[United States Americans] “. . . are entitled to life, liberty and property . . .” (Declaration of Rights by First Continental Congress, 1774
As a maker of things, the never-ending debate of the various strategies that can be deployed for claim to ownership of production can be quite overwhelming. Quite basically, copyleft, sampling, open source, creative commons and the struggle around intellectual property rights tugs at the very fibers of the legal systems that govern the ability to survive in a capitalist world system. Whether or not you believe in this system is up to your taste. It definitely believes in itself, though, as most working systems do….
So as we all know, computer software and code, written later than audio, has had the relative benefit of aligning itself with a certain attitude of sharing, openness and an anarcho-libertarian image (along-side its use as a miltary industrial tool of power).
Audio, however, has been beign continually, and rather quietly, being claimed and owned, such that now, in the United States, any sample of any length of audio, if even almost unrecognizable, is owned and therefore bound up with current copyright laws.
I have yet to encounter a better example of the struggles of audio cultures and their subsequent re-immersions into the systemic fallacy of copyright than the work of djs. But once recorded, their work must be “cleared” as well. The recorded zone is a tenuous one. People ask, “how many can I make?” As a general understood rule, under 10,000 copies “flies under the RIAA radar”. But you better hope you don’t have a hit!
Wait, what’s that, do we have a small light at the middle of the tunnel, with the legendary Beatles? Apparently, Sony and Michael Jackson are not strong enough to overthrow the British Empire.
Pay attention to the Gowers Review if you care about those samples and the future of music, at least in the UK.
(but wait! If Kittler and Edison are right, that the dead can speak, then who owns those recordings?)