Copyright Criminals

Question: Interrogate this statement: "The photographer is to the painter as a sampler is to the instrumentalist."

The statement above is very interesting because it shows how sampling like photography are easy short cuts from someone’s hard work. But both are a completely different format.  Painting involves brush strokes and different techniques where photography takes lighting and the click of a button.  Both take the right eye, but the photographer isn’t a detriment to the painter.  Similarly, the sampler is taking pieces of the instrumentalists work, but is using it in a completely different way.  They are able to take someone’s great instrumental work and turn it into another masterpiece.  The instrumentalist, just like the painter, should be flattered and happy that this would occur, but instead we see pure capitalism at work.  It shows another way to make more money and today who wouldn’t like this?

Its funny how in today’s world we see copyright infringement as frowned upon, but its ironic due to the fact the public is constantly pirating music and movies.  As seen in Copyright Criminals, the industry had no idea that this would ever occur.  When sampling first began, it wasn’t seen as a threat because the industry didn’t realize how much people would make from it and how much they could make from selling the sample.  The same trend occurred with the pirating of music.  When it first began it was seen as just sharing music with other people via the Internet.  The industry wasn’t too threatened by it because they didn’t think it would take away from their sales, but when they were able to get the music for free the consumers stopped paying for majority of music. 

The ironic part of the video we saw in class was the different views on sampling.  Some artists felt very passionately that sampling destroyed real talent and was an easy way out, where others believed that this was just a way for an artist to take an old hit and create new music from it.  Couldn’t this trend also be seen in fashion?  Leggings and leg warmers were worn when my mother was young, but just last year they became popular again.  Using someone elses style or music as a basis to create your own seems harmless enough, but now people are charging extreme amounts of money which destroys the ability of sampling creation.