From: gtaylor@vme.heurikon.com (Gregory Taylor)
Newsgroups: rec.music.makers.synth,rec.music.synth,rec.music.industrial,comp.music
Subject: Re: Make Sampling Legal...
Date: 21 Jan 93 22:06:55 GMT
Reply-To: gtaylor@vme.heurikon.com (Gregory Taylor)
Organization: Heurikon Corporation, Madison, WI

david@roth-music.com (David A. Roth) writes:
>
>LAW = PEOPLE.  ARTIST = PEOPLE.  Give it some thought.

Were it only that simple. Seems like I've seen a fair amount of comfortable
oversimplification in this thread. The LAW is an attempt to codify and
embody a certain set of ideas by a certain group of PEOPLE which are
then given the force to compel compliance at the risk of sanction. It's
important, I think, to question exactly *what* presuppositions about 
personhood, objecthood, originality, and property are codified by the
existing copyright law. As one poster pointed out, the very fact that 
the doctrine of "Fair Use" even *exists* would seem to at least imply
some deficiencies in this LAW which equals PEOPLE. Laws can just as
easily embody doctrines which are pernicious to all but those they
favor [just ask Dredd Scott]; the copyright laws seem, for example,
to provide little real guidance on issues like, say, arrangement. The
reason for that little nicety is, I expect, historical. As nearly as 
I can tell, the whole net seems to be in the thrall of the same Romantic
vernacular aesthetic which permeates Barbara Cartland's novels, Goethe's
poetry, and the Clash's pronouncements of self-worth. And as for 
ARTIST=PEOPLE, I'd argue that the fact that most of what many of us
would consider our precious "originality" is sufficiently molded by
conventional notions of rebellion and conventional *forms* of rebellion
that there's at least some room to ask a nifty question like "Isn't
it possible that your sense of self-defined "uniqueness" is something
that the modern world has fed you in order to guide your habits as a
consumer? If you were really "unique", you'd have Madonna, Louis
Jordan, Khaled, the Duke, *and* David Lanz on your shelf. Instead you
are a unique "synthesist." How convenient for those who sell you stuff."
Having gone to some length in a previous posting to create situations
which would lead one to accept the notion of propriety and ownership,
I'll have to say that it would seem to me that one of the reasons that
more radical attacks on this comfortable notion that you "own" what you
"do" in a world which has democratized your access to the technologies
of production, reproduction, and distribution are greeted with such
exceptional hostility is NOT that they strike at your potential livelihood
as the "next big thing" with a synth [putting aside the only thinly
veiled bits of ah....exclusionism I read in the attacks on (c)rap,
which ISN'T MUSIC], but on the notion that one's unconsidered and
cherished notions of "self" force-fed by consumer culture may be under
attack. Asking these kind of questions to a network full of young men
[mostly] who fervently believe that we're seated on the top of the
resource usage pyramid solely on the basis of our own merit and efforts
is, I think you may agree, to invite the kind of nose-cone full of 
testosterone that the "you leaches (sic) make me want to puke" school seems
to have dished up in large measure.

And oh yeah - the ARTIST = PEOPLE thing doesn't work because the singular
and plural don't agree [unless you're trying to make my point for me].

I hope you're all getting permission to use those I-VII-IVs....

Playing Devil's Advocate,
Gregory

--
The leveling weight of music and weather/closes the stores, drives the people
underground/into cool rooms under ducts and water pipes./There are ways to
prove the logic of whatever happens./In a movie, the darkness between each 
frame proves it./Gregory Taylor/Heurikon Corporation/Madison, WI/608-828-3385