As an artist, this is a very significant issue, and one on which my views may be in the minority. But the whole idea of copyright, and of the illegality of certain uses of any piece of art, be it sound or image, in whole or in part, is ridiculous, and I would like to discuss why I feel that way.

I will do that soon, here.

In the meantime, I will say simply this:

I’ve heard it said that Paul’s Boutique was the last great sampling album.  Since then, the ability to use samples from films, other songs or any other audio source became impractical for any kind of music one might want to sell or otherwise proliferate, because of the concern of litigation.

However it ends up working financially/legally, we need to evolve to an understanding of intellectual property and copyright that does not bind artists’ hands thus.  We need to be more understanding and open-handed, and realize that once we’ve produced it and released it, a piece of art of any kind becomes the world, it becomes the zeitgeist, and belongs to everyone.  That is our great power as artists.

We need to be the great people. We need to eschew illusionary concepts of intellectual property as quickly as we would our real property (the whole what-you-own-ends-up-owning-you/all-our-precious-flaming-little-shit idea). We need to use samples regardless, and allow manipulation and reinterpretation of our own work, because we are entering an era where everything will have a million forms, tweaked a million times and shifted around for creative exploration's sake, and we must all share all this information.