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Some words of caution for samplists out there

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Comments

  • @NeuM said:

    @HotStrange said:

    Not sure if this is what you mean but there are lots of examples of copying the sound and feel of a song and still getting sued for copyright infringement. Like Red Hot Chili Peppers/Tom Petty. Marvin Gaye/Robin Thicke. Etc.

    No, they get sued for copying a chord progression or for lifting whole sections out of someone else's work. The copied chord progression is the weakest legal argument in my opinion. There are only so many available notes and only so many of constructing a song. Some 'accidental' copying is inevitable.

    Marvin's estate is suing a guy for stealing the chord progression and feel from "Let's Get It On", which Marvin stole from:

  • edited March 2023

    You guys sound like you're missing the point of "no one cares", that is until you get a #1 hit.

    It sounds to me like complaining the state gets 20% of you earnings if you hit the jackpot

  • edited March 2023

    .

  • @NeuM said:

    @HotStrange said:

    @NeuM said:

    @maxwellhouser said:

    @NeuM said:

    @maxwellhouser said:

    @db909 said:

    @Edward_Alexander said:

    @db909 said:
    What if I just sample one note? And use it as the basis for a sampled instrument?

    You mean like every rompler available?

    I suppose. Like if I say, recorded bits of a Soundgarden song from YouTube, imported into Koala, sliced up one strum/note from a guitar riff, then used that sample to compose an original melody. Technically, it’s Kim Thayil’s guitar TONE, but my melody.

    So I guess the question is: do mere TIMBRES constitute some sort of infringement?

    That’s copyright infringement of the recorded works and would need clearance legally.

    If you copy a guitar tone that is not copyright infringement.

    I’m not so confident in my response because I’m not an expert but I’m not sure. If it’s in a sampler and you hit the original note or even different pitches you are technically sampling the original recording, no?

    No. A copyright violation would include copying distinct passages from a song (like the hook/chorus) or duplicating parts of the arrangement with minimal differences. You could write, record and sell a song called "We Are The World" if it was a parody, for example. Or you could copy the sound and feel of a particular song or artist if what you made was an original work.

    Not sure if this is what you mean but there are lots of examples of copying the sound and feel of a song and still getting sued for copyright infringement. Like Red Hot Chili Peppers/Tom Petty. Marvin Gaye/Robin Thicke. Etc.

    No, they get sued for copying a chord progression or for lifting whole sections out of someone else's work. The copied chord progression is the weakest legal argument in my opinion. There are only so many available notes and only so many of constructing a song. Some 'accidental' copying is inevitable.

    And that's exactly why I find the whole "duplicate works" detection, in the way it's used today, so incredibly stupid.
    A musical composition lives from copying what has been there before and the more precise the algorithms are set to work (including shorter time spans for the analysis window), the more copyright infringement alarm bells you'll get and the whole process is starting to become a sarcastic example of how to not use technology.

  • @Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr said:

    I got a takedown from yt for using a PD video clip. There is no fighting back in that situation. Your video is zapped, and you did not even steal anything (much less make a penny of profit from it). It is demoralizing and bad for culture. The development of jazz would have been impossible in this environment. How much loss to humanity from art cultures that will never develop because of the copyright police?

    100%

  • @pedro said:
    You guys sound like you're missing the point of "no one cares", that is until you get a #1 hit.

    It sounds to me like complaining the state gets 20% of you earnings if you hit the jackpot

    I have no issue paying my dues. Just not sure of the sense in paying between 2k and 10k to do so, when I've never made a penny from music and my best Soundcloud weeks hit about 60 listens. What I'd have no issue with is retrospective clearing i.e Should a track end up making money, then a certain percentage would go to the copyright-holders.

  • [oversimplifications inboud]

    The physical recording has a separate copyright from the underlying composition. A lawyer might try to sue for nearly anything (in the US), but succeeding is another story. A person can’t copyright a chord progression. Same with drum beats or basslines or arpeggios. If one looks, anything we can come up with as a composition probably already exists in public domain work somewhere. You can use that.

    If you sample someone else’s physical recording, then you are violating copyright. If you release music that has samples of copyrighted material in it, either negotiate a fee upfront, or release your track for free. You can be as artsy as you want to be when you release music for free, but once it’s got a price tag on it, then it can be a target, but likely won’t be unless you sell enough to get noticed. Amateurs relase music into a vast sea of anonimity and feel lucky if a few people hear our music and maybe give us a compliment. Copyright lawsuits shouldn’t be a worry to 99.99% of the iOS music making community.

    Before getting hit with a lawsuit, generally one would receive a “cease & desist letter”, which is the copyright owner (often a label) saying stop using our sample. Often you could get them to drop the matter if you replace the sample(s) with your own material, which is what I recommend people do from the outset.

  • My goal is to get a cease and desist from The Beatles so I know that Paul noticed me

  • @Fingolfinzz said:
    My goal is to get a cease and desist from The Beatles so I know that Paul noticed me

    Ha!

  • OK, I am not a lawyer (and the law will vary geographically anyway), but Adam Neely has a video on YT where he talks to couple of guys fighting back on the “sounds like” front, by generating all possibly note combinations/melodies, copyrighting them and making them PD. I have no idea if this would hold up in a court, but basically two can play the copyright game.

  • @Slam_Cut said:
    If you sample someone else’s physical recording, then you are violating copyright. If you release music that has samples of copyrighted material in it, either negotiate a fee upfront, or release your track for free. You can be as artsy as you want to be when you release music for free, but once it’s got a price tag on it, then it can be a target, but likely won’t be unless you sell enough to get noticed. Amateurs relase music into a vast sea of anonimity and feel lucky if a few people hear our music and maybe give us a compliment. Copyright lawsuits shouldn’t be a worry to 99.99% of the iOS music making community.

    This might've been the way it's generally been. But this doesn't deal with issues of copyright-recognition and blocking on various online platforms, which, as the video shows, are going to (in many more cases) be able to recognise, strike, delete, ban etc. anyone using even the merest whiff of someone else's work.

  • @Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr said:

    @NeuM said:

    @HotStrange said:

    Not sure if this is what you mean but there are lots of examples of copying the sound and feel of a song and still getting sued for copyright infringement. Like Red Hot Chili Peppers/Tom Petty. Marvin Gaye/Robin Thicke. Etc.

    No, they get sued for copying a chord progression or for lifting whole sections out of someone else's work. The copied chord progression is the weakest legal argument in my opinion. There are only so many available notes and only so many of constructing a song. Some 'accidental' copying is inevitable.

    Marvin's estate is suing a guy for stealing the chord progression and feel from "Let's Get It On", which Marvin stole from:

    This was such a sexy piece of music until Marvin got his hands on it ;)

  • @el_bo said:

    @Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr said:

    @NeuM said:

    @HotStrange said:

    Not sure if this is what you mean but there are lots of examples of copying the sound and feel of a song and still getting sued for copyright infringement. Like Red Hot Chili Peppers/Tom Petty. Marvin Gaye/Robin Thicke. Etc.

    No, they get sued for copying a chord progression or for lifting whole sections out of someone else's work. The copied chord progression is the weakest legal argument in my opinion. There are only so many available notes and only so many of constructing a song. Some 'accidental' copying is inevitable.

    Marvin's estate is suing a guy for stealing the chord progression and feel from "Let's Get It On", which Marvin stole from:

    This was such a sexy piece of music until Marvin got his hands on it ;)

    They're both classics.

  • @Fingolfinzz said:
    My goal is to get a cease and desist from The Beatles so I know that Paul noticed me

    Better to get a letter from Ringo. He refuses to sign autographs, so you could sell the letter on eBay and make a fortune! :smiley:

  • Do copyright court cases involve a jury?

    If they do, then it is just a matter of convincing the jury that a song has been copied.

    A clever lawyer could probably do that. "Look, the key is the same, the chord progression is the same, the tempo is the same" etc...

  • @el_bo said:

    @Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr said:

    @NeuM said:

    @HotStrange said:

    Not sure if this is what you mean but there are lots of examples of copying the sound and feel of a song and still getting sued for copyright infringement. Like Red Hot Chili Peppers/Tom Petty. Marvin Gaye/Robin Thicke. Etc.

    No, they get sued for copying a chord progression or for lifting whole sections out of someone else's work. The copied chord progression is the weakest legal argument in my opinion. There are only so many available notes and only so many of constructing a song. Some 'accidental' copying is inevitable.

    Marvin's estate is suing a guy for stealing the chord progression and feel from "Let's Get It On", which Marvin stole from:

    This was such a sexy piece of music until Marvin got his hands on it ;)

    I’m sure both versions wet some panties.

  • @Simon said:
    Do copyright court cases involve a jury?

    If they do, then it is just a matter of convincing the jury that a song has been copied.

    A clever lawyer could probably do that. "Look, the key is the same, the chord progression is the same, the tempo is the same" etc...

    It's even crazier than that. Copyright cases aren't tried using the recordings, because those are considered to be too distracting. Instead, the jurors are tasked with evaluating a transcription of the music to decide if the two recordings are similar.

    The mechanized copyright enforcement system is profoundly anticompetitive and anticreative. It's more about protecting the profits of massive media conglomerates than individual artists. The conglomerates love to hide behind those artists, though.

    Gregory Coleman, who performed the original Amen break, died homeless in 2006. Free use of his performance launched a huge genre of music. I suspect a system could be designed that would have ensured he got compensated for his performance being turned into a global movement without limiting the creativity of other artists.

  • Can anyone tell me why every song ever released is on YouTube for free?

    Does YouTube pay the record companies to allow that?

  • @Simon said:
    Can anyone tell me why every song ever released is on YouTube for free?

    Does YouTube pay the record companies to allow that?

    Yes, they pay licensing fees back to the copyright holders. They came up with a massive deal between them and the various licensing companies a few years back.

    https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7071269?hl=en

  • @NeuM said:
    Yes, they pay licensing fees back to the copyright holders. They came up with a massive deal between them and the various licensing companies a few years back.

    Wow - must be a huge amount of money.

    Thanks for the info.

  • @el_bo said:

    This might've been the way it's generally been. But this doesn't deal with issues of copyright-recognition and blocking on various online platforms, which, as the video shows, are going to (in many more cases) be able to recognise, strike, delete, ban etc. anyone using even the merest whiff of someone else's work.

    The law (speaking generally in the US) hasn’t changed in a long time, but I think there are efforts to update things. Tech changes more rapidly than the law. YouTube may be overly protective, or lacking in the ability to decifer differnces in music, and that may result in unique music or videos being pulled, but that is a different scenario than a court of law. As a private company, YouTube (or others) can choose to make decisions favorable to the company, which likely can mean overly protecting the big labels that YouTube makes more money from and stepping on the toes of amateur ‘nobodies’. That’s the entertainment industry today. I’m not sure what can be done about it, but for discussion it would be nice if someone had an actual real life situation that we could look at. I hear about people having problems with YouTube but I never see any threads of people discussing their story.

  • edited March 2023

    @Slam_Cut said:

    @el_bo said:

    This might've been the way it's generally been. But this doesn't deal with issues of copyright-recognition and blocking on various online platforms, which, as the video shows, are going to (in many more cases) be able to recognise, strike, delete, ban etc. anyone using even the merest whiff of someone else's work.

    The law (speaking generally in the US) hasn’t changed in a long time, but I think there are efforts to update things. Tech changes more rapidly than the law. YouTube may be overly protective, or lacking in the ability to decifer differnces in music, and that may result in unique music or videos being pulled, but that is a different scenario than a court of law. As a private company, YouTube (or others) can choose to make decisions favorable to the company, which likely can mean overly protecting the big labels that YouTube makes more money from and stepping on the toes of amateur ‘nobodies’. That’s the entertainment industry today. I’m not sure what can be done about it, but for discussion it would be nice if someone had an actual real life situation that we could look at. I hear about people having problems with YouTube but I never see any threads of people discussing their story.

    But what good is the law if all the streaming platforms choose to be overly protective? Unless it’s somehow possible to force these companies to add humans into the process of arbitration (post-AI, presumably), they'll continue to rely solely on algorithms that over-reach.

  • @el_bo said:
    But what good is the law if all the streaming platforms choose to be overly protective? Unless it’s somehow possible to force these companies to add humans into the process of arbitration (post-AI, presumably), they'll continue to rely solely on algorithms that over-reach.

    The law is not there to ensure that you can have your music on YouTube.

    If someone steals your music then they are breaking the law and you can sue them. That's where the law comes in handy.

  • @Simon said:

    @el_bo said:
    But what good is the law if all the streaming platforms choose to be overly protective? Unless it’s somehow possible to force these companies to add humans into the process of arbitration (post-AI, presumably), they'll continue to rely solely on algorithms that over-reach.

    The law is not there to ensure that you can have your music on YouTube.

    If someone steals your music then they are breaking the law and you can sue them. That's where the law comes in handy.

    As has already been mentioned, things are going to have to change with respect to our current musical climate.

  • What if you have a mic set up in your living room waiting for your dog to bark. The TV is on in the background as your wife had been watching it before she went shopping. The dog doesn’t bark but you decide to insert a piece of silence into your musical work that was recorded whilst waiting for the perfect bark. Unfortunately the silence has been contaminated by an intrusive piece of music playing in the background (from a group of people have accepted financial remuneration in order to be able to do this). Not being a perfectionist you decide that you can go with it anyway. You did not record directly from the TV as you were only intent on recording the dog barking or the ambient sound of the room.

  • edited March 2023

    @robosardine said:
    What if you have a mic set up in your living room waiting for your dog to bark. The TV is on in the background as your wife had been watching it before she went shopping. The dog doesn’t bark but you decide to insert a piece of silence into your musical work that was recorded whilst waiting for the perfect bark. Unfortunately the silence has been contaminated by an intrusive piece of music playing in the background (from a group of people have accepted financial remuneration in order to be able to do this). Not being a perfectionist you decide that you can go with it anyway. You did not record directly from the TV as you were only intent on recording the dog barking or the ambient sound of the room.

    You still recorded copyrighted music and decided to release it without permission.

    Guilty. Death penalty. :smiley:

  • @bygjohn said:
    OK, I am not a lawyer (and the law will vary geographically anyway), but Adam Neely has a video on YT where he talks to couple of guys fighting back on the “sounds like” front, by generating all possibly note combinations/melodies, copyrighting them and making them PD. I have no idea if this would hold up in a court, but basically two can play the copyright game.

    Great video and great effort, thanks @bygjohn!

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