Kraftwerk lose sampling copyright case.

[highkoo]

I like the idea that the 'judgment' of such things is a point on a spectrum, rather than a black/white, art/infringement.
Empirically, that feels fair. It is a ratio of things; how much was taken, how much does the sample contribute sonically to the whole of the new work, how much is the recognition of the sample's source by the audience a reason for its use, does it infringe on the originals value, etc, etc...

Its a silly argument, and a ridiculous thing to have lawyers and judges arguing about in court, but I think that is the fair way to look at 'guilt' in these things.

[Functional]

Its a silly argument, and a ridiculous thing to have lawyers and judges arguing about in court, but I think that is the fair way to look at 'guilt' in these things.

I was initially going to write a long response to this. But I'll just say my point shortly; if you think about it, most of legal disputes are just silly arguments. I wouldn't recommend searching logic from legal systems, because you'll find little of it. And I don't actually think that's a bad thing in itself — moral dilemmas are always "made up", simple as is.

I think a lot of people tend to view legal systems in sort of and have these odd expectations how it's supposed to fill up the fantasies of practically everyone, despite the fact that they're conflicting with each other. What's more important is the fact that we get to discuss these moral issues like we do in this thread and we get to express our points of views and we are exposed to other points of views. It's this way that we are forced to consider them and I think that this is the real mechanism that we develop morally as societies.

[highkoo]

Well, some legal arguments are sillier and less logical than others, imo. I work in the legal realm of the financial industry, and that is so incredibly horrible and not silly at all. Yes, it is all giant contrived choreography within a convoluted system, usually with made up money, but lives are destroyed. Ha!

But I was more thinking just about the lawyers arguing over the degree of the guilt. Because it gets subjective pretty quickly unless someone is ripping a whole melody or something, and its hard to imagine that being anything other than a legalese version of two stoned teenagers talking about their favorite bands. Which, is what music is all about, kind of.

[Functional]

Well, some legal arguments are sillier and less logical than others, imo. I work in the legal realm of the financial industry, and that is so incredibly horrible and not silly at all. Yes, it is all giant contrived choreography within a convoluted system, usually with made up money, but lives are destroyed. Ha!

But I was more thinking just about the lawyers arguing over the degree of the guilt. Because it gets subjective pretty quickly unless someone is ripping a whole melody or something, and its hard to imagine that being anything other than a legalese version of two stoned teenagers talking about their favorite bands. Which, is what music is all about, kind of.

Financial crime in particular is actually bit of a special case as I've come to understand, because there apparently the severity of penalties actually do have effect in crime rate and that effect is of large magnitude in comparison with more typical, spontaneous crime (where it's pretty much the same whenever you get a good 'ol lethal dose of poison or tap on your shoulder). But otherwise, you could have had same similarities (I mean, a murder is literally the act of taking a life).

What I mean that "all arguments are silly" because they are based upon moral premises which always are "artificial", arguments that are less about logic and more about intuition. And I think that's the human nature of us. For example, let's say that you sign a contract for a mortgage with some odd conditions that are implicitly expressed there. Who is to really say that the person should have understood every possible implication within the contract and who is to really say that it's not fair to assume so?

In fact, especially economists seem to be missing this point and instead (especially the public choice theorists) seem to think that you can truly analyze legal frameworks, moral issues (which have legal implications) and such issues through mathematical formulas which, supposedly, "expose" new kind of view. To understand what I mean, here's a performative caricature (in a very sad way) of such behavior: http://www.thebigquestions.com/2013/03/ ... ubenville/

Though this might be more fruitful if you explained the typical case where pretty much every aspect is clear cut. I'd imagine some of that exists. Would be interesting to know.

But I was more thinking just about the lawyers arguing over the degree of the guilt.

Yeah, I agree with what you said on that spectrum thing. I think if you're going to sample music, you should be aware of what you're doing and you should actually be able to do it so that you can justify it in case you'll get into court over that.

Some people would argue that judges aren't the people working in music industry and they have no clue of how things work there. And while I wouldn't argue against that necessarily, but I would argue instead that it's quite shallow to think that this makes judges incompatible to deal with such questions. First of all, the fact that they're likely among the people who actually only listen to music, makes them perfect for analyzing through the ears of an audience whenever there's a huge similarity or not. Say for example, if you timestretched the sample with a tape algorithm two times the length, it might sound completely different then even if it was "ripped off". The judges might not necessarily even hear the similarity instantly and then the suing party would have to replicate the effect to demonstrate how it was sampled. But then the judges might as well say that "sure, it's sampled from your record, but it doesn't sound anymore anything like it, so what are we supposed to do here?"

To provide an example;



At 0:11 the drums begin and eventually expand at around 0:34

"Where that's from?" you may ask. Well, it's from Amen Brother by The Winstons (while some consider this obvious, but it's not as obvious due to the fact that this is not D&B):



At begins at about 1:26

The whole album "Bricolage" has been sampled from existing music. Even the name implies this; bits and pieces from everywhere. And Amon Tobin has enjoyed a lot of fame and success. But can anybody here truly say that it's not his artistic expression? Can anyone seriously argue that every artist involved through samples should get a share for what Amon Tobin has done there? To me that just seems ridiculous. And I'm quite sure that the judges can't hear the similarity there at all unless they are presented with the concept of timestretching. In fact, I think that here in particular, the party trying to recreate that sound would have hard time actually replicating it so that it won't sound cheesy and instead cool as it does here.

[annode]

Just trying to get a word in please. You think Jackson borrowed a little too much from Kraftwerk with this ?

If Hutter wants to sue someone he should look to Joe Jackson. What do you think?

[whyterabbyt]

Sure. You can ask for the permission and go the legal route. Personally I would just start doing something else, because the last thing I would want to include in my production process is the (possibly tedious) task of contacting record companies and the artist him/herself about that. And it seems really silly in the first place.

so its not about creativity after all. sounds like its more about some sort of minor inconvenience to the process of distribution, a completely different thing.

There are two forms, the a priori & a posteriori ones. Let's see how they go;

The a posteriori would go something like this; "Hey, I sampled your song X. I wonder if I could get the permission to release the track? Oh, no? Well, too bad, all those hours spent to create this killer tune are now washed down the drain..."

Or not, if whoever it is is happy for licensing to occur, which happens all the time. Any particular reason to only present one side of that scale apart from disingenuousness?
But in the menatime, as per your original claim, your creativity wouldnt have been affected. So when you said 'creativity would have been destroyed' you actually meant 'a certain amount of convenience in redistributing my derivation of someone else's work might have been added'.
Big difference.

And even worse is the fact that you'll have hard time sharing your music through the means of vinyl/cd/tape/spotify etc regardless of the fact if you're doing it for profit or not, because they all can be interpreted as being for profit.

There you go again. Disingenuous, one-sided perspective. What you claim as a definitive outcome is only a possibility.

One ought to think that capitalism already does enough harm for us. But no, apparently it's so great that it even corrupts musicians or the companies revolved around music.

You mean the ones trying to capitalise on other people's work instead of making their own from scratch. Ironic.

[fluffy_little_something]

I just read a funny article about Led Zeppelin, who seem to be infamous for stealing other people's music. Someone referred to them as the greatest cover band They are back in court again, this time it is about $40m.
Compared to that the Kraftwerk case seems pretty minor

[Boardwalk]

@fluffy_little_something

You mean this one?

http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/04 ... ment-case/

[fluffy_little_something]

It was on a different site, but the same story of course.
Seems LZ have contradicted themselves. First Plant claimed he only heard that other song for the first time in 2015 and never heard that band live, but it turns out they performed at the same festivals as Spirit decades ago and even attended a Spirit concert. But Plant says he did not listen to the music, but talked to friends

In the other article they listed entire songs whose original titles LZ didn't even bother to change (much)
- Dazed And Confused, based on Dazed And Confused by Jake Holmes
- How Many More Times, based on How Many More Times by Howlin' Wolf
- Nobody's Fault But Mine, based on Nobody's Fault But Mine by Blind Willie Johnson
- Whole Lotta Love, based on You Need Love by Willie Dixon
- Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You, based on Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You by Anne Bredon

This current case makes you wonder whether it is still even possible to come up with music today that nobody has made before, even if it dates back centuries.

[highkoo]

Though this might be more fruitful if you explained the typical case where pretty much every aspect is clear cut. I'd imagine some of that exists. Would be interesting to know.

Oh man it is not interesting. And the fruit is poison. It is the devil.

I work for a large bank. So I see only that spectrum of 'financial crime', and from the plaintiff side.... I work with consumer and commercial lending gone wrong. Not the biggest stuff, not the smallest.
But, overall, there are a whole lot of Summary Judgments. And just generally simple cases. Very often there is not a lot of legitimate "issue of fact" once it actually gets to court. The 'Financial Industry' is so scrutinized that everything is (supposed to be) documented, and no one wants to waste money on a desperate claim that will get swatted down by an expensive lawyer they end up paying for with one document and years of precedent.

Overall more work goes into brokering settlements, whether pre- or post-judgment, than goes into any actual litigation. Something like a big commercial foreclosure or bankruptcy, with a property sale, multiple guarantors, etc, can be a ton of work for lawyers, but again, the work is not the battle over any fact leading to the action. Hammering on numbers negotiations in the aftermath is most of the "work" I see both sides doing.
Basically once we get to court, they have already fuct up so bad that there is not much to argue about. Its really just a way of enforcing the cleanup of a mess they know they made, and both sides have been looking at for a while...

Of the litigated stuff, maybe half is due to some actual dishonest maneuvering gone wrong. But a lot is due to someone just being an idiot somewhere one day.

What I mean that "all arguments are silly" because they are based upon moral premises which always are "artificial", arguments that are less about logic and more about intuition. And I think that's the human nature of us. For example, let's say that you sign a contract for a mortgage with some odd conditions that are implicitly expressed there. Who is to really say that the person should have understood every possible implication within the contract and who is to really say that it's not fair to assume so?

Well sure, in general I agree that a lot of what our legal system is built to 'rule' on is less logical, and more emotional/instinctual than maybe makes sense. But I dont agree that your example falls into that category at all, and its not the work talkin.
Ignorance of law is not a great defense, especially when you signed the law.

Who is to really say that the person should have understood every possible implication within the contract?

Well first, the signature is a record of an individual attesting to their understanding and agreement to the contents of the document. Technically, that itself is to also be explained at signing.
But if a claim was made that implications were "overly" hard to understand, or were hidden, a judge would be the person who is to say whether the contract was reasonable, and even that a person should have understood the implications of what they signed. But it can get into "capacity to contract" shit there if someone is very desperate, and thats just dumb.
I dont see really any of that because the lawyers writing the bank's contracts are probably actual demons.

I really dont know why I am talking about this. It is really disgusting stuff.

[JJ_Jettflow]

It was on a different site, but the same story of course.
Seems LZ have contradicted themselves. First Plant claimed he only heard that other song for the first time in 2015 and never heard that band live, but it turns out they performed at the same festivals as Spirit decades ago and even attended a Spirit concert. But Plant says he did not listen to the music, but talked to friends

Please keep in mind that these events took place about 40 years ago so it is not surprising they may have trouble remembering things. Add a ton of touring, booze, drugs and women into the equation and its a miracle he remembers his own name.