Jason on Sampling
Jason Schultz has a great post about the economics of Creative Commons' new "sampling license." Our new Flash describes it in digimedia speak. But the essence of the idea is that artists can signal to others that they are free to "sample" the artist's work, even sample for commercial purposes, without entering the blackhole of lawyer land to clear permissions upfront. This is a derivatives only license, which, after our trip to Japan, we see we need to version a bit more to make sure it fits the full range of "derivatives only" creativity.
There's alot of detail and there's more we'll be announcing soon about this, but Jason's point is a great one: The great benefit of this simple signal is to build a strain of content that others can build upon freely, and thereby to encourage the reuse and demand for that free content. That was exactly the intuition that Negativland, Vicki Bennett, and Gilberto Gil got us to see.
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Comments (11)
Say you're an up-and-coming artist looking for a backbeat track to sample for your new song. You see two options: (1) a massive library of historically copyrighted works (All Rights Reserved) and (2) a much smaller but growing library of CC licensed works (Some Rights Reserved But Always Ok To Sample).
or, of course,
(3) the "artist" has the option to create something altogether new.
the mice don't see this "sampling license" as a panacea. where is the bright line between sampling "some" of the song, or all of it? sampling the 11 or 12 opening notes of queen's "another one bites the dust" is probably enough to constitute an effective taking of all the song. sample 11 or 12 notes of any ramone's song and you have essentially copied the whole thing.
what this sampling license appears to boil down to is just another way to enable derivative hacks to freeride on someone else's originality. it retards progress, encourages laziness, and leaves us in an endless loop of hip-hop mediocrisy.
it seems to us that the present problem with the record industry is just this - too much tired derivative music - copying success might appear to be a low risk business model, but it leaves all of us poorer in the long run.
A lot of great art has come out of trying to imitate other artist, and failing enough to create something original.
Early in his career, Max Ernst created copies of Arnold Booklin paintings - without this plagiarism he might not have gone on to become one of the most original artist of the twentieth century.
Lets hope the law doesn't stifle this part of the creative process.
"There’s alot of detail..."
Professor Lessig: "alot" is not a word in the English language. Never has been.
watcher, "Never has been." is not a sentence in the English language. It never has been.
If you think Professor Lessig's English is deficient, you should read some of ours'. Not only be our grammar real bad, but our speling is worser.
"Professor Lessig: “alot” is not a word in the English language. Never has been."
If enough people use it, it will be!
After talking to Chuck D and many other hip-hop artists, I feel confident in saying that the reason why so much of the "unoriginal" sampling that takes place today isn't primarily because of laziness, but because of sample licensing headaches. Before 1991, or so, groups like Public Enemy got away with sampling a dozen fragments in one song, but as Chuck told me, for PE to do it now is prohibitively expensive. It's easier and cheaper to just sample one hook, like P. Diddy does. The economics of licensing--which largely doesn't differentiate between large chunks and fragments--is what generates such obvious samples that should have been left back in Hammer Time, or at least the Vanilla Ice Age.
Of course, some of the songs Diddy produced--like “Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems”--are amongst the greatest hip-hop party songs ever recorded, in the tradition of the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight,” which bites a big chunk from Chic’s “Good Times.” While hip-hop can make you think, there’s nothing wrong with wanting it to make you dance. Sometimes an uninventive or obvious sample can make for a great song, but I just wish we had more possibilities, more options.
I want Mr. Diddy’s music to stand alongside heretofore unheard sounds and songs that are more sonically adventurous than the music of today, and I think the CC sample license makes that possible. Given that hip-hop producers have had one hand tied in the creative process, it’s amazing that so much crazy, inventive commercial hip-hop music has been produced in the past ten years. Take, for instance, Missy Elliot’s “Work It”--with its back masked chorus and blippity-bloopity robot pop rhythm track--or Mystikal’s “Bouncin’ Back”--a retro-futuristic version of New Orleans jazz--and many, many more. If there were fewer restrictions on licensing samples, can you imagine what those same producers would have done with even more freedom?
So where is the sampling license? I don't see any announcements of it on the CC website - I'm set to use it!
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