Re: Re: Acknowledging samples

Not much mud on Steve's shoes with that solid response.

All the fun, of course, is in the border areas, but sometimes the border areas occupy more territory than would first appear. Let's take two hypos from the realm of classical music that are fairly commonplace occurrences:

1. composer A writes a set of variations on a copyrighted tune by composer B. No question but that anyone listening would know that the tune is by B (that's part of the fun of writing such variations). However: a) the theme and variations are clearly transformative of the original; b) the variations may or may not use the entirety of the original work--often composers omit any "bridge" material--but what is used is clearly identifiable and important to the original; c) we can stipulate that composer A's work is "for profit" in the sense that A hopes to gain royalty income from performances, publication, etc.; but
2. hard to see how the work by A competes in the marketplace for the original by B or takes sales away from it (might even increase sales).
3. composer A is one of those folks, like Charles Ives or Peter Schickele (in his PDQ Bach guise), who lace their own works with quotations from other works, and in this case, including some snippets (maybe the most identifiable ones) from this tune by B.

To what extent does the fact that composers have been doing this for hundreds of years (think of all those masses using the then "pop" tunes "The Armed Man" and "The Western Wind") affect the analysis, and how does this fact apply to more modern versions of the same practice?

Vance

On 9/14/06, Steven Jamar <stevenjamar[_at_]gmail.com> wrote:
> Into the swamp with this one!
>
> For some music, what seems to be music is really just a beat and such
> a pedestrian tune that the copyright in it is very, very thin. For
> example, the talking blues genre cannot be tied up by copyrighting a
> blues song. And so it is for the blues chord progression in general.
> And for the basic rock cord progression, and so on. Nor can a shuffle
> rhythm, swing, rumba, cha-cha-cha, rap, hip-hop, etc. Nor disco.
>
> But, at some point the combination becomes copyrightable, creative,
> original expression.
>
> But that point is hard to define, especially for ordinary, pedestrian
> renditions of disco or rap or country or rock.
>
> So, your choir's song could be just a sound alike because at some
> level so much of that type sounds alike (like all manilow sounds like
> manilow or fogarty sounds like fogarty), but it might still be
> original and not infringing as either a copy or derivative work.
>
> "Inspired by" is generally not infringing unless it is really a copy
> or is less inspired by than derived from.
>
> Steve
>
>
> On 9/14/06, Varvel, Virgil <vvarvel[_at_]uillinois.edu> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> >
> >
> > Quick question. Our choir was practicing a song last night. As I was
> > listening to it, I realized that the primary beat of the song was taken from
> > an old disco tune of all places. On the music, there was no attribution to
> > where this melody came from, only to the lyrics and the arrangement. My
> > question is whether you can take from another artist in this way without
> > attribution? First, is this alright within copyright law? It seemed to be
> > similar to plagiarism to me as well, since there is no credit given.
> >
> >
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> >
> >
> > Virgil E. Varvel Jr.
> >
> > Illinois Online Network
> >
> > University Outreach and Public Service
> >
> > University of Illinois
> >
> > Vvarvel[_at_]uillinois.edu
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> Prof. Steven Jamar
> Howard University School of Law
>
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-- 
Vance R. Koven
Boston, MA USA
vrkoven[_at_]world.std.com