Permission Culture indeed. I can’t believe there are still people asking whether it’s okay to link to something. It’s the freakin’ web, that’s sort of how it works!

I don’t really understand how that sort of software works, so I might sound a bit stupid 🙂 but is there any chance the thing can get confused and block totally unrelated songs?

Sad thing tho…

You still love to ramble on about nothing don’t you?

nearly all popular music today is built on earlier works, without first getting permission.

Leave it to tech nerd to say something this moronic.

You say dumb sh*t all the time Masnick, but this whopper is right up there with some of your stupidest statements.

Anyway, YouTube is going to lose the appeal, and rightfully so.

http://www.ipinbrief.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Viacom-2d-circuit-main-brief.pdf

The raw material for new culture is, in fact, old culture. But what do I know? I’m just an art nerd.

Fair use doesn’t mean “use it no matter what”. Certainly a DJ mix distributed to others is more than fair use, it is redistribution.

The level of rhetoric in this story is absolutely stunning. There is no diminution of fair use, only a reduction in the number of illegal uses of the material. This isn’t “permission culture” this is “quit stealing the music”. The DJs are trying to make their names on the backs of others without obtaining the rights to the music. That isn’t hard to understand.

Between this and the Indian Copyright story up the page, I truly think that TD is losing it’s edge. Things around here seem to be going from semi-informative and somewhat slanted to desperate and whiny.

“He said “nearly all popular music today is built on earlier works, without first getting permission” which shows his complete and total ignorance of how songs are written.”

Oh yes? And so songs are COMPLETELY and TOTALLY 100% written original with ZERO influence or similarity or ANY reference or same melody as ANY OTHER SONG EVER? Right? Thats what you idiots are saying? You really believe that garbage? Because I’d like to introduce you to a little muscial genre called RAP MUSIC. And before that, Rock Music. And before that, Jazz Music. ALL of these forms BORROWED OR COPIED HEAVILY from other genres that preceded them. You show YOUR ignorance of not only how music is made, but the history of music and culture, by stating such obvious idiocy.

Strawman. I never said music was created in a vacuum with no influence from any other music.

I said that his statement “nearly all popular music today is built on earlier works, without first getting permission”
is moronic. Which it is.

“And when new works infringed on the copyrights of previous works, the original creator sued. And won. The system has been in place for decades and it works.

Go educate yourself a little on music history, and then get back to me.”

Um, yeah, wrong. Sure, SOME people sued, but the vast majority did not. Also, not everyone who DID sue won either. So, you are wrong at least twice. And I dont need to educate myself on the history of something I myself lived through. You might want to however, since you dont even know basic facts of the history of this stuff.

And your ignorance of how music is created is typical of tech sites populated by those that do not create, but leech.

Influenced is very different from “copied whole, including performance” as has happened here. The DJs are not performing music, they are performing mixing using other people’s work. Plain and simple, nothing much more to it.

I can listen to a bunch of blues songs, learn the structure of the blues, and play and sing a song that nobody has done before in the blues. There is a huge (immense) difference between influences and replication.

If it was all about replication, we wouldn’t need to record any music because everyone would be playing the same one song over and over again.

You need to capitalize a few more words, btw. It’s funny as heck to picture you jumping up and down and ranting like a mad man at this stuff.

“using copyrighted material for something that is intended to make a profit. (like a new music mix), Does not fall under FAIR USE..

Quite simply, its commercial in nature, so it does not come under fair use..”

Oh look, Darryl is 100% wrong. It must be Monday. Or Tuesday. Or any day, really.

Pirates vs. Indians! ? Anonymous Coward, 2010

Ugh.

I hate it when all the formatting I put into a post gets mysteriously collapsed.

It’s not clear from that post, but the intention is that the ‘program’ I write is an empty space . . . zero bytes. It will always produce correct results, and, as a bonus, is also a quine in nearly any language.

“…false matches to essentially zero”

Spoken like a person who has never done anything scientific in their whole life.

Science, and therefore the application of science – Technology, is NEVER without any error. If there are no erroneous assumptions in the algorithm which models a relationship, then there will still be some level of measurement error in the data which is plugged into that algorithm.

The question in science is always “How small can we get the error?”, not “Will the error be zero?” Anyone with scientific training knows this.

yes, its funny how using facts and solid evidence tends to make you 100% right.. its not me, the facts speak for themselves.

Its really easy to make factual claims, I feel sorry for Mike sometimes, who has to try to warp and twist the facts to suit.

That forces him to make false claims, not based in fact, and once you go down that path it is easy to show it for what it is.. a falsehood to say the least..

Because you have to open your article with statements such as this:

The very point of fair use is that it’s supposed to allow for creativity without permission

The very point of fair use is clearly set out in law. And it is not what Mike says it is.

He says its for creativity without permission and that is clearly incorrect also.

Simply, fair use has specific uses, and they are clearly defined. Its not about creativity, its about protecting the creativity of others.

Fair use does have a very very important role to play in society and culture, it allows for study, analysis, commentry etc on the work.

Fair use is not and was never intended to allow people to take advantage of others works for their own profit of gains.

Yes, you can profit from commentry that is fair use, but you cannot profit directly from the work. that is why you cannot put large chunks of others works in your own..

and it is why you cannot use fair use and an excuse to directly profit from that work.

Mike, it is not hard, it takes but a few minutes to find out the facts regarding fair use.. are you so busy you dont have the time to determine the facts Mike ?

Or is it you would rather not rely on facts, and just make stuff up ?

Either way, it does nothing for you, to show everyone who can think, that you either have no understanding of fair use and therefore should not be commenting on it, or you do know but prefer to tell untruths to push your point of view ?

Of course people create on what has come before, they do not create on what has allready been created!.. Note the difference..

As someone said, I can learn about the 12 bar blues structure, timing, and style, and I can create a blues song that is unlike is unique in its own right. I am not stealing from anyone, I am not using something someone elses has developed to make profit.

I am using a style, the same style as all other artists employ.

So when Eric clapton plays a blues song that is his own creation, it is nothing like when Jimi Hendrix plays a blues song in his own style.

its just a shame that there is a growning group of people these days who think that they are not capable of original thought, or able to create something without having to steal the idea off someone else.. that is very sad indeed.

that is also a huge part of the free software culture, it appears they cannot create original designs and innovations themselves, so they spend all their time, trying to work out how to get around the patents and laws that stop them from using the creations of people or groups are are capable of original thought.. and that have the talent to create without having to steal, sample, illegally copy, or whatever nice term you try to put it as.. It boils down to the same thing..

Not being able to create yourself, and having to rely on others creativity for your own gains.

Mike, it is also clear your own gains, is what is most important to you, as selling out your reputation seems easy for you..

What if we were to turn things around?

What if YouTube, MySpace, SoundCloud etc used their algorithms to ‘detect’ possibly infrining content (as they do already), but in stead of blocking the upload, they do the following:
– send a message to the uploader that the content gives a match for possible infringment, which will be reported to the rightsholder
– report the upload to the registred copyright holder
– stop

Then if the registered copyright owner decides that the content is not fair use, they can file DMCA for takedown…

Note that this places the burden of deciding if content is fair use with the rightsholder, and not with a third party.
Further, the rightsholder is required to take fair use into consideration before a takedown can be requested.

Just my thoughts…

So man up and tell us who you are and what you’ve created, so we can all have a look/listen/read of it and see how you’ve managed to create content that does not in any way build upon earlier works.

So far all you’ve offered is insults. Unoriginal ones…

As a matter of interest, apart from the online aspect, how exactly does this differ from a DJ creating mix CDs or mixtapes in his bedroom and distributing them physically? You know, like every DJ for decades has been doing.

The magic word for today is “scale”. When someone made a single mix tape and gave it to a single person, it is technically illegal but not worth the effort to prosecute. Further, if you are old enough to remember, a copy of a tape is a lower quality copy, such that by the 3rd generation, even on really good equipment, you have a crappy, noisy, almost useless “copy”. In terms of scale, that illegal mix has a life span of maybe 3 copies. Oh, and the copying would effectively be in real time, so anyone wanting to copy it would end up paying a pretty sizable time penalty to do it. For the most part, the mix tape starts and ends with the one person who got it.

The new way? You make a fully digital mix FLAC. You put it online, and it is downloaded by tens of thousands of people, who share it with their friends, perhaps hundreds of thousands of copies possible in a short period of time. The digital nature of these copies means that exact duplicates can be made in seconds. That file could end up anywhere in the world, and replicated any number of times without loss.

“scale”.

Also as a matter of interest, how does this differ from the promotional value of working DJs on radio and in clubs?

In both cases, they are paying licensing to use the music. They are also not putting it out there in a format that is easily copied (most radio stations toss their IDs over mixes, or cut the ends with IDs or voiceovers, and you cannot easily get a digital copy of what a DJ plays in a club, unless you bring equipment and tie into the mixing board. Oh, and any copy you made that way to distribute would be illegal, because they have performance rights but not distribution rights).

“Things around here seem to be going from semi-informative and somewhat slanted to desperate and whiny.”

Are you the “semi-informative” AC on the Indian thread who replied with “lolfail” or “indeed”? I’m sure insightful comments like those are what you think Mike’s not supplying.

I don’t think that individual lame comments are really the point. Rather, It’s a sort of weird tone to many of the recent posts that seem very desperate, like TD is trying very hard to prove something that is being proved against them. This article is a pretty good sample, because the activity is so clearly not fair use. Only TD could try to come up with some way to make it fair use. The Indian story is another great example of TD not even understanding the current situation, and trying to play “got you” with the movie industry. It’s sad, desperate, and more than a little whiny.

The issue isn’t to blame the tools providers for implementing such features, but to look more deeply at the state of copyright law today, where we’re increasingly suffocating the real purpose of fair use, which was to allow such creativity, without first requiring permission. These filters don’t understand fair use, so they assume anything that matches is infringement, and because of that, we all suffer.

Obviously there’s another side to this that you failed to bring up: the good that comes from it. I think your analysis would be more complete and compelling if you at least acknowledged the putative benefits. Without this, it’s impossible to follow you to your conclusion that “we all suffer.” How did you determine that in the net, that’s necessarily true?

I understand electronic music just fine. I also understand what an existing recorded performance is: someone else’s work.

I can put a needle on a turntable and play someone else’s music. Does that make me an artist? I can capture a sample and retrigger it to play. Does that make me an artist? I can duplicate a CD. Does that make me an artist?

Sorry, just saying “you don’t understand electronic music” is a major cop out, and admission that you see no value in the work of others.

Heck, your little ID image pretty much shows you swim in the koolaid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collage

Welllllll… *technically* everyone is kind of wrong in their assumptions.

YES, modern popular music is built on earlier works, but not just in the sense of earlier works being vague “inspirational sources”. I mean LITERALLY! Most popular songs today contain both musical appropriations (“sampling” like Biz Markie, Diddy, etc) and manipulation of pre-recorded sounds (“sampling” a la Brian Eno).

Where everyone is wrong is in assuming these things are done without permission. Just take a look at the liner notes for Kanye’s new album! It’s basically an essay of CREDITS. And I guarantee you that each credited person gave clearance and gets paid. So, I think it is patently false to say that “nearly all popular music today is built on earlier works [ed: true], without first getting permission [ed: demonstrably false]” It’s false simply because if it were done without permission, like it or not, it wouldn’t be widely released which would preclude its ability to be popular. Let’s assume that “popular” means that something has wide market saturation.

Now, I suppose what people are talking about is this absurd mindset that ‘nothing is truly original’, which is also false and kind of stupid. Mainly, it’s stupid because the people saying it clearly don’t understand what the word ‘original’ means. I believe the word that these people are looking for is ‘unique’, not ‘original’. While it’s true that no music is wholly unique, that has NO bearing on whether it is original.

For something to be original, it simply needs to be the origin of something. The Ramones were completely derivative of 50s bubblegum pop, yet they are still wholly the original punk rockers. And the Sex Pistols were derivative of them, yet they are still the original British punks. And John Lydon is a corporate shill these days, but originally he was an iconoclastic artist (see how it works?). It doesn’t even have to be creative! When I leave for work, my original location is/was my home.

Marcus, all of that is stuff that you could easily program a computer to do, do well, and without issue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_art

Look! Apparently not art!

If you were to make an infringing copy of my work, my copyrights over that work don’t just suddenly disappear, or automatically become your property. Since I would, in fact, still have the copyright, it was not stolen.

Done… see how easy that was !!!