August 7, 2008
Steal This Hook? D.J. Skirts Copyright Law
By ROBERT LEVINE

The D.J. Girl Talk has won positive reviews for his new album and news media attention for its Radiohead-style pay-what-you-want pricing, and on Friday night he is scheduled to play a high-profile gig at the All Points West festival in Jersey City. Not bad for an artist whose music may be illegal.

Girl Talk, whose real name is Gregg Gillis, makes danceable musical collages out of short clips from other people’s songs; there are more than 300 samples on “Feed the Animals,” the album he released online at illegalart.net in June. He doesn’t get the permission of the composers to use these samples, as United States copyright law mostly requires, because he maintains that the brief snippets he works with are covered by copyright law’s “fair use” principle (and perhaps because doing so would be prohibitively expensive).

Girl Talk’s rising profile has put him at the forefront of a group of musicians who are challenging the traditional restrictions of copyright law along with the usual role of samples in pop music. Although artists like the Belgian duo 2 Many DJs have been making “mash-ups” out of existing songs for years, Girl Talk is taking this genre to a mainstream audience with raucous performances that often end with his shirt off and much of the audience onstage.

On a sweltering July afternoon Mr. Gillis, 26, who lives in Pittsburgh, opened his laptop on the bar at the Knitting Factory in TriBeCa and discussed how he builds songs out of samples. Clad in a black T-shirt, jeans and a blue sweatband to tame his long hair, he looked less like a club D.J. than a member of a rock band. Mr. Gillis, who said he saw “Feed the Animals” as an album of his own work rather than a D.J. mix, spent several months testing out ideas during live performances, then several more matching beats and polishing transitions. He estimates that each minute of “Feed the Animals” took him about a day to create.

“I want to be a musician and not just a party D.J.,” he said, “and like any musician I want to put out a classic album.”

Mr. Gillis’s music is pulled from more sources than most hip-hop hits, which often use a loop of music taken from a single song. But unlike most D.J.’s who see themselves as artists, Mr. Gillis does not radically reconfigure songs or search out obscure samples. Instead he mixes clips of contemporary hip-hop artists like Jay-Z and OutKast with time-tested rock riffs from groups like Aerosmith, Cheap Trick and AC/DC. The first track on “Feed the Animals,” “Play Your Part (Pt. 1),” starts with a sample of a rap song by UGK and the ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-DUM rhythm of the Spencer Davis Group’s “Gimme Some Lovin,’ ” among other things. At times the album sounds like a cleverly programmed K-tel compilation that presents catchy riffs instead of full songs, and part of the fun is recognizing familiar sounds in a new context.

“I want to take these things you know and flip them, which is something I’ve always enjoyed in hip-hop,” Mr. Gillis said. “This project has always been about embracing pop.”

But this embrace may be an illicit one, according to music industry executives. In legal terms a musician who uses parts of other compositions creates what copyright law calls a derivative work, so the permission of the original song’s writer or current copyright holder is needed. Artists who sample a recording also need permission from the owner, in most cases the record label. Hip-hop artists who don’t get that permission have been sued, often successfully.

Mr. Gillis says his samples fall under fair use, which provides an exemption to copyright law under certain circumstances. Fair use allows book reviewers to quote from novels or online music reviewers to use short clips of songs. Because his samples are short, and his music sounds so little like the songs he takes from that it is unlikely to affect their sales, Mr. Gillis contends he should be covered under fair use.

He said he had never been threatened with a lawsuit, although both iTunes and a CD distributor stopped carrying his last album, “Night Ripper,” because of legal concerns. (It had sold 20,000 copies before then, according to Nielsen SoundScan.) It may not be in the interests of labels or artists to sue Mr. Gillis, because such a move would risk a precedent-setting judgment in his favor, not to mention incur bad publicity.

Fair use has become important to the thinking of legal scholars, sometimes called the “copyleft,” who argue that copyright law has grown so restrictive that it impedes creativity. And it has become enough of an issue that Mr. Gillis’s congressman, Representative Mike Doyle, Democrat of Pennsylvania, spoke on his behalf during a hearing on the future of radio.

“You have to look at the length of those samples,” Mr. Doyle said in a phone interview. “Case law gets built as cases are brought to court, and I think that more case law is going to fall on his side as this becomes more mainstream.”

Not all lawyers agree. “Fair use is a means to allow people to comment on a pre-existing work, not a means to allow someone to take a pre-existing work and recreate it into their own work,” said Barry Slotnick, head of the intellectual property litigation group at the law firm Loeb & Loeb. “What you can’t do is substitute someone else’s creativity for your own.”

Mr. Gillis chose to allow fans to decide how much they wanted to pay to download “Feed the Animals” from Illegal Art. (He plans to release the album on CD in September.) Illegal Art puts out sample-based music that falls into a legal gray area because the company’s owner, who goes by the pseudonym Philo T. Farnsworth, after an inventor of television, believes that the law limits artists unfairly.

“What the Beastie Boys and Public Enemy were doing, no one could do anymore,” he said, referring to groups that made music from densely layered samples when record companies were paying less attention to these legal issues. “We’re drawn into this because of the music we support.”

Mr. Gillis declined to say how many copies of “Feed the Animals” had been downloaded or what fans had paid for them. But, he said, he makes enough money performing that he quit his day job as a biomedical engineer last year. One major expense for him is computers; his live show takes such a toll on them that he went through three reinforced Toughbook laptops last year.

So far, Mr. Gillis said, he is mostly concerned with making sure his music is heard, although he’s also become well versed in the legal issues. “I get swept up in thinking of it as another album,” he said of “Feed the Animals,” “but I’m certainly conscious of the issues it raises.”

"It may not be in the interests of labels or artists to sue Mr. Gillis, because such a move would risk a precedent-setting judgment in his favor, not to mention incur bad publicity."

I found this part interesting. Obviously the copyright laws are outdated and precedents need to set don't yall think, but ofcourse musicians, other than Prince, don't want to be the bad guy to do it.

wonder505 said:

Its not a simple issue. On he one hand you have abusers like Puffy, Jermaine Dupri and others that made those laws happen in the first place. On the other hand you have nuts like Prince and Metallica who act like they invented the musical scale and would copyright the 12 notes if they could. The line is soewhere in between. A collage is art and some artists have musical collages like Chuck-D and J. Dilla. Those artists have a place and should be able to create without losing their shirts. The line should be drawn in the middle but that's where all of the arguments come in.

BlaqueKnight said:

gotta disagree on the Metallica front, Metallica wasnt fighting for their "riffs: they were fighting some goofy white guy who had only one thing in mind making money off everyone else. And because this generation didnt want to pay for stuff, Metallica looked like they were evil, shit if you dont want the music, dont freaking get it, if you are that worried that something sucks, dont buy it. People act like music is a necessity and they should be able to get it for free, its like any other extra activity you have to pay for it, or just dont get it, anything else is theft. If someone started selling my films for their profit like this cat was doing with metallica and everyone else, hed be sued and beat down.

lastdecember said:

Aren't Metallica among the artists suing people for using their songs in "youtube-like" ways such as background music for kid's home videos, etc.?
If not, then my bad. If so, then it applies to them, too.
Regardless, there has to be a line between Puffy and Prince. That was my point.

BlaqueKnight said:

no that i know of, but on the you tube thing, there is still a fine line, yeah of course we hear "prince sues 5 year old" and its a cool catch phrase and soundbyte, but where is the line? If i make a film and say im not selling it and use a Prince song as the theme for a trailer and cut clips of the film with it and post it on you tube for nothing more than to get people interested in a film i did, but not for sales, than should i be sued? answer is Yes.

lastdecember said:

-----
"If i make a film and say im not selling it and use a Prince song as the theme for a trailer and cut clips of the film with it and post it on you tube for nothing more than to get people interested in a film i did, but not for sales, than should i be sued? answer is Yes."

Thank You finally someone gets it. P or anyone else that is removing clips and music from YOUTUBE are not going to get pick and choose which clips to take down because of how they are used they are going to ask that all use stop.

One person may use music as background for his toddler someone else may be using to promote a product or film. To solve the problem you stop people from using without permission or payment across the board.

“I want to be a musician and not just a party D.J.,” he said, “and like any musician I want to put out a classic album.”
.”

At the end of the day Im sure he feels like
"a girl pretending to be a natural beauty"
with, a Boob job, Plastic surgery,high heals..A face plastered in Make Up,
a hair weave..and a fake tan..
A fraud !
go learn do to something Musical and actually "create" something..
Its Total Bullshit getting publicity for nonsense like this...
people like DJ Shadow..Madlib..ect..
at least put in the work...
Who the hell cant take snippets of popular shit and throw it in a program to tempo match it ?

laurarichardson said:

What you suggest is the elimination of fair use laws altogether. That's not going to happen. Dream on.
They exist for a reason. Lawyers are there to debate over the "fine lines" as every case is going to be different and the objective is to attain some sort of balance in the matter. This guy got by. Some will, some won't. These laws are applicable only in the U.S. and other countries in compliance. There is no universal "rule" (and never will be) when it comes to this sort of thing so there will always be debate over it.

Fair use is a bogus claim and always has been.

I don't think anyone ever had to sue Puffy for sampling.

He always followed the industry rules.

Cinnie said:

wrong, cinnie!!!!! westbound just recently won a $4 million judgement against bad boy. why???? seems the sample from the title track of biggie's "ready to die" cd was not cleared!!!!! but that's "chump change" to diddy!!!!!

the song in question was the ohio players' "singing in the rain"

laurarichardson said:

What you suggest is the elimination of fair use laws altogether. That's not going to happen. Dream on.
They exist for a reason. [color=red]Lawyers are there to debate over the "fine lines" as every case is going to be different and the objective is to attain some sort of balance in the matter. This guy got by. Some will, some won't. These laws are applicable only in the U.S. and other countries in compliance. There is no universal "rule" (and never will be) when it comes to this sort of thing so there will always be debate over it.[/color]

just a thought that came up. i was wondering how is this supposed to be done. The Internet is a monster with hundreds of thousands videos/content crossing the line, how is the court system going to have the time to debate each piece of content that is in question?

lastdecember said:

Like hell it is. You can't teach music appreciation in college without fair use laws. If a promoter wanted to promote a show, without fair use laws, the promoter would have to actually pay the artist every time a commercial was played for the show that is booked. Artists wouldn't get booked because no promoter in his right mind would pay mechanical fees to a damn artist to book the artist to play a venue. The problem isn't fair use laws. The problem is people trying to abuse fair use laws. Fair use laws are in place so crazy mutha f***ers like Prince can't do outrageous shit like try to charge schools to use his music for teaching purposes.

woogiebear said:

That's right! I meant for stuff Puffy had production credit for, not Easy Mo Bee's ish.

Though I sometimes wonder about those MJB My Life credits...

Cinnie said:

i'm gonna correct myself, cinnie!!! the ohio players song was "singing in the morning", not rain!!!!!