The presumed belief that ones intellectual property is protected by law is a nice idea, but in today’s digital age of reproducing, recreating and downloading content at the click of a button it seems that it is almost impossible for copyright laws to keep up. In this blog I will discuss the difficult task faced by intellectual property laws in the digital era and will use ‘Girl Talk’ as my example to support this.
Gregg Gills or ‘Girl Talk’ as he is commonly known in the music world has become famous for his sampling of popular music tracks into aural collages. The success of ‘Girl Talk’ has sparked debate within the public sphere as many believe that his work is a major breach of copyright legislation and thus he shouldn’t be able to profit off the work of others. Today ‘Girl Talk’ has released 5 albums of cut-and-paste pop and has become a huge name in the music industry; all without one legal suit against his name.
Below is an example of Girl Talks latest work; remix or piracy? what are your thoughts?
Gill’s has so far avoided legal action as he claims to conform to the requirements of ‘”fair use” under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. The concept of “Fair use” legally allows unauthorized reproduction of creative pieces if the work is educational, satirical, a parody or transforms the original without infringing on the works monetary commercial value. I believe that ‘Girl Talk’ exploits this oversimplification of the law to his benefit and by transforming old samples into creative mash ups he provides the audience with something completely new.
The success of Girl Talk highlights a grey area of Intellectual property law. I believe that by strengthening current laws we would be inhibiting the ability of creative artists such as Girl Talk to flourish yet at the same time we may be encouraging other artists to cross moral lines without any repercussions at all. In the future intellectual property faces a difficult task; how do YOU think the law should respond?
The documentary 'Remix Manifesto' elaborates further on this issue. A trailer of the film can be found below and I reccomend that you check it out as it raises some interesting points on modern societies consumption of media.
Bravo Corryn, great piece which draws on current issues in the music world. It does seem that GirlTalk is cashing is on the weak law system. I personally feel that he is reinvigorating, adding some jazz and making these old pop hits seem even better. At the end of the day though, i'm sure artists would kick up a stink if he was destroying their works.
ReplyDeleteInteresting drawing on Girl Talk. I'm not sure, but he's proffitting from other's work, is he citing his sources? Two Many DJ's do something similar, usually mixing acapella tracks with well recognised and loved riffs. I beleive their ok under fair use, but should put a disclamier somewhere? sort of like fan-fiction and the use of canon?
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