Copyright Criminals

Copyright Criminals from IndiePix on Vimeo.

"... What the photographer is to the painter, is what the modern producer and DJ and computer musician is to the instrumentalist."

This is a repost of a PBS documentary that Beautiful Decay put up in their own blog, but it was so interesting, I couldn't resist.

Copyright Criminals takes a look at the ethics, history and process of sampling music in the modern music industry. The focus, rightfully so, tends to be on hip hop DJs and shows people like EL-P (Def Jux) and DJ Qbert (Invisibl Skratch Piklz) talking about their process and the considerations they take when choosing what to sample.

Intellectual property law continues today to be a field of infinite grays it would seem, and moving forward I think we're going to see more and more discussion of what is and isn't ethical in the creative process. All the same, this is no new concept, people have in fact been covering, dubbing and flat out copying other works for years and years and years (waaay before hip hop), so why is it even an issue in our modern society? Do we need to collectively opt out in favor of a more pure creative process? Nah, it's probably just an issue of green.

Personally, I used to think it was wrong to draw from others (steal) to make your own work, but we live in a world of collaborative processes anyhow, so is it really that wrong? Doctors share information via medical journals and no one says a thing because their contributions lead to a greater whole, but why don't we lend that concept to more arenas of our lives? I had an old friend that would harp on about how stealing wasn't wrong when it contributed to a greater whole, and I hate to say it, but he made a good point. I'm sure as time moves on we'll continue to see works that evolve from many hours of collaborating, digging around and drawing on others.

Watch the documentary, be entertained and make your own conclusions. It starts as CO1 and continues in the browser as CO2 and so forth.

*** Update: Full documentary no longer streaming online.
Go here for more information. ***