Copyright and Creativity: The Grey Area in Works Like the Grey Album

 by Sawyer Vanderwerff

Since the emergence of copyright laws and regulations, artists have found themselves constantly dealing with the implications of regulated ownership of theirs and others creative endeavors. Music is one of the many mediums of expression protected by current copyright policy. The protection these artists are afforded for their original works is necessary for preserving the creative integrity of the original artist. Sampling of music and sound is nothing new to musical creativity though much of the current policy that is meant to protect original works from reckless infringement is also what inspires much of the developing techniques for sampling. The development of music sampling techniques and musical copyright and licensing has been a steady progression of the technology that allows musicians to more effectively sample and the policy that allows for the policing of these activities. All artist are entitled to clear and defined rights concerning their works just as all artists have the right and perhaps even the responsibility to push policy to the brink in the name of artistic progress.  

While much consideration and debate over copyright law has been sparked over the sampling of music, the artistic practice of musical sampling is not necessarily flagrant disregard for the creative property of someone else. The technique of creating a “collage” of sound has been present since the reproduction of sound has been possible. To help further explain the reciprocal relationship of current copyright law and sampling technology it would be prudent to move towards a definition of the two as they stand today. For this, it would be best to observe the origins of terms and the exigency of policy. 

When the Copyright Act of 1790 came into effect it gave authors legal ownership of their published works and gave them and the public certain rights concerning these works. The policies were simple because the act of using someone’s published works without the right permissions was simple. This law was a social contract essentially. According to Charles Bailey, “Copyright was a bargain: society would grant creators a time-limited ability to control and profit from their works before they fell into the public domain (where works are unprotected) because doing so resulted in ‘Progress of Science and useful Arts’ (a social good.)” This policy worked fine for music in 1790 because flagrant copying of sheet music is an obvious infringement of the rights of a composer. 

Fast forward a few centuries and definitions of “copying” music have changed dramatically. With the technologies like this and this, musicians have the ability to not only adapt other’s music and sound for their own needs but to entirely transform the work by converting sound into readable computer files known as MIDI. Eliot Van Buskirk from Wire describes one such sampling tool by saying, “In layman’s terms, this has the potential to let people rewrite music that’s already been written, fix wrong notes, pickapart samples and basically get their hands on the DNA of a song or sample…” Digital technologies have made sharing and editing music entirely practical for just about anyone. With greater access came the need for more precise regulation. “Once the copyright implications of digital media and the Internet sunk in, entertainment and information companies were deeply concerned: digital technologies made creating perfect copies effortless, and the Internet provided a free (or low-cost) way to distribute content globally,” Bailey states in his article. 

Copyright policy helps to find the balance between compensation and access. With this in mind we move towards a greater understanding of what sampling means to copyright by placing digital sampling within the context of the sound collage. The fine arts practice of collage has contributors in not just music but also in the fields of visual arts or writing. The advent of the phonograph allowed for music to be presented in a reproducible, tangible format that musicians could work with as a sculptor molds clay. Stefan Wolpe is the first composer documented to have used the phonograph for anything other than straightforward playback. Essentially, he played eight different recordings at various speeds in the same room. It wasn’t until 1956 that Bill Buchanan and Dickie Goodman tested the limits of copyright law with their “skit” entitled “The Flying Saucer.” The piece relied on magnetic-tape editing techniques to create a rendition of the radio broadcast, War of the Worlds, wherein certain parts were replaced with lines from pop songs. The roots of sampling are highly embedded in this practice of literally cutting and pasting pieces of tape to achieve new sound. When a slew of record labels and artist inevitably filed for an injunction, Judge Henry Clay Greenberg decided that the work was clearly a parody and that Buchanan and Goodman had not violated anyone’s copyright (Kembrew and Dicola)

When does a sound cease to belong to a musician? Is the sound that the particular piece of percussion produces owned by the musician or is just the specific recording? Who draws the line between infringement, parody, transformation, remix, etc? Take mash-ups seen in the Grey Album by Dangermouse as an example. This work was simply a capella from Jay-Z’s Black Album played over spliced loops of songs from the Beatle’s White Album (Demers). A mash-up relies on people’s familiarity with the music at hand and never tries to appropriate the works as an original piece for the new artist. Dangermouse relied on his audience recognizing exactly what his music was. The piece was only successful because it was stolen however the impact of this arrangement wouldn’t have been quite as effective if the audience couldn’t recognize the music that was being appropriated. 

 As the technology that allows artists to manipulate theirs and others sounds advances so too must notions of ownership and copyright. While regulation does need to exist on the ownership of creative endeavors it is obvious that the course of music has favored digital sampling as a viable technique for creative output. Despite its definition as parody, transformation, collage, or remix, digital sampling remains relevant in music and in the ever-changing policy of copyright. 

Works Cited

Demers, Joanna Teresa. "The Shadow of the Law." Steal This Music: How Intellectual Property  

 Law Affects Musical Creativity. Athens: U of Georgia, 2006. 138-46. Print. 

McLeod, Kembrew, and Peter DiCola. "Legal and Cultural History of Sound Collage." Creative

License: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling. Durham: Duke UP, 2011. 36-74. Print.

"Most People Know Just Enough To Hurt Themselves."

 A Response to Jeanne Fahnestock's "Accommodating Science: The Rhetorical Life of Scientific Facts" in Defense of Popular Science Writers and Readers

by Sawyer Vanderwerff

While the scientific process is innately rhetorical it is important to mention that most scientists themselves are often not rhetoricians, but so than neither are the majority of audiences. Though meaningful dialogue can be achieved between the mediated public sphere and the scientific sphere it is often somewhere in the transfer of thoughts that misinformation develops.

Jeanne Fahnestock suggests in her article, “Accommodating Science: The Rhetorical Life of Scientific Facts,” that the breakdown of communication may be disregard for scientific discourse on the part of journalist looking for, what she calls, “the wonder” and “the application” appeals. While this notion that journalists for popular science articles are recklessly causing misinformation is debatable, it can be argued that Fahnstock makes a prudent observation concerning the change of writing style between a scientific paper and article meant for the masses.  A shift in genre between information published by scientist and by journalists can account for much of the discrepancies in scientific notions and the public’s understanding of those notions. 

 Scientific papers are largely concerned with forensic discourse and are rigidly structured to provide a logical progression of information that ultimately leads their intended audience to a justified conclusion. The justification comes from a tedious recount of the steps taken to achieve data, outlined in the “Materials and Methods” section of a scientific paper. In the “Discussion” section the acquired data is simply that; discussed. This section allows the one conducting the research to communicate their ideas on what the abstract data represents outside of the study. The information provided is meant to be only a result of that specific trial though it may imply greater significance to the overall field of science. 

It is the “Discussion” section that suffers the greatest distortion when accommodated for the general audience. Scientists write for other scientists where as a journalist for a popular science magazine writes for those who don’t have the in-depth knowledge necessary to fully derive greater meaning from a scientific paper. Fahnestock seems to imply a malicious withholding of information on the part of journalists when it comes to the misinformation transferred to audiences. Fahnestock seems convinced that the popular science journalism genre is skewed to only supply readers with information that will find hard to believe and seems somewhat fantastical, or “the wonder,” and information that will help the reader personally, or “the application.” This couldn’t be a more false assumptions about the readers of popular science. 

Certainly the information formatted in a scientific paper is beyond the understanding of the common reader interested in sciences, however, those who write for popular science stand somewhere in between those in the scientific sphere and those in the common sphere. A journalist who adapts scientific writings obviously understands at least enough of the information present in a scientific paper to change the specific information into abstract facts for a common reader unfamiliar with precise scientific terms. In this way the journalist are more like translators; changing jargon to common speech. Often, any transfer of misinformation would be a simple mistranslation. Even more frequently a reader takes the abstract “facts” that a journalist composed from scientific data as being conclusive of one idea or another. Readers in the common sphere often take a fact proven by a study to be conclusive of in ways that in ways it just is not. A study that proves mice reacted positively to, say, a research medicine, does not conclude that it is overall an effect drug. While the fault is hard to pin on the journalist or the reader, it is as Fahnestock states that a genre shift will lead to mistranslations of both readers and journalist. 

Popular science sources such as I Fucking Love Science, which has helped to reinvigorated interest in popular science for an entire internet inclined generation, understand that it is easy for readers to draw false assumptions from information that is definite fact. Often, this particular web page will point towards misconceptions that “translated” scientific information can form and tries its best to create a standard for readers and writers of popular science journalism. Most articles are even posted with a forward that reminds readers to be wary of drawing conclusions that may be sensible but are nonetheless unproven. While Fahnestock does make valid points about a sensationalist tendency in popular science journalism to only reveal the most shocking and personally relevant information to an audience, it is evident that the main motivation for reading popular science is to catch a glimpse of the truth without doing the really hard work. There is clearly a presence of writers in the field currently catering to an audience who don’t want the sensations in the science world but rather to be presented objective, scientific information on terms they can at least begin to understand. Hopefully, this is the trend that continues. Though it doesn’t solve the issues, sources like these are forming good habits for readers and writers of popular science.

 
Once again, however, misinformation happens when adapting or translating information no matter what. This is true in popular science and even in the scientific community itself. Despite best intentions communication naturally breeds gaps in understanding, even between individuals using the same language. We do our best to forgo this flaw in human communication but despite the best efforts it happens, especially the further one is removed from the original source. Even scientist can misinterpret another scientist findings or, even worse, their own information. Scientist often rely on a system of trust and coordination amongst fields in order to progress, however, it’s still difficult for a biologist to explain the true workings of mitochondria to someone who spends all their time staring through a telescope. Take the Principal Component Analysis as a conduit for misinterpretation that may encounter a scientist trying to prove his data is meaningful. This analytical program is constantly updated and used by the scientific community, however, it relies on the efforts of the community as a whole for its function. The data it produces from ones recorded procedures is objective and it’s up to the scientist to find somewhat of a narrative in the data, just as a journalist would try to adapt the “Discussion” section of a scientific study to a common audience.