What are the ethics of sampling and borrowing?
We hear often of cases of musicians suing others for using their music. There is even one case where a band was sued for using a two-second guitar chord from another band.
Beyond the legal ramifications, what are the ethical standards of using all or part of what someone else has created? Some may argue that all creativity is borrowed, others that it is vital to protect the creators of new work. Do we own what we create? Are there ways to “borrow respectfully” and if so, what forms can this take? If not, are legal means the only way forward? If you are not a musician, how do you approach issues of sampling, borrowing or copying in your discipline?
Beyond the legal ramifications, what are the ethical standards of using all or part of what someone else has created? Some may argue that all creativity is borrowed, others that it is vital to protect the creators of new work. Do we own what we create? Are there ways to “borrow respectfully” and if so, what forms can this take? If not, are legal means the only way forward? If you are not a musician, how do you approach issues of sampling, borrowing or copying in your discipline?
Tags: artist, artists, borrowing, copyright, culture, ethical, legal, sampling
Replies to This Post
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Permalink Reply by cheryl gravitt on -
Well,I myself,am a Writer in addition to being an Artist.I have posted poetry to different sites,and this exact question was asked by another writer who'd posted a poem.One opinion was this: Once someone posts anything on internet,it is Public Domain.
I've marked some of my art,so that if they really want it,(as in giving me cold,hard cash for it,LOL,I like cash! :>D
unless they buy the original,all their going to get is a copy with,"Contact artist if interested in purchasing original."
To me,it's like cheating on a test,you know,you might pass the test,but the knowledge is not there.A REAL Artist,will not be content with this sham.
If a person is truly a good person,it WILL hurt their concience,you know? I registered for a site called Freecopyright.com but I will not give up too much of my precious time worrying about someone stealing from me,life's too short.
Another saying is this: Locks are for honest people,not criminals.
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Permalink Reply by Mo on -
If I am influenced by another visual artist, I strive to make a piece my own.
A quote from a workshop handout:
"The difference between a bad artist and a good one is . . . the bad artist seems to copy a great deal . . . the good one really does copy a great deal." -- William Blake 1808
Last year my local film society showed the documentary "RiP: A Re-Mix Manifesto." The filmmaker argues that current copyright and patent laws are holding mankind back from advancement. Here's a link for the film site:
http://films.nfb.ca/rip-a-remix-manifesto/
Besides music, the filmmaker discusses literature, visual art, animation and even touches on medicine.
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Permalink Reply by claudia roulier on
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I think someone once said there's nothing new under the sun.....if you took a class from teacher A then some of what learned is going to stick you aren't copying you are just incorporating, that's how you learn, once you've done 10 things it's your piece....
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Permalink Reply by Diversity of Metamorposis on -
Isn't this what the internet was designed for, the sharing of ideas or the theft of ideas, without anyone's particular awareness of the process...The value of things is overrated and what gives specific groups power to design a world between the meaning of public and private, open and closed, when in the beginning the mind and the planet were open not closed or privatized.
There are more closed minds on earth, because, of the capitalist perceptions of wealth, than there are wealthy people...The perception and reality of wealth is in the translation occurring between the wealth of minds considering their mind to be a tunnel of wealth and the wealth a planet relates to them in developing their tunnel.
Tunnel vision is a media program running in the minds of all the different prison camps in the Garden of Eden, to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Lawyer are a useless pound of flesh designed to destroy morality and enslave populations...there main benefactors are the criminally minded ancestral thieves, the holy mother of all mothers and capitalist entrepreneurs on the make. Everyone’s on the make in Nede land because that’s the way power gets moved around and people get shares in the big show. Credibility is all bought and paid for and is very nice to look at but, pretty ugly when you remove the mask and see what lies beneath.
When our ancestors painted in caves, the rewards of knowledge and wisdom in awareness were given freely without cohesion or a fee and yet the rewards are what the whole of a living humanity share naturally and will go on sharing in time.
Who owns the rights over the human mind and conscious/subconscious experience in life, existence and death, is it ethical or a contrived piece of art? Is ethics a piece of art, something made that works for all people or something with a limited opportunity to inspire, or is the enduring work of ideas about ideas that don't translate as a compatible meaning to a status quo or living audience in the microcosm or the macrocosm, viable pieces of legislation.
Do you want to protect, can't get enough protection, there's an entire industry based in protection and the living fields of bodies all define the living art of ethics on the world stage in glorious multicolor and splashes of red here and there to cement the union between art and ethics, like a vast dreamscape you never forget, because ethics is a bag of shit with no natural meaning without a natural definition, but, what’s natural?
Who owns Time and Space, God, a particular group or Humanity as a defined whole and in who's best interest do the ethics work?
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Permalink Reply by Jim Halsall on -
Creative artists should be inspired by other artists. I am a musician and I deplore so called 'sampling' where recorded music is simply lifted form the original work created by others and used to enhance the sounds of other peoples recordings.The recordings made by these people is, in my opinion often inspired by little more than making money and only serves to detract from the originality of genuinely inspired artists. It is sad to hear the work of artists such as Stevie Wonder for instance used in this way, a man who works hard at what he does, and also has a very creative social conscience as well, a real inspiration. There is only so much airtime available to play music on the radio, and I consider these people to be leeches on the back of the music industry.
This phenomenon has only come about because of the enhancement of digital technology and has little to do with inspiration or creativity.
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Permalink Reply by Sandra Lefever on -
Has anyone been keeping abreast of the shepard fairey and associated press law suit and countersuit? The determination in this case could set a new precedent and change the existing fair use doctrine (which really only pertains to anyone living or working in the united states).
As an artist, I have had my moments where i really needed to appropriate something that already existed. But i've never used anything outright. it's been derivative and has been transformed in some way. you could call redrawing a piece of a photograph from a magazine an appropriation. any collage artist appropriates. anyone who references a previous artwork, style or period appropriates. I think a lot of people do it, (and obviously shepard fairey did it) when a photo reference is needed for a subject that isn't easily available in real life. so, credit should be given, when it comes down to borrowing something from an individual or organizational ownership. without doing the research to find out what kind of licensing the owner has on the image, permitting derivative works or not, and also without going through the hoops of asking permission to use it, you really have no right to just outright steal anything, Unless you can prove a visual and/or conceptual transformation from the original.
You can find out more about licensing through the creative commons. Also, as an artist, you can register individual pieces or whole bodies of work through the u.s. copyright office.
whether you work within the confines of what's "legal" or not, it's always good the keep uP with where the wind is blowing.
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Permalink Reply by eunoia on -
I dabble with music so this issue is of significance to me. I strongly believe in open-source and file sharing. Creatives who are too involved in protecting their creations are more likely to get stuck than creatives who take this kind of situation as some kind of compliment or better yet, a kind of challenge for the next creation. After birthing the baby, which could be your song, painting, sculpture, whatever - its not up to you what becomes of it - unless you intend to make profit out of it. Now thats tricky because money and art are not exactly in the same plane, and both don't exactly share the same interests. Well if your an artist that needs profit, cheats and thieves won't be the end of you. If they cared enough to copy your work, that means your work is of value and thats even more reason to keep creating. As an artist, the primary concern is mastery in creation -mastery in playing with the elements, much like getting better at flying. Not many do and most others stop at the first level and proceed to becoming more vain than most politicians.
In short, creativity must persist. Lets not get stuck with that one vision we had of God. Thats only the beginning. Theres more to come. :)
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Permalink Reply by Andino R. Ward on -
I have been a rpoducer for over twenty five years and started producing back in the early days of hip hop when sampling was the norm. It is and has always been a complexed issue as it involves intellectual rights and property ownership not to mention a considerable amount of ego and down right greed.
One must consider that many artists whose time had come and gone, as a result of sampling, were given new life and a second start as the sample brought a whole new generations attention to them and in some cases restarted their careers. I firmly believe that artists, whose work is sampled, should be compensated, but the problem became one of shear unadulterated greed as the labels, lawyers and artists saw sampling as a whole new revenue stream and just went crazy with pricing, contractual and residual revenue demands. It became so bad and still is, that the use of a sample, must get prior approval and can take up to a year or more of contractual negotiations before an agreement can be reached and the song, in which the sample is used can be released.
Considering the aforementioned, sampling is and will continue to be very unpopular, unless you have a tremendous budget and can pay whtever fee is being required. The trend, over the last 15 years has gone more towards creating the sample from scratch instead of using the real sample. Their are some very good producers who no how to do this and do it so well that you can't really tell the created sample from the real one.
Kanye West and Mariah Carey use a guy named Ken Lewis out of New York and he is probably the top guy in creating samples from scratch. I have spent time with him and heard his work, he is excellent as a producer in general.
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Permalink Reply by Nico Daswani on -
Very interesting, Andino, and great to get the perspective of someone in the industry. What would you say would be a better way of dealing with this issue? Would charging less for use of samples solve this?
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Permalink Reply by Andino R. Ward on
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unfortunately, there is no real solution to this process as the dye has been cast and it is difficult, as always, to undo that which has been done and has taken on a life of its own.
the solution seems to be and has been the one i previously indicated, which is recreating the sample from scratch, thus removing the issue of permission, compensation and negotiation. muchless, the aspect of sampling has had somewhat of a positive effect as it invoked the reintroduction of real, instrument driven music instead of sampled, synthetic and overly mechanized music.
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