Feed the Animals, the pay-what-you-will second album from mash-up musician Girl Talk, samples over 300 different songs. This is quite wild, because hip-hop artists get the bajeezus sued out of them for for sampling even one song without clearance. (See: 2 Live Crew, Wyclef, Kanye, Ludacris, and, this week, Mary J. Blige)
But Girl Talk, aka Greg Gillis, has never been threatened with legal action.
Curious.
It helps that, for so long, Gilles operated under the radar, beyond the horizon most label execs can see when they decide who to clamp down on. But now his profile is on the rise — generally, musicians like when this happens — which means he's en route to clashing with the recording industry, which generally frowns upon this sort of thing.
Though the samples Gilles uses are so short they would better be described as "snippets," he's also creating what copyright attorneys might call "derivative works," which require copyright holders' consent.
But not according to him. Since his sampling is so bite-size, and the final product doesn't sound anything like the original, he's claiming the safe turf as book reviews: fair use.
Labels, meanwhile, appear unready to sue — perhaps because he might actually win, and set a new copyright precedent that's not in their favor. Or perhaps because Gilles' congressman, U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.), is on his side, leaving Gilles; only concern getting people to actually pay for his album.
Editorial Director
Exhibit A for the prosecution will be this post.
They'll say something like:
"Your Honor, we didn't even think about suing, until someone brought it up on jossip.com"
Bank on it!
Unlikely, since the NYT article on Gillis brings up the exact same issue.
He should be sued by everyone except the deaf.
I paid for the album and it's awesome. Clearly better than the original works; he's doing the original artists a favour.
The reason he hasn't been sued is because he's self-produced. The reason those hip-hop artists are sued is because their record companies all have an interest in having every last little snippet sampled. The Biz Markie case, that started the standard industry practice of paying for every last little snippet, was a long time ago, and someone ought to challenge it. It is legally tenuous at best.
Lawyers also call what Gillis does "transformative," which means that even though he uses recognizable pieces of existing works, he does so to create something entirely new. No one is going to refrain from buying one of the artists Gillis samples just because he hears that sample on the Girl Talk album.
Gillis will likely be sued soon–there is no conspiracy or odd reasons otherwise regarding why he hasn't been used yet other than the simple fact that he's not that known nationwide and he's not connected to a huge recording company. But he will get sued, and he's going to be sued soon–you simply cannot sample from copyrighted, protected music without permission from the publishing house, and the label, and the artist, and that is exactly the way it should be. If you record original material, and have it copyrighted, then no one has the right to steal it on another record–no one. This guy will be sued, and he'll either have to withdraw the record, pay the labels, or stop recording immediately, or a combination of all of the above. But no one has the right to steal other's copyrighted material. So look for a lawsuit and a cease-and-desist soon.
The front page:
Sorry. It's a lot more complicated than "if you record original material, and have it copyrighted, then no one has the right to steal it on another record - no one.
People can "steal" copyrighted material and use it in new works. Determining when they it's "theft" and when it's "fair use" is complicated, but I think one of the reasons Gillis hasn't been sued yet is that his material really is original, and the record companies are afraid they'd lose. In short, it's a bad case for them. They'd rather sue someone who strung together a bunch of copyrighted material in some ham-fisted way that really was nothing more than an effort to exploit the markets created by the copyright owners.
Do you think there's any chance the artists whose works Gillis "stole" will suffer any possible loss in sales due to his album. Have you even bothered to listen to it?
One thing is sure - what you wrote is exactly what the record companies want you to believe and is exactly wrong.
I just saw a local news story about a police raid on a store that was selling fake purses. When I read about this guy I wonder if the owners of that store would still have been infringing on the rights of the owners of those trademarks if they'd merely been cutting up the purses to make new ones (and constructing them in such a way as to show the brand and trademark of each). It is not the case that he is sampling the odd kick drum like Trent Reznor did from Iggy Pop's Nightclubbing. Nor is it the case that he is taking "snippets" of songs. His obvious purpose is to showcase clearly recognizable songs played atop other clearly recognizable songs. To me, the word snippet would only be accurate if the samples were short enough to go unrecognized. No, this guy is counting on the listener's fondness for the perfectly audible and recognizable copyrighted music. Much like the hypothetical purse mash-up-makers from my example, Girl Talk is profiting from the proven market-power of products that he did not produce. For those who don't know, the process is extremely simple. It's on par with hardcore scrapbookIng. Should the resultant audio be considered a finished product entitled to protection? It seems highly probable that the material that Girl Talk is releasing is competing for market share with those same original works that he sampled from. Most would agree that you can only hear a catchy song so many times before you lose interest. Every time you hear a Girl Talk track with a clearly recognizable sample that's just one more time you've heard it and one less time you'll want to. Should a piece of music have to compete with itself in the market?