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?

One of the common refrains in the comments from some of Techdirt's biggest critics is that I'm a "piracy supporter." I'm not sure what to make of such claims, because I don't actually support or endorse copyright infringement. I don't partake of it (willingly). I don't use any file sharing programs for downloading or sharing content. I don't download unauthorized music or movies. My position is solely from the point of view of the content creator and how they might be able to better engage their audiences and put in place smarter business models. Yet, for some reason, people keep trying to paint me, falsely, as a supporter of "piracy."

Of course, what I do support is the creation of new and engaging content. What troubles me, is when people try to imply wonderful creative works are somehow not creative because they build on the works of people before them. Of course, that's silly. All kinds of wonderful creative works you enjoy almost certainly come from near direct copies of things that came before. A lovely demonstration of this is seen in this short clip from the documentary RIP: A Remix Manifesto: But I still feel that one of the best examples of creative works building on the works of others comes from Kutiman, the Israeli artist who burst on the scene two years ago with his absolutely amazing album Thru You, in which he assembled random clips from around YouTube -- without permission -- into an entire album that sounds absolutely nothing like its component pieces. Kutiman is the modern conductor, putting together an amazing, involuntary orchestra of players who don't even know what's happening. While he's been somewhat quiet (though, apparently touring the world), Kutiman has just released a brand new track, once again combining various YouTube videos into quite the jazz song, entitled My Favorite Color: Seeing people's reactions when they first see the videos really is priceless. They're amazed as they realize what's happening. The one that seems to get the most attention (for plenty of good reasons) is the first track off the Thru You album, The Mother of All Funk Chords. However, when trying to show the power of remixing and building on creativity, I actually think the second song from Thru You can be more instructive. That's because if you break down a number of the component parts, you realize that some of them just aren't all that impressive by themselves. Take, for example, trombone part that's used in the song. When viewed by itself... it's really nothing special: Now, put it into the middle of a larger song, with the very accurate (for this discussion) title of This Is What It Became, and you get an incredibly powerful, haunting and moving trombone solo, which comes in at about 43 seconds: And, if you look at some of the other component videos, including a family vacation video, a simple demo of a bass synth, a fire engine siren and even crappy toy piano, and pull it all together to become the song above... it's really quite amazing.

And yet, to hear some people talk about these things, none of this is "creative." It's all just "copying." In some cases it's outright "piracy." After all, Kutiman is using the works of others, and doing so entirely without permission. And yet, I have trouble seeing how anyone can legitimately claim that these songs are "piracy" in any real sense of the word. Kutiman is clearly a musician. That he uses a note played by someone else on a YouTube video, and then "plays" it himself, strikes me as no different than playing a keyboard that plays a recorded sounded, or even strumming a guitar. A musician is putting different sounds together to create music. Does it really make a huge difference if that music involves someone making a note from an instrument directly themselves... or by taking the note originally played by someone else and doing something creative and amazing with it?

Is this really the kind of thing that our politicians and copyright defenders mean to outlaw?

I'm not a supporter of copyright infringement or "piracy." But if this is piracy, then I am a supporter of it. Because this is truly creative works, whether or not it's built on the works of others.

At the beginning of the month we were one of the first to write about the amazing Thru-You "album" created by a DJ named Kutiman, who took individual sounds off of YouTube and mixed them into a full album. I've always been a believer in the concept that remixing something is a creative endeavor in its own right, but I'd never seen the point driven home quite as clearly as in this album. Not suprisingly, Kutiman has received plenty of well-deserved attention for the project, and Wired is running a great interview with him that's well worth reading. The idea that what he's done is almost certainly illegal and copyright infringement (he seems incredulous at the idea) should be a clear indication that something is wrong with the current copyright regime.

But, again, there's this false belief out there that "remixing" is simply copying. But I defy anyone to explain how taking a simple kid playing a scale on a trumpet could become integral to an entire (great) funk song. Here's the trumpet bit: And here's the full song: Or how about this basic trombone solo becoming such a haunting and compelling part of this dub reggae song (trombone comes in at 42 seconds). Here's the trombone: And here's the full song: To say that's "copying" or even just derivative is insulting to the amazing creativity and work of Kutiman to blend all these totally separate sounds into something amazing. Just as a musician plays notes on an instrument, Kutiman used YouTube as his instrument and created something amazing and wonderful... that probably breaks a ton of copyright laws. It's difficult to see how anyone could claim that's not a massive problem.

There's been a bunch of buzz this week about a new "album" created by an Israeli musician, Kutiman, who took videos on YouTube of people playing different instruments, and mixed them together to create a series of songs (tragically, it looks like all the attention has brought down the site right now). The end result is incredible. The music is really good, even if it's based off of a mix of high and low quality clips that no one ever would have put together otherwise. Whenever we talk about the power of "mashups" or "remixed" content, there's always someone who complains that it doesn't count, and it's not really creative or new because the remixer "didn't create anything." However, I don't see how anyone can listen to the songs created here and say that Kutiman didn't create something new and amazing. But, of course, as reader Johnjac notes, in theory, those whose videos were used on this album certainly could claim copyright infringement (in the credits, you can see all the "original" videos), and perhaps they might. But it's difficult to take seriously any copyright law that says that creating music in this manner is illegal.