Well that's the end of rap music!

[FrostyBoy]

Buck Birdseed, your posts have been on subjective grounds right throughout this thread. You shouldn't argue personal tastes against everyone elses tastes.

Altering any form of art is not a matter of improving it, but changing it to meet your own (the artist) liking. Many others will like it, many will not - not because it's a variation of the original; but simply because it doesn't meet their tastes.

Now, when one person, without permission, rips, mixes, whatever, with an original. That is theft. On top of that, it IS a lack of creativity. Creativity is a form of Imagination and Original Thought.

If the artist was given permission to alter another artists original work, then so be it. Some will like the new sound, some will not.

If the original artist does not give permission, then that is just tough.


Don't take this post with a grain of salt. I am a long time artist and have been down this road many times. (A graphic designer, not a musician).

[Immortal Wombat]

If an artist creates an original composition using three-second samples of numerous other tracks, could it not be considered as much a work of creativity as a collage made up of ripped-up prints from Old Masters paintings?

[Whaleboy]

Ok basic summary of my argument, can't be arsed to address all the points here.

Property is an economic condition, whereupon one owns a limited resource, in a position to trade, according to potential difference, with assigned values according to supply and demand (where demand can be questioned further of course but thats irrelevant here). We can all agree how that applies to material goods, but what of information. Regarding information, I speak not of the media, a CD, a block of paper, I refer instead to the record, to the book... the actual pattern of dots and dashes, or letters and numbers, not the tangible form itself.

So the property definition is to be applied to that pattern, to information. Now, let us say that two conditions exist for information. The artist who creates that, it is his, and he has actual, physical control of the only media where it is stored. It is effectively the unique instance of a physical manifestation of a thought in the artists mind, and I'm sure we can all agree that we "own" our own thoughts. We have to! Descartes = credibility .

Now suppose he releases that to the public, whereby he does not own the only instance of the information. That now becomes public property, the information, that pattern is not a finite resource, it is, in human terms, infinite, who's only limitation is the supply and demand of the physical manifestation of that information... the informational potential remains regardless. As a result, by my argument, if you buy a CD or a book, you own that instance of that information, that physical book and your own thoughts, but no-one owns the information since upon public release it has now become an infinite resource.

That is my argument I have used for months/years, however there is an interesting twist to this, something I have only recently realised, but I like to think I'm big enough to admit where I am wrong. It came from a discussion with a photographer who also writes poetry. She integrates the poems and the photos... so a visual image overlaid with or adjacent to text. That made me curious. If the two were seperate, surely they would be different pieces of art, considering that their representation had changed. However, what of the integrated piece?

It dawned on me that there was no distinction between different artistic groups. Why not merge poetry and photography and consider that an art? As a writer, I might hand-write, artistically, a unique text which I'll give, so effectively writing and art, that is normally called calligraphy but my emphasis is on the writing, not the style. A musician might combine music and art. For each artist, particularly ones that bridge "gaps" in genre, so to speak, there is a particular expressive sweet spot, not a unique "you're a painter, you're a writer", yadda yadda.

My point however, is that when a company distributes an album, it has creates a piece of art in its own right. Not merely the music, but the images on the album art, the text provided etc. Now obviously the pattern of molecules that constitute that unit are subject to the same informational potential as the music itself, however it is far less easy to replicate a piece of matter (after all, finite resources), than it is to replicate the information. That leaves the record companies with some degree of control, at least until perfect energy->matter replication technology exists, which, pragmatically, isn't a due consideration at this time. The information itself is still free, so you can swap files or texts or whatever, however as a consequence of my argument, the publishing industry are still left with a degree of control over their product, though obviously for commercial reasons they have to make the album unit, as a piece of art, more appealing for it to sell than the basic jewel case etc, and I haven't crunched numbers I don't know how economically viable it is, but I come at this argument from the point of view of consistency, not pragmatics. Of course, pragmatically, it is best for me to steal material goods etc and not pay (another argument, lets not go there) but a large society must function with some degree of consistency within.

[Giancarlo]

Re: Well that's the end of rap music!

Originally posted by Albert Speer

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/08/entertainment/main641872.shtml

copyright laws going to far?

Thumbs up for society improvement.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Sn00py


Now, when one person, without permission, rips, mixes, whatever, with an original. That is theft. On top of that, it IS a lack of creativity. Creativity is a form of Imagination and Original Thought.

If the artist was given permission to alter another artists original work, then so be it. Some will like the new sound, some will not.

'
There is no copyright in literary ideas

Allan Massie


PLAGIARISE, plagiarise, plagiarise," sang Tom Lehrer, "don’t let other men’s work evade your eyes" (a rhyme, I may say, worthy of Byron, but not, I think, lifted from Don Juan.)

Now, with Canongate’s Booker Prize winner, Yann Martel, being accused of pinching the idea for his novel from a Brazilian writer, Moacyr Scliar, plagiarism is news again.

Scliar’s book, Max and the Cats, tells of a Jewish boy adrift in a lifeboat with a jaguar; Martel has an Indian boy in his lifeboat with a Bengal tiger. Some similarity certainly; and in fact, in an author’s note, Martel acknowledges a debt to Scliar. But there's been no suggestion that he translated from the Portuguese, or cribbed anything but the idea.

Now, there is no copyright in literary ideas. If there was, most authors of crime novels would be in breach of it. Copyright is restricted to words on the page. So, properly, is plagiarism.

Concern about plagiarism is a fairly recent thing. In the past, authors borrowed and "imitated" freely. Speeches in Shakespeare’s Roman plays, for instance, are often lifted from North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives, and turned into blank verse.

BEFORE the Romantic era, with its stress on individualism, the elegant and ingenious reworking of an existing text was regarded as evidence of talent. Good literature is drawn from life, certainly - but also from earlier literature.

There’s an excellent essay, "In Defence of Plagiarism", in Christopher Hitchens’s recent collection, Unacknowledged Legislation. It should be read by anyone interested in the subject. It has many choice examples as well as some good lines which I would call characteristically Hitchens, if, that is, I could be certain that somebody else hadn’t said it first.

But, as he himself remarks: "Originality is a quality so rarely met with in humans that when it does occur it is often disputed."

Still, I would like to think that this line is absolutely Hitchens’s own: "Cineasts even have a fancy word for lifting, hommage." To which I would add, it sounds better in French. That line is not my own, but I can’t remember whose it is.

Hitchens also offers a good quotation from George Moore, the Irish author with a reputation for a certain duplicity. ("Some men kiss and don’t tell; George Moore tells but doesn’t kiss." Can’t remember who said that either, but it was probably already said of someone other than Moore.)

Be that as it may - a line I got from Gore Vidal, who borrowed it from ex-Governor Jerry Brown of California - George Moore said: "Taking something from one man and making it worse is plagiarism."

I doubt whether Martel took more than the bare idea from Scliar, but he made it pretty good.

So, no plagiarism. In literature, it’s how you do it that matters. '

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=1259112002

Now Snoopy- you say you're a graphic designer. Let's take John Heartfield or Cath Tate, both of whom use photographs in their artwork.

Are they creating something original with those photographs, even though they may not have taken them, or altered them very much?

Or how about Marcel Duchamp's famous graffito of the Mona Lisa with a moustache and the legend ' L.H.O.O.Q. ' written underneath ?


Or Cornell and his boxes, which nearly always consist of found, reused images (which he didn't create) and found objects (which he didn't manufacture) ?


Isn't it really the intent to defraud or to pass off as entirely one's own, what matters in this case?


When Portishead sample a riff from Isaac Hayes's 'Ike's Rap II' on their song 'Glorybox', they aren't pretending to be Isaac Hayes, nor are they fooling anyone into thinking that their song is 'Ike's Rap II'- all they've done is what Taverner did back in the 16th century, which is take an existing piece of music (in his case an anonymous secular song) and create something new with it.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Whaleboy


It came from a discussion with a photographer who also writes poetry. She integrates the poems and the photos... so a visual image overlaid with or adjacent to text. That made me curious. If the two were seperate, surely they would be different pieces of art, considering that their representation had changed. However, what of the integrated piece?

It dawned on me that there was no distinction between different artistic groups. Why not merge poetry and photography and consider that an art? As a writer, I might hand-write, artistically, a unique text which I'll give, so effectively writing and art, that is normally called calligraphy but my emphasis is on the writing, not the style. A musician might combine music and art. For each artist, particularly ones that bridge "gaps" in genre, so to speak, there is a particular expressive sweet spot, not a unique "you're a painter, you're a writer", yadda yadda.

Because it's rare that you'll find a visual artist who is also as adept with words, or sounds.

Cocteau is an example who springs to mind, and Picasso also wrote two absurdist plays.

D. H. Lawrence painted (although not terribly well in my opinion) and Woody Allen plays in a jazz band.

Usually, though, a creative artist devotes most of their creative energy to one particular medium, writing, film-making, music, the visual arts, tactile arts, whatever.

And as you point out, there are certain cultures where a visual art (because of cultural or religious proscriptions) may focus on words, such as Arabic calligraphy, or even Hebrew script, or Christian illuminated manuscripts.

Also, you might find performances by groups such as Psychic T.V. , 23 Skidoo, Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle, S.P.K. or The Pop Group where light and film were integrated into the whole artistic experience, along with the music (Wagner and opera would be another example- drama and music).

[Whaleboy]

This is true, I suppose I was basically saying that everyone is differing artistically and there is no barrier between the genres. For example, according to my argument, my novel if God willing it gets published, is a different work of art if I get may way and a painting by a friend of mine features on the cover, than the mere information in the text itself.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Whaleboy
This is true, I suppose I was basically saying that everyone is differing artistically and there is no barrier between the genres. For example, according to my argument, my novel if God willing it gets published, is a different work of art if I get may way and a painting by a friend of mine features on the cover, than the mere information in the text itself.

I think you might enjoy 'A Humument'.

http://www.tomphillips.co.uk/humument/

[Whaleboy]

Absolutely classic!!

[Agathon]

How does it work then? When an artist creates a song, it becomes their property.

Only by legal convention and only for the purpose of promoting creation of works which people will enjoy.

Copyright is a wholly artificial phenomenon. I, like WB think that all property is like this, but it is instructive that the US founding fathers, who (unlike us) believed that property rights were inalienable natural rights, opted for the utilitarian conception of copyright (a legal right given with the sole purpose of encouraging people to create ideas, rather than a reflection of some natural moral relationship with the idea).

We can argue over whether sampling is creative, but that is not what is at issue in the law. What matters to the law is making sure that artists get paid in order to encourage the production of more art.

Molly is right in that most artworks are largely derivative - that's just a fact. But it has little to do with copyright law. Unless you can argue that rap sampling is reducing the record sales of the people sampled from, and thus discouraging them from producing more recordings, then there isn't anything wrong with it from the perspective of the reason for having copyright law.

What is really happening here is that some people are trying to stiff consumers by claiming a greater right over their creations than the law is intended to allow. They are in effect working against the purpose of copyright law by making it less likely that recordings involving samples (which a lot of people like) will be produced.

At least that's what it looks like.

[Sikander]

I do think that sampling can hurt the value of the original artist's work commercially. When one begins to associate a tasty hook not with the originator but instead with the second hand hack who lifted it and deposited it into what otherwise is a wasteland of bad poetry and a dull simple rythym, I think the original artist has cause for concern.

On the other hand I do consider collage a form of art, in whatever medium it is expressed. The Beatles (John in particular) used it several times, dynamically in "For the Benefit of Mr. Kite", with extensive use of copyrighted dramatic material from the BBC in "I am the Walrus", and almost completely outside any musical structure whatever in "Revolution #9.

My favorite "Rap Artist" is MC900 ft Jesus. He turns the sampling issue on its head. He writes his own music and records it with a small but impressive jazz ensemble, which already puts him miles above 99% of the Rap I've heard. Then he samples other rappers and snips out lines he likes, and uses them both as rythmic spice as well as contextual counterpoint to his own subdued raps.

But for the most part I can't abide the genre. Like reggae and even the blues, its rules weigh it down until all but the brightest of its stars can't produce anything that I don't find insufferable. The vast majority is unmusical, which leaves you with one very dull rythym and stacatto poetry which I rarely relate to. Give me the Jazz rappers any day of the week. Not only did their style start the whole genre, they are free to work with different time signatures, different vocalization styles, different instrumentation and they aren't afraid to shut the hell up for a minute or two and let the band take an image and explore it, or conversely to take an image from the band and explore it verbally.

----

Originally posted by Buck Birdseed
All good art is stolen or illegal anyway. Accepting the norms of society is the road to blandness.

Don't let your radical political side do any more damage to your already severely damaged aesthetic, I beg of you.

------

Originally posted by chegitz guevara

That's true for every type of art. Do you think Thomas Kincaid paints for the art or the bling? The fact that his paintings are the painted equivalent of elevator music on prozac doesn't stop it from being the most popular paintings in the U.S. Most rock musicians are i it for the money and not the creativity. But there are some few geniuses who do it for the music.

This is needlessly cynical. The vast majority of artists obviously do it for the love of their art, as they make nothing for their troubles. A few are provided with an opportunity to make a living wage, and many of them make comromises in order to continue doing their art while allowing themselves to have the sorts of things most of us take for granted. An even smaller group are in a position to not only get by as musicians, but to become wealthy by it. They aren't very much different from the previous group, just some combination of more ambitious, more mainstream, better salesmen, more talented, more willing to compromise for better or worse, etc. But I do think that most of these folks believe in their art, even if it is to many of us the sort of soulless music we usually find on elevators and christian music stations.

The one group of musicians who I agree should not be considered as artists are the sort of pre-fab bands / singers who are chosen more for their look than for any musical talent or capability. Britney Spears comes immediately to mind, completely a corporate creation based on very little talent and no visible artistic ideas of her own.

[Drake Tungsten]

I think this ruling is horse****. Then again, I like rap.

[Tuberski]

quote:[size=1
Originally posted by Buck Birdseed [/size]
All good art is stolen or illegal anyway. Accepting the norms of society is the road to blandness.

Isn't stealing someones work accepting the norms of society? Only stealing them?

Using the same ideas over and over is the road to blandness.

Creating is not the same as copying something and changing it to your taste.

Copying is the road to blandness.

ACK!

[Al B. Sure!]

Rejoice!

On the other hand, I support every and all measure used to rid the world of the abomination that is rap.

I support any move that would destroy or hurt the rap industry.

Thumbs up for society improvement.

so much ignorant jackassery...

[Drake Tungsten]

I'm with you, Speer.