Last July, I asked, why doesn’t Girl Talk allow commercial use? Girl Talk (Greg Gillis) makes commercial use of samples from all sorts of artists for his own music, yet he uses a Noncommercial Creative Commons license himself. Though, he points out that anyone else could use his material commercially, if it were fair use. That’s how he defends his own commercial use of samples from other artists. Still, it seems a bit ironic.
I had a chance to ask him the question directly in the Globe’s Download Decade Live Chat this Tuesday. I didn’t realize it was happening until the last minute and was rushing out the door, so my question was worded a bit awkwardly:
4:32 [Comment From Blaise Alleyne]
Greg, huge fan of your work, came to see you in Toronto in the fall. One question that’s bothered me though — why CC BY-NC-SA? [edit: it's actually CC BY-NC] In other words, why forbid commercial use? I know you argue that fair use still allows commercial use (basis of your work), but I’m sure you’re well aware of all the legal ambiguity there. And, you’ve said that you don’t want your songs appearing as an endorsement in a commercial, but that sort of thing could happen anyways through collective licensing agreements. Also, the Share-Alike provision protects from exploitation much more than the Non-Commercial provision (i.e. if a company wants to use your song in a commercial, they’d have to release *their commercial* under the same license!)So… why not adopt a free culture approach entirely a4:32 [Comment From Blaise Alleyne]
(opps, didn’t finish that comment…) So, why not fully adopt a free culture approach and allow commercial use of your music?
And his response:
4:35 GreggGillis: Basically, by going with CC BY-NC-SA, that means that someone can’t just take any one of my songs/albums/etc and just put it on a commercial or sell or a product with it without asking. But, people are protected under Fair Use, the same way I am protected under Fair Use. So I’m completely open to people remixing / recontextualizing my work and selling it if they believe it is transformative and does not negatively impact me.
I was disappointed at first because I thought this was his whole response; he was just restating the arguments I anticipated.
I’d heard him use the “put it in a commercial” response back in November at the Kool Haus, when he was trying to respond to the slightly outrageous “Is Girl Talk Killing Music?” piece by Marc Weisblott in Eye Weekly. Except, this was at the end of the show and he was shouting and everyone was drunk, dancing and excited, so he kept it brief. I wasn’t sure whether to attribute the ambiguity to the setting or to his understanding then. I think it’s clear he realizes that commercial use is about more than just commercials, but that just strikes me as a really bad way to talk about commercial use. Using “commercials” to explain commercial use is guaranteed to make a confusing topic even more confusing.
4:36 GreggGillis: In all honestly, I was open to going “completely free” with it. The label, who releases my music, Illegal Art, suggested going with the CC BY-NC-SA and I thought it was a good idea.
4:39 GreggGillis: If you are familiar with my work enough to sample it and make something new out of it, then I’m guessing you would most likely know that I would have no problem with people re-working my material in the same way I re-work other peoples’ material. The CC BY-NC-SA just seemed like a safe move. I’m approached by people asking to license songs pretty often. I didn’t want to make it a free for all.
It’s interesting that it was the label’s suggestion. I suspected that the NC choice had to do with retaining potential royalty streams, and he does mention licensing. Is NC the “safe move?” Sure. But I think the unintended restrictions and the ambiguity of the license make something like CC BY-SA a better choice in the long run.
The argument that people would need his permission for potentially objectionable uses doesn’t really make sense when you consider the ways in which that could happen anyways though collective licensing agreements. A company could easily use a Girl Talk track to sell a product, if all they needed were performance rights (so, maybe not in a commercial, but at an event).
But I do not believe he’s being hypocritical. I had read the Eye Weekly article in print, and was quite annoyed when they said the NC license “prohibits anyone from pulling a Girl Talk on Gillis,” but I just noticed that the web article links those words to my Techdirt post! Argh… Gillis would never take legal action against someone else for remixing, and it’s not actually hypocrisy when you consider fair use — just a bit odd and disappointing. I think Gillis and other artists would be better off removing the barriers to commercial use, but I don’t think he’s a hypocrite.
To be even more clear… I think Girl Talk is making great music, doing great work promoting the art of sampling, helping to legitimize remix as art in the minds of many and challenging restrictive copyright provisions which make this sort of art form impossible if each sample has to be negotiated individually, not to mention the business model experimentation with his last album. I’m just picking on him for the non-commercial restriction and making an observation that even an artist like Girl Talk seems to have some attachment to a permission culture. I think we can do better.
This comment was originally posted on Techdirt.
the remix is creative the content is not. truly creative people would make their own music.
This comment was originally posted on Techdirt.
> the remix is creative the content is not. truly creative people would make their own music.
Why stop there? :
"The music is creative but the chords are not. Truly creative people would make their own chords"
And then :
"The chords are creative but the instruments are not. Truly creative people would make their own instruments!"
Who are you to say where the line should be drawn? And why do you think it’s a good idea to place arbitrary limits on creativity?
This comment was originally posted on Techdirt.
Well, I hope they paid the musical instrument patent owners for the copies they made.
This comment was originally posted on Techdirt.
the remix is creative the content is not. truly creative people would make their own music.
Uh, it is his own music.
This comment was originally posted on Techdirt.
not exactly the same thing. sort of like saying book isnt creative because it uses letters like other books. moronic. chords and notes are base products. songs are finished products. you dont get to call them base products just cuz you want to. dont confuse tools with end products. its moronic to do otherwise
This comment was originally posted on Techdirt.
And you will notice that he isn’t using the songs… he is using bits and pieces of them, the building blocks of the song, if you will.
There are a lot of examples of ‘finished products’ that are used as ingredients in other products. Have you ever made a sandwich? That bread was a finished product too.
This comment was originally posted on Techdirt.
yes i pay for the bread to make a sandwich. so if i sell it i paid for the parts. if i steal the bread and then sell it as a sandwich it is the same no? musician plays a note that is a creation. someone else records it and uses it they didnt create the note the musician did. the musician plays 4 notes. record each one seperate use it to make a song. who played the song??? musician did.
This comment was originally posted on Techdirt.
I think the whole point of this kind of remix is that is that it destroys the distinction between tools and end products. Gillis uses the end products of other people as his tools.
Which, actually, is quite natural. When you write an essay or a non-fiction book, you are often using the end products of others as your sources to draw on as you create something new.
I think that the ThruYou project best illustrates it. The songs of others are simply the DJ’s instruments.
The distinction between base and finished products isn’t written in stone, nor is it objective. All artists, to some degree, take the finished products of others to use as their base products. Remix artists, even more so than most.
This comment was originally posted on Techdirt.
Is the sound of the note the sum total of its artistic effect? A note is musical because of things like context and intent. In remixes, like Gillis’, he creates a new and original context from the notes that other musicians played. The frequencies and raw audio was created by someone else, but the artistic components that evoke emotion, Gillis largely controls.
This comment was originally posted on Techdirt.
Blaise has this right, I think. Context and intent are part of the work; the notes themselves, divorced from the other two, belong to everyone, and should be free for any transformative or parodic use.
This comment was originally posted on Techdirt.
A simple solution to the sampling and remix problem is to use 1980’s technology/programming, random sentence generation. Do the same for Musical notes. Mix the music and sentences. Generate and publish everything you produce on the internet. All you need is for one person to sing every word in the english laguage. Copyright is automatic from what I have read here.
Also you can sue the big three for every song they produce after about 6 months on a standard PC.
This comment was originally posted on Techdirt.
I just ran the random sentence software in Visual studio for 30 minutes with a case statement looking for …. 1) hit me baby one more time, 2) I am still a guy, 3) I was blue and lonely, 4) wont you be my girl, 5) you shook me all night long 6) When daddy let me drive……. 10) When I was young
Out of the 10 lines/titles from songs I had 4 hits.
Wow I am a pop star
This comment was originally posted on Techdirt.
remix artists should not be ones choosing if something is base product or finished product. i will go to car dealer say that ferrari is just base product i will take it for free put new rims on it now it is finished product then i sell it for $100000. sorry real world doesnt work like that musicians did the playing it is up to them not the dj.
This comment was originally posted on Techdirt.
This comment was originally posted on Techdirt.