Content: Tech - Cultural Sampling

In probably the most exciting of the week's presentations, Glenn Brown from Creative Commons, Alex Macgilvray of Google, and lawyer Wendy Seltzer gave audio, video, and web examples of creative uses of copyrighted works. From mixing "bootylicious" with Nirvana to make "Smells Like Teen Booty," to Google using snippets of other website descriptions in their searches, to whitehouse.org's parody bios of the Cheney's, we wonder: "Who decides who can create and appropriate uses of creative and political works?"

Glenn Brown, Executive Director of Creative Commons
Alexander Macgillvray, Intellectual Property Counsel, Google
Wendy Seltzer, Staff Attorney, Electronic Frontier Foundation

Alex: Give an introduction (we're all in the "disciples of Larry" camp: code is law)

Peer 2 Peer: What is it?
Comes from Client/Server: Web Server and Web Browser

Peer computers can get and send messages to each other.
File Sharing: puretunes is a most recent example.
-Napster, they kept the index on a central server.
-Gnutella is the most decentralized: no central index. Each computers asks other computers.
-Kazaa: certain computers with high plike Charlie get "supernode" status, and they ask as semi central connectors.

There are a lot of different ways of doing peer 2 peer from Client/Server to absolute p2p. While Gnutella is good for resisting copyright law, but Kazaa has been more efficient in downloading due to the supernode model.

The default is to share everything in your Shared folder, and unlimited uploading to other users. Now Record companies can go and look in your folder for copyrighted files and prosecute you.

Which is Reality?
Is the current copyright system really Dead? Or has the RIAA just begun to fight?
The plus and minus of the techno war.

Glenn Brown: sampling, mash-up (combining songs), bastard pop, collage, bootleg remix: Get this powerpoint presentation and get it.

1. Dreamworks Collage: 007 + Mike Myers = Austin Powers
Mike Myers signed a deal with Dreamworks to gain access to anything that they have rights to. "Rap artists have been doing this for years with music. Now we are able to take the same concept and apply it to film." Rap sampled for free until 1991, when people started having to pay for rights.

Mash-up: "bootylicious" + Nirvana ="Smells Like Teen Booty": Illegal Art

2. Negativland: intentionally combine copyrighted works, like U2 and Casey Casem: Illegal Art.
Island Records and the other sued Negativland and won. They had to pay about $90,000. illegal-art.org has this stuff online. Hans Christiean Andersen + Disney +bored Disney + .... =

3. Hell-raiser mash-up: combined both songs and videos to create a collage. Not necessarily parody.
The Strokes guy wasn't that into it. "If it had worked, I would have probably promoted it... The funny thing is, Christina Aguilera's on our label."

4. White (& Red) Strips Collage: skip the intermediaries

5. Creative Commons Collage: public domain, money, aeshetics, connections, consent, availability, parody, licensing, technology, branding

Give permission up front for certain uses.... Creative Commons

Alex Macgilvray: broadening the idea of sampling
Hyperlinks to other sites, and images that link to others, are sampling. Google is a massive sampler
Outline may be collaborated. Weblogs sample lots. Google's snippets that give a hint to where you're going. Froogle samples.... Who samples? In a sampled work, who's the author? Can I get more creative with our sampling? Do we need more technology? When we get it together as a society to get that all creative works come from other works, and change the legal regime?

We see that there's all this new kind of creative works happening? Are we OK with having a legal system that officially makes certain things illegal, but then allows it to a certain extent?

Wendy Seltzer, Chilling Effects: when companies and others claim ownership of copyright
Davezilla.com, AIBO (sony's dog), AIBO Simpsons. People appropriate different parts of the culture.

Who decides who can create and appropriate uses of creative works.

Impolitics: Whitehouse.org has a parody website including fake bios of lynn cheney. jeb02.com, rtmark.com.

Some do get the web: Moveon.org: using the web to assemble people through mass grass roots campaign, or meetup.com. What can the law do against these distributed attacks? Is it the people's culture to create and appropriate.