Copyright

A Eurocourt case from 2019 involved Kraftwerk and a sample from their track "Metal on Metal". For two decades the band have gone through the German courts against Moses Pelham over a song "Nur mir" that he produced in 1997.

The case went to the EUROPEAN COURT OF JUSTICE over the very important 2 seconds that were sampled – judges agreed that it wasn't legal, and that EU law wouldn't allow even shorter unauthorized samples.

- https://completemusicupdate.com/article/european-court-provides-clarity-on-sampling-rules-in-long-running-kraftwerk-case

And that was the conclusion of the EU court’s Advocate General Maciej Szpunar when he published an opinion on the Kraftwerk case last year. He wrote: “A phonogram is not an intellectual creation consisting of a composition of elements such as words, sounds, colours etc. A phonogram is a fixation of sounds which is protected, not by virtue of the arrangement of those sounds, but rather on account of the fixation itself”.

^ ^ new kraftwerk lyrics

But the real winner is the F-word, which is now a recognized legal term in EU documents, unless this writer was just paraphrasing

But what about the artistic freedom of the sampler that the German Constitutional Court was so concerned about? Well, the ECJ has put some constraints on its main ruling. In particular, if the sampler fucks with the sample so that it is unrecognisable in the final track, well, that’s fine. Because, it seems, sampling isn’t artistic enough to be protected by artistic freedoms, but fucking with samples is. – (Chris Cooke, CMU)

The real lesson is, don't ever sample a group from the '60s or '70s, it isn't worth it.

EXHIBIT A:

Kraftwerk - "Metall auf Metall"
https://youtu.be/JlatOPOMlyA

EXHIBIT A, again:

Sabrina Setlur - "Nur mir"
https://youtu.be/_KQLxP-UX_Y
(Somehow the music video has survived for 12 years on Youtube, where most others from the '00s were deleted. For copyright infringement.)

These Hipgnosis guys really buying up songwriters’ catalogs:

https://variety.com/2020/biz/news/blink-182-tom-delonge-hipgnosis-1203459579/

https://variety.com/2019/biz/news/timbaland-hipgnosis-songs-1203372008/

But why? They want to hang up a lot of album covers in their office?

Hipgnosis cofounder Merck Mercuriadis said: “Ask any of today’s greatest creators who their biggest influences are and the one name that appears on everybody’s list is Timbaland. Blink 182's Tom DeLonge.”

Haha. Here’s a whole thing about it — publishing rights as evergreen commodity: https://variety.com/2019/music/opinion/master-rights-futures-greed-is-good-nick-jarjour-column-1203358588/

The Kraftwerk v Pelham lawsuit is back before the BUNDESGERICHTSHOF, but unexpectedly the 22-year case is set to go on for even longer – weeks or months, God. It's not like Germans to overcomplicate matters

Snapshot from yesterday:

https://cdn.prod.www.spiegel.de/images/d6f01afb-5bd4-418f-a873-c670070259fe_w948_r1.77_fpx87_fpy37.jpg

...It's cool that there are two girl Kraftwerks now, while Moses Pelham's lawyer is Andre Rieu for some reason.

Public Domain Day 2020: These 95-Year-Old Works Are Now Free to Use

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/akwd7b/best-of-public-domain-day-2020

This is rad:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJtm0MoOgiU

https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/19/23689879/ai-drake-song-google-youtube-fair-use

If Google agrees with Universal that AI-generated music is an impermissible derivative work based on the unauthorized copying of training data, and that YouTube should pull down songs that labels flag for sounding like their artists, it undercuts its own fair use argument for Bard and every other generative AI product it makes — it undercuts the future of the company itself.

If Google disagrees with Universal and says AI-generated music should stay up because merely training an AI with existing works is fair use, it protects its own AI efforts and the future of the company, but probably triggers a bunch of future lawsuits from Universal and potentially other labels, and certainly risks losing access to Universal’s music on YouTube, which puts YouTube at risk.

Nilay doesn’t seem to understand the DMCA. YouTube’s not at a risk for being sued; the lawsuit would involve the claimant and the content uploader. The person he asked at Google clearly tried to explain this to him.