What music was created? none.

Was something created? Certainly. But in the end, he created a collection of already existing music performed by others. Those people performing that music, and the people who wrote that music originally and have ownership of it have a right to say how it is used.

What would happen if the clips were longer? What would happen if he just collected all the clips together at their full length and sold them (or used them for commercial advantage, which is the same thing in the end)? The length of the clip used doesn’t suddenly grant additional rights to the user that were not there before.

Please go back and look at 25 years of rap and techno music using sampling, the courts have pretty much always come down on the side of the rights holder.

There is a difference between raw materials and a finished product. A single note on a piano is raw materials. A combinations of noted played is a product. A single molecule of paint is nothing more than that, but enough of them together in a certain way is art, a finished product.

Would you think it fair for someone to open a restaurant and offer the chicken using the KFC recipe plus McDonalds fries and Starbucks coffee together as fair because nobody else sells this particular combination? Would it be fair for someone to collect short stories they like from different authors, and put them in a book and sell it, without paying the authors or asking their permission?

Don’t confuse the raw materials (like in a book, the individual letters are nothing, their combination is a product) with finished products. Taking finished products and combining them doesn’t suddenly negate that they are in fact products in their own right.

As for Warhol’s soup cans, consider this:

“It was only after Warhol’s death, when the Andy Warhol Foundation began making licensing agreements with various manufacturers to use Warhol’s imagery on products, that there was an official legal agreement between the Andy Warhol Foundation and Campbell Soup Company. Presently, both parties own a stake in the copyright and neither party can make licensing agreements without the other party’s permission.”

Basically, as art (and only as art) the issue wasn’t ever settled. It is clear that Campbells retains their rights and controls how their image is used.

Just a note, this mix up is also working as free promotion for the artists involved. I already looked up several of them to hear what they sounded like by themselves. They all sound better with Kutiman’s music behind them.

When you put something up on Youtube you’re just one clip out of millions, screaming amidst the screams. Anything that can give you a boost up, can be a good thing.

It’s the same idea as free music – your youtube clip is infinite, you can use it to make the scarcity that is you more valuable.

But then again most people probably don’t put this stuff on youtube intending to make money. I’m sure a lot of people do it just for the sheer joy of sharing and showing off. And if some of them do it because they want to be discovered, well this could only help.

@Harold

I’m sympathetic to the idea that artists be compensated for their contribution to culture, but other than that I disagree with almost everything you’ve said. Some points I think you’ve missed:

– Kutiman is not making a (monetary) profit off his remix as far as I can tell. Requiring him to pay market rate the (mostly amateur) artists he remixed would mean that his project would most likely never happen because he would then be *required* to use his remix commercially to pay for the creation.

– Music made by professional musicians is in no way fundamentally better than music made by people who don’t get paid. As someone already pointed out, it’s subjective.

– Generally speaking, music that is created for the express purpose of making money tends to be artistically bankrupt. There is a distinct tension between creative expression and the kind of expression that you can profit off of.

Creative work is fundamentally a selfish endeavour. Most people do not get paid for doing what they want, they get paid for doing what *other* people want. Claiming that musicians deserve to be paid simply because they are producing music ignores the fact that society as a whole does not really need or want their music as much as the musicians want to play it. Artistic professionals are perhaps the only people in the world who get paid for doing what they would be doing for themselves anyway. And, for the most part, the work they get paid to do is not the work that is closest to their heart. Photographers, musicians for hire, just about any technician in the film industry *do* pay their bills through “creative” work, but most of them create their own unpaid for work free that means much more than the work they are paid for. Only a very few, very lucky individuals get paid enough to live on the work that *they* want to do.

That’s not to say that there’s *no* demand for creative work. A few exceptional artists resonate enough with the general public that the public is willing to fund more creation by those artists, but the equation is never “hey, we need more songs — let’s pay a musician to write some”. It’s more along the lines of “Hey, those songs are good — let’s support the artist and see if he/she can produce any others”. Artists that support themselves support themselves on the basis of their reputation, not on the basis of getting people to pay for things they haven’t seen / heard / experienced and don’t know if they are worth paying for.