5 ms·

I really don't see this as fundamentally different from digital sampling equipment for music that became popular in the 1980s. Some new technology comes along

I really don't see this as fundamentally different from digital sampling equipment for music that became popular in the 1980s. Some new technology comes along that repurposes things created by others that allows people to use it as the implements of a new form of art. The digital sampler was used as a musical instrument in its own right - with high variations, skill, and taste applied to the arrangements of other people's copyrighted sounds. There's a wide variety of opinion on digital sampling and it's really the same thing here. I'd be surprised if a particular person's views on the two are in conflict.

irishloop 3y ago
Yes but aren't artists now compensated for their art being used in sampling? At least when it makes a profit? I haven't heard of anyone being compensated for their works making profit for OpenAI
- Kiro 3y ago
  I was curious and checked how much the drummer behind Amen Break has made, undoubtedly one of the most sampled things in the world. The answer was nothing.
- kristopolous 3y ago
  It depends. A lot of times it's just a new, say UMG song that samples another UMG song so it's just Hollywood accounting with cross charging. When say Madonna sampled the Beegees, I'm sure it was a large ordeal. But for low profit or no profit work (independent stuff), the answer is nobody cares. Bob James, one of the most sampled artists in history, take it in stride. He's happy that so many people are listening to his stuff. The Winston's (the famous amen break) were also happy the track got such wide acceptance. Killing Joke, on the other hand, felt "Come as you are" was a rip off of "Eighties" and only dropped it upon the death of Kurt Cobain. Or take Toni Basil's Mickey, which is actually a cover song of Racey's Kitty. Toni Basil has gone to court to secure pretty exclusive rights to the song. Racey does not get any of Toni's cash. So it varies and it's messy.
  - twelve40 3y ago
    > no profit work this is not a very interesting use case to consider because the AI outfits making the current news are definitely for-profit.
    - kristopolous 3y ago
      Sure but are they the E-MU SP-12 or the samples themselves? If they're selling just the models then it's a cleaner case, but lots of copyrighted sample discs had unlicensed samples or entire synth piano rolls, it was common. The copyright system is a human institution that's layered on top. It can go a variety of directions. Michael Jackson for instance, took a sample from the Synclaviar sampler disc, put it at the beginning of Beat It completely unmodified and now the copyright for all intents and purposes is owned by Jackson.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - philipwhiuk 3y ago
    > Bob James, one of the most sampled artists in history, take it in stride. He's happy that so many people are listening to his stuff. The Winston's (the famous amen break) were also happy the track got such wide acceptance. That's an act of generosity, not legal status
    - kristopolous 3y ago
      Sure but the context of the discussion is people's opinion on the matter, not the state of current law.
  - piva00 3y ago
    Not true, at least not for me and some other electronic artists I know. Sampling anything is met with a lot of reservations from even very small labels, you need to clear rights to get it released anywhere.
    - 3y ago
- fzzzy 3y ago
  Artists who make a lot of money commonly voluntarily license samples they use which are not used in a highly transformative way. Artists who were sampled by artists who did not license the sample may get some lawyers and threaten to sue. The threatened artist may settle. For any cases that do make it to court, copyright generally only covers works in their entirety and quoting is explicitly allowed under fair use. The four tests used to determine fair use are length of the quote; whether the allegedly infringing use is for commercial or nonprofit uses; whether the allegedly infringing use interferes with the sales of the original work; and the nature of the quoted work (for example, facts are not copyrightable). (This commentary is us-centric; other countries have different rules)
  - philipwhiuk 3y ago
    You're intentionally blurring the line between quoting, which is a single small piece of the whole, and sampling, which generally takes large quantities albeit split up. People license stuff because they'd lose. Fair use isn't nearly as broad as most people think. > In 1991, the songwriter Gilbert O'Sullivan sued the rapper Biz Markie after Markie sampled O'Sullivan's "Alone Again (Naturally)" on the album I Need a Haircut. In Grand Upright Music, Ltd. v. Warner Bros. Records Inc, the court ruled that sampling without permission infringed copyright. Instead of asking for royalties, O'Sullivan forced Markie's label Warner Bros. to recall the album until the song was removed. As much as it was made out to be anti-hip hop, it was really anti-copyright abuse.
    - hn_acker 3y ago
      > You're intentionally blurring the line between quoting, which is a single small piece of the whole, and sampling, which generally takes large quantities albeit split up. I don't think it's generally true that sampling takes large quantities. I think it's just as often or even more often the case that sampling takes a small quantity from the original song and uses it multiple times in the new work. A 2-second trumpet hit here. 7 seconds of a drumbeat there [1]. In the 1980s and 1990s, the devices for sampling could only sample a few seconds at a time anyway [2]: > The E-mu SP-1200, released in 1987, had a ten-second sample length and a distinctive "gritty" sound, and was used extensively by East Coast producers during the golden age of hip hop of the late 1980s and early 90s.[40] Even though a significant portion of the new work's audio uses the old song, the expression in the use of the sample is predominantly the remixer's expression, not the expression of the author of the original song. At least before sampling cases like the Grand Upright case [3] you mentioned, hip hop sampling usually consisted of taking small pieces from many different songs and making a new song out of all of those small parts. Again, the vast majority of the expression is the remixer's, yet the remixer is the one who loses in court. Grand Upright Music, Ltd. v. Warner Bros. Records Inc. (1991) [3] was a judicially dubious case in my opinion: > Judge Duffy has been accused of bias in admonishing the defense and referring the defense for criminal prosecution.[2] Such criticism points out that Duffy's written opinion begins with one of the biblical ten commandments, "Thou shalt not steal." According to The Copyright Infringement Project of UCLA Law and Columbia Law School, Judge Duffy's opinion in Grand Upright v. Warner demonstrates "an iffy understanding on the part of this judge of the facts and issues before him in this case."[2] And then there's the even more dubious case Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films (2005) [4]: > The case centered on the 1990 N.W.A. track "100 Miles and Runnin'", which contains a manipulated two-second sample of the 1975 Funkadelic track "Get Off Your Ass and Jam". > Bridgeport brought the issue before a federal judge, who ruled that the incident was not in violation of copyright law. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed the decision and ruled that the sampling was in violation of copyright law. Their argument was that with a sound recording, an owner of the copyright on a work had exclusive right to duplicate the work. Under this interpretation of the copyright law, usage of any section of a work, regardless of length, is in violation of copyright unless the copyright owner gave permission. In its decision, the court wrote: "Get a license or do not sample. We do not see this as stifling creativity in any significant way."[1] The Sixth Circuit in Bridgeport ignored that copyright is about expression [5] and not just about copying. If you see bracket citations within quote paragraphs then ignore them. They are in-line citiations copied from Wikipedia, and I keep them in for ctrl-F purposes. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_(music)#Common_samples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_(music)#Common_sample... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_(music)#Hip_hop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_(music)#Hip_hop [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Upright_Music%2C_Ltd._v._Warner_Bros._Records_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Upright_Music%2C_Ltd._v..... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeport_Music%2C_Inc._v._Dimension_Films https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeport_Music%2C_Inc._v._Di... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea%E2%80%93expression_distinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea%E2%80%93expression_distin...
jwells89 3y ago
The difference is that usually with sampling, a handful of pieces of other songs are mixed into a larger original work whereas ML generators (AI is a misnomer) instead chop hundreds or thousands of works into a fine slurry and reconstitute them into something that resembles the average of all of them — its works are comprised entirely of the work of others. If ML generators become actual AI (AGI) and become able to apply abstracted concepts and and use non-trained observations like humans do, enabling them to create works that aren’t solely composed of samples of existing work, the comparison to music sampling makes more sense. AGI will probably also want fair treatment unlike their ML model predecessors and as a result probably won’t be the wealth generators that many seem to be looking for, though…

irishloop 3y ago

Yes but aren't artists now compensated for their art being used in sampling? At least when it makes a profit? I haven't heard of anyone being compensated for their works making profit for OpenAI

Kiro 3y ago
I was curious and checked how much the drummer behind Amen Break has made, undoubtedly one of the most sampled things in the world. The answer was nothing.
kristopolous 3y ago
It depends. A lot of times it's just a new, say UMG song that samples another UMG song so it's just Hollywood accounting with cross charging. When say Madonna sampled the Beegees, I'm sure it was a large ordeal. But for low profit or no profit work (independent stuff), the answer is nobody cares. Bob James, one of the most sampled artists in history, take it in stride. He's happy that so many people are listening to his stuff. The Winston's (the famous amen break) were also happy the track got such wide acceptance. Killing Joke, on the other hand, felt "Come as you are" was a rip off of "Eighties" and only dropped it upon the death of Kurt Cobain. Or take Toni Basil's Mickey, which is actually a cover song of Racey's Kitty. Toni Basil has gone to court to secure pretty exclusive rights to the song. Racey does not get any of Toni's cash. So it varies and it's messy.
- twelve40 3y ago
  > no profit work this is not a very interesting use case to consider because the AI outfits making the current news are definitely for-profit.
  - kristopolous 3y ago
    Sure but are they the E-MU SP-12 or the samples themselves? If they're selling just the models then it's a cleaner case, but lots of copyrighted sample discs had unlicensed samples or entire synth piano rolls, it was common. The copyright system is a human institution that's layered on top. It can go a variety of directions. Michael Jackson for instance, took a sample from the Synclaviar sampler disc, put it at the beginning of Beat It completely unmodified and now the copyright for all intents and purposes is owned by Jackson.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- philipwhiuk 3y ago
  > Bob James, one of the most sampled artists in history, take it in stride. He's happy that so many people are listening to his stuff. The Winston's (the famous amen break) were also happy the track got such wide acceptance. That's an act of generosity, not legal status
  - kristopolous 3y ago
    Sure but the context of the discussion is people's opinion on the matter, not the state of current law.
- piva00 3y ago
  Not true, at least not for me and some other electronic artists I know. Sampling anything is met with a lot of reservations from even very small labels, you need to clear rights to get it released anywhere.
  - 3y ago
fzzzy 3y ago
Artists who make a lot of money commonly voluntarily license samples they use which are not used in a highly transformative way. Artists who were sampled by artists who did not license the sample may get some lawyers and threaten to sue. The threatened artist may settle. For any cases that do make it to court, copyright generally only covers works in their entirety and quoting is explicitly allowed under fair use. The four tests used to determine fair use are length of the quote; whether the allegedly infringing use is for commercial or nonprofit uses; whether the allegedly infringing use interferes with the sales of the original work; and the nature of the quoted work (for example, facts are not copyrightable). (This commentary is us-centric; other countries have different rules)
- philipwhiuk 3y ago
  You're intentionally blurring the line between quoting, which is a single small piece of the whole, and sampling, which generally takes large quantities albeit split up. People license stuff because they'd lose. Fair use isn't nearly as broad as most people think. > In 1991, the songwriter Gilbert O'Sullivan sued the rapper Biz Markie after Markie sampled O'Sullivan's "Alone Again (Naturally)" on the album I Need a Haircut. In Grand Upright Music, Ltd. v. Warner Bros. Records Inc, the court ruled that sampling without permission infringed copyright. Instead of asking for royalties, O'Sullivan forced Markie's label Warner Bros. to recall the album until the song was removed. As much as it was made out to be anti-hip hop, it was really anti-copyright abuse.
  - hn_acker 3y ago
    > You're intentionally blurring the line between quoting, which is a single small piece of the whole, and sampling, which generally takes large quantities albeit split up. I don't think it's generally true that sampling takes large quantities. I think it's just as often or even more often the case that sampling takes a small quantity from the original song and uses it multiple times in the new work. A 2-second trumpet hit here. 7 seconds of a drumbeat there [1]. In the 1980s and 1990s, the devices for sampling could only sample a few seconds at a time anyway [2]: > The E-mu SP-1200, released in 1987, had a ten-second sample length and a distinctive "gritty" sound, and was used extensively by East Coast producers during the golden age of hip hop of the late 1980s and early 90s.[40] Even though a significant portion of the new work's audio uses the old song, the expression in the use of the sample is predominantly the remixer's expression, not the expression of the author of the original song. At least before sampling cases like the Grand Upright case [3] you mentioned, hip hop sampling usually consisted of taking small pieces from many different songs and making a new song out of all of those small parts. Again, the vast majority of the expression is the remixer's, yet the remixer is the one who loses in court. Grand Upright Music, Ltd. v. Warner Bros. Records Inc. (1991) [3] was a judicially dubious case in my opinion: > Judge Duffy has been accused of bias in admonishing the defense and referring the defense for criminal prosecution.[2] Such criticism points out that Duffy's written opinion begins with one of the biblical ten commandments, "Thou shalt not steal." According to The Copyright Infringement Project of UCLA Law and Columbia Law School, Judge Duffy's opinion in Grand Upright v. Warner demonstrates "an iffy understanding on the part of this judge of the facts and issues before him in this case."[2] And then there's the even more dubious case Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films (2005) [4]: > The case centered on the 1990 N.W.A. track "100 Miles and Runnin'", which contains a manipulated two-second sample of the 1975 Funkadelic track "Get Off Your Ass and Jam". > Bridgeport brought the issue before a federal judge, who ruled that the incident was not in violation of copyright law. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed the decision and ruled that the sampling was in violation of copyright law. Their argument was that with a sound recording, an owner of the copyright on a work had exclusive right to duplicate the work. Under this interpretation of the copyright law, usage of any section of a work, regardless of length, is in violation of copyright unless the copyright owner gave permission. In its decision, the court wrote: "Get a license or do not sample. We do not see this as stifling creativity in any significant way."[1] The Sixth Circuit in Bridgeport ignored that copyright is about expression [5] and not just about copying. If you see bracket citations within quote paragraphs then ignore them. They are in-line citiations copied from Wikipedia, and I keep them in for ctrl-F purposes. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_(music)#Common_samples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_(music)#Common_sample... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_(music)#Hip_hop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_(music)#Hip_hop [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Upright_Music%2C_Ltd._v._Warner_Bros._Records_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Upright_Music%2C_Ltd._v..... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeport_Music%2C_Inc._v._Dimension_Films https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeport_Music%2C_Inc._v._Di... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea%E2%80%93expression_distinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea%E2%80%93expression_distin...

jwells89 3y ago

The difference is that usually with sampling, a handful of pieces of other songs are mixed into a larger original work whereas ML generators (AI is a misnomer) instead chop hundreds or thousands of works into a fine slurry and reconstitute them into something that resembles the average of all of them — its works are comprised entirely of the work of others. If ML generators become actual AI (AGI) and become able to apply abstracted concepts and and use non-trained observations like humans do, enabling them to create works that aren’t solely composed of samples of existing work, the comparison to music sampling makes more sense. AGI will probably also want fair treatment unlike their ML model predecessors and as a result probably won’t be the wealth generators that many seem to be looking for, though…