Jason Salas' WebLog

Twice guilty!

Mashups are not safe, which is why I find claims from Adam Curry that what he plays is "pod safe" rather ludicrous.

Just look at what happens with sampling. Where a snippet from one song gets used on another and the author of the original track goes to court. Mash-ups are no different and frequently feature not just a small sample but the bulk of a track.

DJ remix services have discovered the same thing when they've released this sort of thing. As soon as the copyright owner finds out what they've done the lawyers are on the phone.

To take the "pod safe" broadcast example I heard last week as an example the idea that playing The Beatles over a different backing track is "pod safe" is just crazy.

Hi Ian,

Interesting comments. Would you say then that playing mashups is still a no-no for people outside of the United States, and outside the scope of U.S. copyright law?

twice guilty , unless you can demonstrate fair use, which is made extremely difficult if you use full songs.

I am outside the USA and certainly in Europe there have been cases of record labels chasing individuals and the various remix services for "stealing" their work. In extreme cases artists have won substantial sums of money for having their work stolen. The most publicised case over here was many years ago when an Italian producer used a singer's vocal "Right on Time" and released it as a (misheard) single called "Ride on Time" (by Black Box). It went to number one all across Europe and was fronted by a beautiful model who mimed the vocals in the accompanying video. You can imagine how the original singer (an extremely overweight black diva) felt when she found "her" song at no.1 with some model pretending she'd sung it. It all got very messy very quickly.

I should explain that I dropped out of IT for 3 years back in the late 1990s and worked in the dance music industry (the UK offices of an Italian-based subsidiary) so saw a lot of what goes on when record labels find out their vocals or music snippets has been "sampled" or that a DJ remix service has put out a "mashed up" version of their track without asking or paying a cent in royalties or licensing. The attitude can vary a lot and the wiser companies will come to an agreement with whoever "stole" the work that they can use the mash-up themselves free of charge and that free publication of the original will immediately stop. In some cases of course this has lead to a record label actually having a bigger hit with their "bootlegged" mash up than they had with the original.

But there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that when you're in a situation where to even play a record company's artist in a public place (like a church hall or a village disco) you have to pay licensing rights (a PPL license in the UK, and they're not cheap) that podcasters playing to much bigger audiences are breaking the law in "transmitting" the same without paying a penny in royalties.

It's a nightmare for those of us who like to hear different versions of well known artist's recordings but the law is the law. I love Adam's broadcast mash-ups but when he keeps claiming to be "pod safe when he quite clearly isn't, and coming from the background of MTV he really should know better, I think that's outrageous.

Look at it this way: if you're a fan of an artist and you've downloaded a free mash up of a favourite song of theirs are you then going to go out and buy the legitimate unmashed version? Of course not and this is why record labels get so upset at losing sales to what they see as people "stealing" the work they've paid for.