Tag: The Song Remains The Same

https://www.youtube.com/watch?vnJPERZDfyWc Dunno how I missed Everything is a Remix series on copyright and ideas by Kirby Ferguson - especially the last episode which spells out some of the big issues for copyright and IP law (and also includes The Kleptones in it!). With the world in need of good ideas how to stop climate change, how to transform food production, how to cope with overpopulation and poverty, how to cure diseases & cheap medecine, it's a shame that so much of what would be good for humanity, what John calls the 'public good' isn't shared freely or is scared off by the freezing effect of litigation. It's very true that the original copyright and patent laws were in place to help society, to do the exact opposite of what they do now - rather than people keeping their secrets for 100s of years as before, a bit like the alchemists of old - they were to enable public domain and copying, with the candy of a short period of protection. Also I'm glad they pointed out the strange contradictions of the US and Steve Jobs - those who built their whole empires on what would be now illegal copying - ask George Melies about Hollywood for instance - pull up the ladder in recent years to stop others doing same, and become the world's police over copyright, ACTA and WIPO. Personally I'm aware of loss aversion too - I tend to be slightly tetchy over my photographs....but I'm aware (and would be proud) of others using my work, and it doesn't bother me. The only time it bothers me is if it's a commercial site and there's no credit really - credit is free, and can lead to other work. In the same way I use photographs sometimes I don't own or aren't CC in my collages, I know that transformation, juxtaposition and comment are vital parts of art - and accept that my work goes into that melting pot the same. The only time I get rather bothered is when people put little land enclosure fences around such publicly gained 'common' land and claim it as theirs - which is blatantly isn't. For an instance of this check out 'The Song Remains The Same' the one about Led Zeppelin (who hate being sampled btw) for one of the reasons I don't really like Led Zep: https://youtu.be/nJPERZDfyWc?t147 You can see more of this series - really good but way too short. I've been thinking and looking at what's been produced about remix and mashup culture over the years and although a lot of it is good, it's always a little scant, a little patchy. I do think the definitive modern story of remix and sample culture, mashups etc. in full hasn't been written or filmed yet. For instance the US related books focus on the relatively recent US events, Girl Talk et al and miss the UK/European originators - or even their own originators (Negativland, Oswald, Cage etc) and fail to talk about the early pre-bootleg times. Those that cover those from the 90s or earlier either keep to genre boundaries (hiphop for instance) or have missed the later mashup explosion or have a small update chapter on it, say like Last Night A DJ Saved My Life. I think a lot of journalists missed the 'punk' explosion of kids with their laptops or computers in their bedrooms somewhat, because it wasn't shaped like Led Zeppelin and didn't fit their ideas of white boys with guitars. Or more importantly the ideas of their parent company (IPC I'm looking at you here). The revolution has been and gone and they missed it...

Tag: The Song Remains The Same

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