RE: [microsound] shades of grey

["jt" <jt@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello.
I mostly lurk, but this is a topic of personal interest.

Working with digital media(or any media for that matter) I find that there
are many gray areas concerning ownership and authorship.

Perhaps I am just restating previous posters, but my opinion is that
sampling audio/code/images is fair game as long as you are using it as a
building block to express something new. I think much of it depends on
intent.

It's important to give credit to those who have done much work, but I also
don't think an exhaustive list of citations for each musical work is
necessary. A good dividing line is how much work/ideas you, as the author
have put into the finished product. That will be reflected in the final
product, regardless of source material, but if you take something wholesale,
just be honest about it. Personally, I am in favor of a community that
shares and shares alike in order to expand the collective vocabulary and
palette.

In a practical manner, I would say that 'emailware' is a good solution. If
you use someone elses product in your own, send the author an email stating
what you have done. I figure it is better to be upfront than to have them
find out later and feel ripped off.

OK, perhaps I am rambling a bit here, its late, and my ambition for this
email outshined my actual mental capacity for right now, but I am sure the
conversation will continue tomorrow, it has been very interesting so far.

jonathan c. tobin   (   jt@xxxxxxxxxx   )
badzen, la          (   www.badzen.com  )
phone               (   310.841.6002    )

-----Original Message-----
From: macrosound@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:macrosound@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2003 11:23 PM
To: microsound
Subject: Re: [microsound] shades of grey

> giant can of worms.

One of my favorites.  What was that chief seattle quote? "The earth does
not belong to us, we belong to the earth."

I am not a very extreme person when it comes to my actions but I believe
in social anarchy.  Why?  because it's all I see.  Do what thou wilt shall
be the whole of the law.  This is natures way.  We construct all sorts of
rules that we deem "laws" and then assume they actually are laws.  The
fact is that anyone can do anything at any time but most of us choose to
respect each other enough not to cause violence.

Do you ask the birds permission to record their song?  or exhaust vents or
whatever.  No you don't.  Do they care?  They don't give a flying donut.
I think that if you are concerned about something being reproduced then
don't release it to the public.  It's going to get used and resused and
reused.

This is the era of Microsoft or my-crosoft.  My, my, my.  Everyone wants
to draw a line down the middle of the room and say, "This is my half and
that's your half."

Anyone interested in writing a free-music license, similar to the GNU
General Public License?

free your music and your mind will follow,
elisha

>
>> since when did live pa's include playing other peoples tracks?
>
>
> giant can of worms.  at what point in the processing of an audio file
> created by someone else does the work become "your own"?  or in a
> programming context, if I take one of your patches and make a few
> changes, is it now mine?  perhaps most importantly, are ownership
> scruples like this keeping us honest, or holding us back?
>
> for the record, my music making - live and otherwise - almost always
> makes use of data from music that I did not create.  sometimes it's
> subtle and sometimes it's blatant.
>
> bbn
>
>
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