Neither.
Cultural creations are build upon logics of repetition and variation. Sampling is just the continuity of those logic made possible by technological advances.
@tomasz it’s inaccurate to say that copying a digital file is theft. they’re not physical objects, which are finite and difficult to copy accurately. digital files are infinitely replicable, and someone copying your file doesn’t mean that you can’t use it. copying is positive-sum, unlike theft.
a better question to ask is “is sampling music wrong?”
it’s troubling to me to see building off of another’s work framed as a moral issue. all culture, all creativity is based on copying elements of each other’s work. creators call it being inspired by someone.
i see no negative effects of sampling music, as long as it’s credited adequately. it brings attention to the song you sampled, and everyone wins. as long as you give credit where credit is due, it is morally unproblematic to sample music
To add a helpful link, this question about sampling is similar to how Fair Dealing works, often termed “Fair Use” in the U.S. How much is sampled, and how it’s changed and integrated into the new work is a vital component when looking at whether someone is merely copying or innovating.
@erpicht i wasn’t looking at the legal component of sampling. copyright law is immoral and we’d all be better off without it
Sure, but I bring it up to highlight when even dread copyright law can be excepted, as the many legal cases tackle the questions of where the line between theft and quotation lies.
@erpicht i thought i made it clear that theft doesn’t exist in art?
It’s still an interesting question to know where to draw the line about reusing other works of art.
Is taking a picture of a drawing and selling it with a filter fair? Our without filter? Is a recording of a recording where you tweak really little things fair?
Where do you draw the line?
Copyright started when French composers noticed people were using their music and they didn’t get anything from it. Are you ready as a professional musician to accept people monetising your work without your knowledge, consent and without you getting anything?
What would be a good system? A system that can realistically be implemented as of today.
Copyright started when French composers noticed people were using their music and they didn’t get anything from it.
i don’t know where you got that information from. according to University of Georgia School of Law professor L. Ray Patterson’s “Copyright and ‘the Exclusive Right’ of Authors” (link), the first copyright law was the Charter of the Stationers’ Company, created in 1556. it granted the Stationers’ Company the power to seize and burn presses and books, thus implementing a powerful tool for the government to censor subversive literature. the first copyright law was not about credit or getting paid, it was an authoritarian crackdown on literature
You’re entirely right, I mixed things up. It’s the SACEM, the french royalties collecting company which has been started this way.
What would be a good system? A system that can realistically be implemented as of today.
Good question. Some people have suggested some kind of flat fee/tax that will be given to artists and copyright holders. I don’t remember the exact implementation, if it allowed for the more stupid forms of copyright (after authors death etc).
With this system all art would be like creative commons I think
What would be a good system? A system that can realistically be implemented as of today.
no system can be realistically implemented, thanks to the power of the copyright lobby, but if they weren’t so powerful, i’d like to see automatic copyright replaced with automatic CC BY-SA. it ensures that artists have to be credited for their work, while allowing a lot more freedom of culture. if copyright had to still exist, i’d like to see it be something that an artist/publisher would have to apply for. it would only be valid for one year, and you can apply for copyright restrictions a maximum of 20 times
Are you ready as a professional musician to accept people monetising your work without your knowledge, consent and without you getting anything?
it’s going to happen anyway. the internet has made information slippery and difficult to control, and people are going to do that whether you like it or not. and that’s kind of the beauty of the internet, the ease of remixing things nowadays has brought about a cultural renaissance. copyright is failing anyway, might as well speed it along and keep up with the times as a creator
One solution to the revenue issue for musicians is freely distributing the digital music and selling merch, physical copies, and concert tickets for income, much how Run the Jewels operates.
This doesn’t work, however, if one’s work is largely copied by larger figures early on, such that building a following and steady income is difficult to impossible because people first and foremost encounter soullessly copied derivatives of one’s music and the original artist is now “just another copy.”
Hence the discussion on how much of a work must be original.
