Development of the Creative Commons Sampling license (or license option)

["Glenn Otis Brown" <glenn AT creativecommons.org>]

fyi

On Mon, 07 Jul 2003 20:07:44 -0700, "James S. Tyre" <jstyre AT jstyre.com>
said:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/08/arts/music/08MIRA.html
> July 8, 2003
> How to Make a Sonic Purée From Pop Snippets
> By MATTHEW MIRAPAUL
> 
> Elvis Presley sounded all shook up. As his music streamed from a
> computer's 
> speakers, he sang, "You ain't nothin' but a hound dog/ don't be cruel." 
> Then, after urging listeners to avoid contact with his blue suede shoes,
> he 
> crooned, "Hallelujah."
> 
> This mangled medley was not remixed by a mischievous D.J. Instead, the 
> mismatched music was generated by new software. N.A.G., as the
> interactive 
> program is called, works like a cross between Google, the Morpheus music 
> file-sharing network and a Cuisinart kitchen appliance.
> 
> It allows users to search for words — like "Presley" and "love" — in
> areas 
> of the Internet where MP3 song files are, for the most part, illicitly 
> swapped. But the program is not designed to play complete tunes. As
> N.A.G. 
> retrieves song files labeled with the selected words, it slices off audio 
> snippets and blends them into sonic collages.
> 
> The results are generally closer to sound art than conventional music. 
> Searching for "Madonna," for instance, spawns a staccato string of song 
> excerpts, some as short as one-twentieth of a second. But chance can
> yield 
> a mellifluous outcome, as when overlapping versions of "Yesterday" by the 
> Beatles, James Taylor, Boyz II Men and José Feliciano produce a near
> fugue.
> 
> N.A.G. was created by Jason Freeman, a 25-year-old New York composer and 
> media artist, who put the program online last week. It can be downloaded 
> from Turbulence.org, the Internet-art site of New Radio and Performing 
> Arts, a new-media arts organization that commissioned the work.
> 
> Despite the recent announcement by the recording industry that it intends 
> to sue computer users who illegally share large numbers of music files, 
> N.A.G. users are unlikely to be targets. Matt Oppenheim, senior vice 
> president of business and legal affairs for the Recording Industry 
> Association of America, said, "I'm concerned about anything that relies 
> upon infringements to succeed." But he added that he did not expect the 
> program to be responsible for widespread copyright violations.
> 
> Mr. Freeman said he became intrigued by the file-sharing networks once he 
> began to appreciate the vast music library they contained. But the notion 
> of simply downloading songs bored him, he said, so he decided to develop
> a 
> tool that would roam the networks, using them not so much to steal music
> as 
> to render something new.
> 
> In a telephone interview, Mr. Freeman described N.A.G. as an instrument 
> that plays the Internet. "I just love the serendipity," he said. "It's
> not 
> that things always line up in really interesting ways. But when they do, 
> it's all the more exciting."
> 
> "N.A.G." results can resemble coarser versions of "mash-ups," recordings
> on 
> which D.J.'s combine two musically related tunes to startling effect. A 
> search for "Beethoven," for instance, might yield a blend of the 
> "Moonlight" Sonata, a techno remix of the Ninth Symphony and "Roll Over, 
> Beethoven." Or pick a sufficiently rare search term like "Norah" or 
> "Ginuwine" and hear what sounds like a defective greatest-hits album.
> 
> But surprises can occur when the program successfully merges musical 
> material whose relationship is primarily linguistic, as when a search for 
> the singer of "Beat It" produced a crosscultural patchwork by an unusual 
> version of the Jackson 5: Michael, Janet, Alan, Wanda and Browne. And by 
> running two searches in quick succession, users can forge imaginary duets 
> between Toby Keith and the Dixie Chicks or another improbable pairing.
> 
> Debra Singer, associate curator of contemporary art at the Whitney Museum 
> of American Art in New York, said Mr. Freeman's software turned anyone
> into 
> a sample-crazed D.J. "The spirit of it is a sort of subversive populism," 
> she said.
> 
> Ms. Singer said many practitioners of sound art constructed layers of 
> sampled sounds to create a desired effect. With N.A.G., she said, chance 
> combinations play a greater role. In fact, N.A.G. was partly inspired by 
> John Cage's chance-driven composition "Imaginary Landscape No. 4." In
> that 
> 1951 work for 12 radios, performers would change the stations and adjust 
> volume, not knowing what might be on the air.
> 
> Mr. Freeman said he especially enjoyed searches that retrieved
> incorrectly 
> labeled files, which show just how quirky and unreliable the Internet can 
> be. In a quest for "Mozart," N.A.G. combined a concerto passage and an 
> opera aria by the composer with works misattributed to him, including
> "Für 
> Elise," "Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy" and a misspelled Pachelbel Cannon.
> 
> N.A.G. is an acronym for Network Auralization for Gnutella. Gnutella is a 
> set of technical specifications that allows individual computers on the 
> Internet to exchange data like MP3 song files. It underlies Morpheus, 
> LimeWire, Bear Share and other file-sharing networks.
> 
> But the work's title also alludes to Mr. Freeman's nagging doubts about
> how 
> the battle over file-sharing will affect musical creativity. As a
> composer, 
> he is concerned by how easy it is for file-sharers to violate musical 
> copyrights. Yet he is also troubled by the music industry's efforts to 
> impose limits on how digital music can be copied, redistributed and, 
> ultimately, transformed.
> 
> Mr. Freeman wondered what would happen if commercial music were
> exclusively 
> distributed this way. "Would the virtuosic techniques of D.J.'s still be 
> possible?" he said. "Would teenagers still be able to make mash-ups or 
> remixes to share with their friends? And, of course, will works of art
> such 
> as N.A.G. still be possible?"
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> James S. Tyre                               mailto:jstyre AT jstyre.com
> Law Offices of James S. Tyre          310-839-4114/310-839-4602(fax)
> 10736 Jefferson Blvd., #512               Culver City, CA 90230-4969
> Co-founder, The Censorware Project             http://censorware.net
> 
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---------------------
Glenn Otis Brown
Executive Director
Creative Commons
glenn AT creativecommons.org
+1.650.723.7572 (telephone)
+1.415.336.1433 (mobile)