would even care about the derivative song if it didn't add value in some way, if it wasn't somehow original? (b) If no one cares about it... what's the harm being done to the Beatles? Sure, it might be terrible or useless, but should that get the law involved?
"That's just the way it goes": right now that a publisher can deny your request to create a song using Bonham licks, you as an artist need someone else's permission to create, but does that have to be how it goes? What benefit is the system providing?
(2) I was focusing on this particular example to make a broader point. Where do you define the limits for ownership? You have to get the permission of a publisher to use Bonham's licks, but you can just fill out some forms and pay the royalties if you wanted to cover an entire song. And, to take the Beatles riff and reverse it and change the phrasing isn't considered infringement. It's not clear to me what should be considered infringement, what should require permission and what should simply require that royalties be paid. The system seems to be a real patchwork, rather than anything well thought out.
It's not clear legally when you've created something "new." I'm pretty sure that people aren't listened to Rihanna's song in place of Dibango's.
On the post: Michael Jackson and Rihanna Both Get Sued Over a 1972 Tune
Re:
Copyright infringement isn't stealing, it's copyright infringement. Stealing removes the object in question from the possession of the owner.
Do you honestly believe an artist "dreams up something, out of thin air?" Where do you think the chant that Dibango used comes from? Art doesn't come from thin air. It's a reflection of society and experience and inspiration.
The main problem with your entire comment is the limits of ownership. Jackson and Rihanna aren't even saying the same thing that Dibango did, and the music is entirely different. Is that the same? If so, how different does it have to be? How many words, notes, etc... It's not as simple as you make it out to be.
Once you trace things back up the chain of inspiration, you can have many "owners," many variations on the expression of an idea (or even transformative expressions)... and even after you establish the "owners," you're still faced with the question of what ownership means. Who owns an expression of an idea is not as obvious as the question of who owns a physical thing.
What do you think the extent of ownership is on a 10 syllable chant in a song?
On the post: Michael Jackson and Rihanna Both Get Sued Over a 1972 Tune
Re: Hook
How is an emerging artist (i.e. someone who isn't rich) even supposed to begin to play that game? With this system, culture is only accessible to the rich; it's a €500,000 risk to use a phrase from a popular song, even if you try to get the rights.
On the post: Dispensing With Some Myths About The Poor Poor Songwriters Decimated By Piracy
Re: Your definition of stealing?
Notice that the explanation you give sounds a lot like a description of competition. Getting something from somewhere else isn't stealing. If it involves unauthorized copying, however, it may be copyright infringement. You still have the thing you were trying to sell. If it were stolen, you wouldn't have it anymore.
Is it really that hard to understand?
Yes, it's still copyright infringement, and that's illegal, but it's not stealing.
On the post: Dispensing With Some Myths About The Poor Poor Songwriters Decimated By Piracy
Re: Re: Re: Here is a new business model for songwriters
Sure, it's extremely simplified. But I don't think it's inaccurate.
On the post: Dispensing With Some Myths About The Poor Poor Songwriters Decimated By Piracy
Re: Songwriter copyright
If artists like Trent Reznor and Issa and Coulton etc. can make money with new business models (which may or may not involve touring), then they will have the money to pay session musicians and songwriters. Most session musicians, at least, get paid for their time anyways. If artists can make money who need to hire songwriters and session musicians, then songwriters and session musicians can get hired. If artists aren't making money, they might want to reconsider basing their business models on copyright.
I think you're confusing royalties and salaries. Copyright pays people for what they've already done, whereas a salaray pays someone to do work.
You seem confused. Do you pay Godin every time you play their guitar? My guess is no, yet copyright demands that a songwriter gets paid every time someone uses their song.
Making a one-time purchase to acquire something or have it created (where it's a guitar, or a new song you've commissioned for your new film) is quite different from having to pay every time you use something.
That's why people are increasingly paying less attention to copyright law. You simply can't use a computer and not run afoul of it.
Copyright law isn't becoming increasing irrelevant because people are being "doctrinaire," but rather, Mike is simply explaining why it's becoming irrelevant.
You are completely mistaking an explanation for the cause. Mike's ideas are powerful, but not that powerful as to change the nature of economics and digital goods!
On the post: Dispensing With Some Myths About The Poor Poor Songwriters Decimated By Piracy
Re: Songwriters who don't perform
Also, it's important to note that commissioned works don't mean only writing songs for other recording artists. A lot of songwriters I know make quite a bit of their money writing original compositions for film and television.
I got into this sort of debate with a local songwriter last summer and he kept coming back to the point that "if artists aren't making money from their music, how are they supposed to have the money to pay session musicians or songwriters?" Once you realize that the premise of the question is false (artists are making money, with the right type of business model), then it seems clear that so long as artists need the services of songwriters or session musicians, there will be a market there.
Plus... some artists embrace the economic aspect without embracing free culture. For example, Trent Reznor is a shining example of these business models in practice, but he uses a CC BY-NC-SA license, which still remains some rights given to him by copyright (e.g. he can collect performance royalties for radio airplay, people can't sell his music).
I admit that the non-performing songwriter is a bit of a tricky case for me too, but if there's a demand for the service there will be a market and there will be some way that someone will figure out to make it work. The efforts of all these "protectors" of songwriters to insist that that way must involve copyright is doing songwriters everywhere a real disservice.
On the post: Dispensing With Some Myths About The Poor Poor Songwriters Decimated By Piracy
Re: Re:
On the post: Dispensing With Some Myths About The Poor Poor Songwriters Decimated By Piracy
Re: Rats, here I go again...
On the post: UK Online Protest Finds Success In Just 48 Hours
Re:
But, like I mentioned, it played a role, but I'd be surprised if it were the only factor.
On the post: Joe Satriani Sues Coldplay For Copyright Infringement
Re:
Thanks for the comment. But... seriously? Same "contours?" Satriani is wailing on an electric and Martin is using his voice. There are three notes that are identical (3/42). How is that even enough to have "starting" or "ending" contours?
And what about all the other songs people have pointed it in the comments? Is Satriani's song not a blatant case of plagiarism (of Doves or Cat Stevens or Billy Joel...) by your logic?
On the post: How ASCAP And BMI Are Harming Up-And-Coming Singers
Re:
On the post: Software Developer Realizes That Pirates Are Giving Him Market Feedback
Re: Re: Re: Micropayments
On the post: Software Developer Realizes That Pirates Are Giving Him Market Feedback
Re: Money
If a developer makes a really good game that lots of people like, there must be a way to capitalize on the demand for more content for that developer.
That's admittedly a vague, high level answer, but I think there are business models that could put the idea into practice. I think it'll take some experimenting to figure out what they are.
On the post: RIAA Abandoning Mass Lawsuits In Favor Of Backroom 3 Strikes Policy
Re: ILLEGAL File Sharing, Stealing, Etc.
Or, let's be conserative: song are available as low as $0.69 on iTunes, let's cut that in half -- $20,000 (which is like $5 per CD assuming 10 songs per CD).
Then and again, maybe there is reason for the RIAA to rethink its approach after all...
On the post: Yes, Being In Rock Band Or Guitar Hero Helps Bands Sell More Music
Re:
On the post: Yes, Being In Rock Band Or Guitar Hero Helps Bands Sell More Music
Re:
There's a difference between value and price, or value in general versus monetary value.
I'm not sure what you're arguing here... The labels are over-valuing their music's role in the video games, but the exposure from the video games for their music is valuable insofar as it increases sales and insofar as it grows a fan base (like Metallica apparently noticed).
What's the contradiction? I think you're just muddling the meaning of the word value and confusing a whole bunch of valuable things involved...
On the post: EMI Claims Controversial Satriani/Coldplay Mashup Video Violates Coldplay Copyright
Re:
It's not that tempo or key changes make something different, but by playing the two songs side by side it makes it seem as if Coldplay might have had Satriani's song playing in the background while they were recording or something, like they simply layered theirs over his and then muted the track.
The tempo/key change is relevant in that, when vying for people's opinion, it's not as simple as playing the two recordings side by side to get them to flow seamlessly together, someone put quite a bit of effort into making them match up.
It's relevant in terms of how people form their opinion on the similarity, even if it's irrelevant in the actual lawsuit.
On the post: Why Doesn't Girl Talk Allow Commercial Use?
Re: GT
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