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A serious discussion about sampling- (pg. 5)
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| fritz perls |
| "Good artists copy, great artists steal." |
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| SMC |
| quote: | Originally posted by RJT
Just like Plato's defintion of "knowledge," the ability to prove the creation of an IP, or rather, the debate regarding whether or not this is even possible to prove, will more than likely be a mystery that I'll puzzle over forever.
My gut feeling says that in the strictest sense, it's impossible - Though this raises all sorts of question about the idea of proving "innovation" or "pioneering" something new. I think we can arguably point to people who have clearly done "new" things in our eyes, how do we prove that they were beyond a shadow of a doubt the first to do so?
Gah - So many questions leading to so few answers! |
"But the distinction between creation and discovery is not clearcut or rigorous. Nor is it clear why such a distinction, even if clear, is ethically relevant in defining property rights. No one creates matter; they just manipulate and grapple with it according to physical laws. In this sense, no one really creates anything. They merely rearrange matter into new arrangements and patterns. An engineer who invents a new mousetrap has rearranged existing parts to provide a function not previously performed. Others who learn of this new arrangement can now also make an improved mousetrap. Yet the mousetrap merely follows laws of nature. The inventor did not invent the matter out of which the mousetrap is made, nor the facts and laws exploited to make it work. Similarly, Einstein’s “discovery” of the relation E=mc2, once known by others, allows them to manipulate matter in a more efficient way. Without Einstein’s, or the inventor’s, efforts, others would have been ignorant of certain causal laws, of ways matter can be manipulated and utilized. Both the inventor and the theoretical scientist engage in creative mental effort to produce useful, new ideas. Yet one is rewarded, and the other is not. In one recent case, the inventor of a new way to calculate a number representing the shortest path between two points—an extremely useful technique—was not given patent protection because this was “merely” a mathematical algorithm. But it is arbitrary and unfair to reward more practical inventors and entertainment providers, such as the engineer and songwriter, and to leave more theoretical science and math researchers and philosophers unrewarded. The distinction is inherently vague, arbitrary, and unjust."
from Stephan Kinsella's "Against Intellectual Property"
http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf |
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| RJT |
Excellent post, thank you for the link, settlin' in for a good read :cool: |
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| SMC |
| quote: | Originally posted by Allied Nations
Is digital information tangible?
What if a work sampling another work is heralded by the public audience, and completely hated by the owner of the copyright - take Danger Mouse - Grey Album for example- this ia very imprtant work which deals with copyright and sampling issues. Many will agree this is a legitimate work of art, yet the label who owned the a lot of the material (I think it was the beatles stuff and it may have been capitol, i forget) wouldn't fought against it's release- How is this copyright benifiting artists?
He used almost exlusively JayZ and Beatles material to put together the grey album (maybe completely exclusive), yet still made something arguable artistic and exciting- |
Digital information is not tangible and it's not scarce. A piece of digital information is a sequence of numbers, which are a concept, or an idea. There is no need for establishing any propery rights around things which are not scarce and over which there can not be any real conflict. You, me and another infinite number of ppl can all simoultaneosly use a specific sequence of numbers, think it or write down without a conflict emerging over it's use. Can the same thing be said about one specific banana? No. That's the difference between scarce and not scarce resources.
So, i have no objection to Danger Mouse creating and selling the work in question. : ] |
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| Allied Nations |
| quote: | Originally posted by SMC
Digital information is not tangible and it's not scarce. A piece of digital information is a sequence of numbers, which are a concept, or an idea. There is no need for establishing any propery rights around things which are not scarce and over which there can not be any real conflict. You, me and another infinite number of ppl can all simoultaneosly use a specific sequence of numbers, think it or write down without a conflict emerging over it's use. Can the same thing be said about one specific banana? No. That's the difference between scarce and not scarce resources.
So, i have no objection to Danger Mouse creating and selling the work in question. : ] |
Ok, so if he did it purely using analog equipment you might have a problem with him doing it? These are exactly the sort of response I want to hear. |
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| RJT |
| quote: | Originally posted by Allied Nations
Ok, so if he did it purely using analog equipment you might have a problem with him doing it? These are exactly the sort of response I want to hear. |
I don't think it has to do with the process, but with the material. This is where the argument gets muddy because many "scarce" resources such as vinyl or any other "analog" source material can easily become digital. Does that change the material (or idea) itself in any way fundamentally? |
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| SMC |
| quote: | Originally posted by Allied Nations
Ok, so if he did it purely using analog equipment you might have a problem with him doing it? These are exactly the sort of response I want to hear. |
No, not at all. I just used digital information or numbers as an example since you asked me if digital information is tangible. An analog signal is a sequence of electrical impulses, it is just like a sequence of numbers or of letters, words, spoken or written, not scarce. |
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| ASFSE |
| quote: | Originally posted by fritz perls
"Good artists copy, great artists steal." |
+1 |
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| SMC |
| quote: | Originally posted by RJT
I don't think it has to do with the process, but with the material. This is where the argument gets muddy because many "scarce" resources such as vinyl or any other "analog" source material can easily become digital. Does that change the material (or idea) itself in any way fundamentally? |
Analog or digital are charachteristics of the information itself, not of the material source. I can write down digital information on a piece of paper. I own the paper and the pen with which i write it. The same goes for the vinyl or the dvd, what is owned is the material resource. So the characteristics of the information are of no importance. An analog signal or sequence should be treated the same way as a digital. The reason why there is a sort of illusion that digital information in some way radically differs from analog information, is that digital information and the technology that sorrounds it have exposed the problem we're debating in a way that analog technology didn't/couldn't. |
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| RJT |
| quote: | Originally posted by SMC
Analog or digital are charachteristics of the information itself, not of the material source. I can write down digital information on a piece of paper. I own the paper and the pen with which i write it. The same goes for the vinyl or the dvd, what is owned is the material resource. So the characteristics of the information are of no importance. An analog signal or sequence should be treated the same way as a digital. The reason why there is a sort of illusion that digital information in some way radically differs from analog information, is that digital information and the technology that sorrounds it have exposed the problem we're debating in a way that analog technology didn't/couldn't. |
Exactly. I only posed the question to see if anyone could argue for the opposite in any way I wasn't seeing. :) |
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| Allied Nations |
| quote: | Originally posted by SMC
Analog or digital are charachteristics of the information itself, not of the material source. I can write down digital information on a piece of paper. I own the paper and the pen with which i write it. The same goes for the vinyl or the dvd, what is owned is the material resource. So the characteristics of the information are of no importance. An analog signal or sequence should be treated the same way as a digital. The reason why there is a sort of illusion that digital information in some way radically differs from analog information, is that digital information and the technology that sorrounds it have exposed the problem we're debating in a way that analog technology didn't/couldn't. |
Mmm- very tasty response... |
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| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by RJT
I think a strong argument for sampling would quite simply be the Beastie Boys album "Paul's Boutique." |
And an end to this debate is the DJ Shadow album "Entroducing". |
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