Kraftwerk lose sampling case

[JKL2000]

Throwing all hip-hop under the bus as though the whole genre is "U Can't Touch This" is gonna make us look very, very out of touch.

I don't think we're throwing all hippity-hop under the bus - it's that the article seems to say the court "gives hip-hop artists greater freedom [than non-hip-hop artists] to use small segments from recorded tunes." Next there will be cases in Germany where someone has to prove that a piece of music is hip-hop in order to avoid charges.

What IS hip-hop? They'll have to decide for certain.

[StevegSr]

2 seconds...they couldn't just recreate the essence of this sample on their own?

F**kin' A. You're right!

[Plasmatopia]

What if I make "my own song" consisting of nothing but samples of recognizable songs? Is that protected as "creativity"?


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[JAMOOL]

I don't think we're throwing all hippity-hop under the bus - it's that the article seems to say the court "gives hip-hop artists greater freedom [than non-hip-hop artists] to use small segments from recorded tunes." Next there will be cases in Germany where someone has to prove that a piece of music is hip-hop in order to avoid charges.

What IS hip-hop? They'll have to decide for certain.

Because different styles of music have different focal points? What these courts are trying to figure out is - how much of this song's appeal/"essence" is based on the sample? Of course that's entirely subjective and impossible to do, but in this case (IMO) they're right. Sabrina Setlur is not getting rich on the backs of Kraftwerk - I would say that Zeppelin "borrowing" riffs wholesale is a lot worse, because in that case, yeah, those riffs are a major part of the tune. But that's for the courts to decide.

[Steve F.]

Lots of grasping, greedy people on this thread.

And a darned good thing we have judges and other learned people making policy rather than mouth-frothing ideologues with no common sense, and no perspective other than what slips through the blinders.

Never a reasoned argument from you. Always just insults when people disagree with you.

[Mister Triscuits]

What IS hip-hop? They'll have to decide for certain.

We'll work on that one as soon as we're done defining exactly what prog is.

[StevegSr]

We'll work on that one as soon as we're done defining exactly what prog is.

Ha ha ha!

[Facelift]

Never a reasoned argument from you. Always just insults when people disagree with you.

Agreeing with the highest court of Germany is now "unreasoned?"

Big LOL.

Taking insignificant parts of a song is not "stealing." Also, copyrights exist to balance a bunch of rights, liberties and social concerns. There is no absolute right to a copyright - in fact, the concept was totally foreign to some of the world's largest societies until relatively recently.

The "insults" (such as they are - nobody was personally insulted) were perfectly on point. Who wants copyright law to be in the hands of a bunch of me-first grasping greedies who consider nothing but their own self-interest? Not me; not any enlightened person.

[A. Scherze]

What if I make "my own song" consisting of nothing but samples of recognizable songs? Is that protected as "creativity"?

How about John Cage's "Radio Music", where a variable number of "performers" tune radios to different frequencies?

Not only is it all sampling, but every "performance" steals from different people!

[A. Scherze]

It's not just rap and hip-hop.

Remember Eno and Byrne's "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts"?

[JKL2000]

I have no problem with this as long as the courts decide on a SONG-BY-SONG basis. Because if, say, Klaus Schulze puts a Hip-Hop song on one of his albums he should be able to enjoy this freedom. They can't determine one artist is a Hip-Hop artist and another isn't.

[Plasmatopia]

How about John Cage's "Radio Music", where a variable number of "performers" tune radios to different frequencies?

Not only is it all sampling, but every "performance" steals from different people!

Very cool! A little bit different perhaps since it's aleatoric and hip-hop is not.

[moecurlythanu]

The Court seems to be saying that hip Hop has a value as an art form that supersedes ownership rights and inoculates the Hip Hop artist from copyright protection law. Talk about legislating from the bench.

[JKL2000]

Judge "DJ Jam Master Jurgen" Presiding

[chalkpie]

It's not theft. It's taking an insignificant speck of something and creating something entirely new with it. Of course it should be allowed - there is not even an intelligent argument to be made for not allowing it.

Are you being serious?

[Paulrus]

Are you being serious?

Do not try to get inside Facelift's reasoning. That way lies madness.

[A. Scherze]

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/k...lizes_sampling


The former co-leader of Kraftwerk (who now leads a Kraftwerk tribute band also called “Kraftwerk”) Ralf Hütter, has bombed spectacularly in his evident quest to become the Lars Ulrich of electronic dance music.

...

That dull roar you’re hearing in the distance is a legion of troglodyte dullards revving up their invective engines to altogether denounce the practice of sampling in the comments, but fuck them. Collage and pastiche have always been legitimate forms of artistic expression, remix culture is clearly here to stay, and all of our culture is fair game for homage, parody, and commentary. It’s refreshing to see the importance of creative appropriation to modern artistic production—as distinct from mere piracy and plagiarism—legally acknowledged.

That Ralf Hütter of all people filed such a suit to begin with is particularly laughable in its hypocrisy—the sound of an engine revving at the beginning of “Autobahn,” which Hütter long maintained was a field recording of his own car, turns out to have been sampled without acknowledgement from a sound effects collection.

[Facelift]

Are you being serious?

Two seconds worth of music? Yes, it's insignificant. In no jurisdiction, ever, have copyrights been absolute rights. People arguing from this perspective are automatically wrong, as they have zero force of law behind them (and copyrights are licenses created from nothing out of thin air, not natural rights like life or liberty). It is always a socio-legal balancing act designed to promote creativity, foster economic rights of artists, and also to give back to the public. Sampling two seconds worth of something falls squarely into ideological end of promoting artistic creativity. Kraftwerk's 19 years worth of whining on this matter is disgracefully bad form and thankfully it's now all over and common sense has prevailed.

The cries of "theft" (music can't be "stolen" unless the master tapes are stolen, as merely copying - by legal definition - is never "theft" anyways) in this instance are from people who don't possess an understanding of the pertinent issues that is sophisticated enough to warrant the time it takes to read the posts.

[Rarebird]

..."In the court battle, Pelham argued that sampling is common practice in the hip hop genre."...

One could argue that Pelham is really saying THIS: Hip-Hop "artists" are both creatively deficient and morally corrupt in that they have no originality of their own and need to "steal" musical tidbits from others to make an "artistic" statement.

Facelift: I think you might want to reevaluate your position on the implications here. Uncredited/uncompensated sampling IS STEALING.



on the other hand: While attending GIT, Howard Roberts was doing a Master Class with us and he stated that copping a riff from another guitar-player was stealing but copping TWO RIFFS from that guitarist was "Stylistic research"....lol.

Progressive rock artists did the same, with classical composers. The only difference is those composers are long dead and gone and their work is public domain.

[rdclark]

Progressive rock artists did the same, with classical composers. The only difference is those composers are long dead and gone and their work is public domain.

Pretty significant difference. That's like saying the only difference between a kiss and head-butt is poor aim.

[Rarebird]

Pretty significant difference. That's like saying the only difference between a kiss and head-butt is poor aim.

Not that much difference. Using 2 seconds of a song, or copying complete melodies from some classical composition, the difference is, the first has some copyright which can be claimed, though 2 seconds of a rhythm is very little.

[rdclark]

Not that much difference. Using 2 seconds of a song, or copying complete melodies from some classical composition, the difference is, the first has some copyright which can be claimed, though 2 seconds of a rhythm is very little.

Performing public domain music requires no licensing or permission. What's the difference between Wakeman doing it and Emmanuel Ax doing it? From whom would either seek permission; to whom would they pay royalties?

Re-using segments of copyrighted, finished work as a building block for your own is not the same... although I guess it isn't if your a German rapper.

It seems to me that either you're using the sample because of its recognizabilty -- in which case your work is unarguably derivative, and owes something to the source by definition; or you're using it because you like the sound of it -- in which case you're just stealing out of laziness, and if you had any respect for fellow working musicians you'd roll your own or at least seek permission.

This court's ruling is just wrong, IMO.

[JKL2000]

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/k...lizes_sampling


The former co-leader of Kraftwerk (who now leads a Kraftwerk tribute band also called “Kraftwerk”) Ralf Hütter, has bombed spectacularly in his evident quest to become the Lars Ulrich of electronic dance music.

...

That dull roar you’re hearing in the distance is a legion of troglodyte dullards revving up their invective engines to altogether denounce the practice of sampling in the comments, but fuck them. Collage and pastiche have always been legitimate forms of artistic expression, remix culture is clearly here to stay, and all of our culture is fair game for homage, parody, and commentary. It’s refreshing to see the importance of creative appropriation to modern artistic production—as distinct from mere piracy and plagiarism—legally acknowledged.

That Ralf Hütter of all people filed such a suit to begin with is particularly laughable in its hypocrisy—the sound of an engine revving at the beginning of “Autobahn,” which Hütter long maintained was a field recording of his own car, turns out to have been sampled without acknowledgement from a sound effects collection.

My main problem with this ruling, and it isn't addressed above, is that it seems to give additional right to "Hip-Hop" artists over all others. As I mentioned further up, I think for every piece of music (every individual "song") released in Australia that benefits from these relaxed restrictions, some party ought to be compelled to go to exhaustive lengths to prove said piece is in fact Hip-Hop, which will probably be costly and time consuming, but seems necessary to enforce the spirit of the ruling. Other types of music aren't allowed to benefit from the ruling.

[JKL2000]

the difference is, the first has some copyright which can be claimed,

Seems like a significant difference to me.

[JAMOOL]

Aren't there prog bands that lift melodies wholesale from other prog records? Such as (say) Magenta?