The above is Gregg Michael Gillis doing his thing under the stage name Girl Talk. So what is his "thing"? By day Gregg is a biomedical engineer, but by night Gregg is a disc jockey that specializes in the mashups the crowd of people behind him in this picture are going crazy for. He has also released several albums under this name.
But even more than just mashups, Gregg Gillis's "thing" is music sampling. He produces no original melodies on guitars or pianos, but he samples songs from other artists and makes new songs from them. This puts Gregg in a tight spot with Copyright Law. Technically the music that Gregg is sampling is the intellectual property of these other artists, and some would call his sampling stealing.
So what keeps Gregg from being sued under Copyright Law for stealing intellectual property? It is this idea of making new songs from existing ones. It is Gregg's claim that he has "Fair Use" of the samples because the nature of the use is transformative. Specifically under Section 107 of Copyright Law, something is considered a fair use of intellectual property if it transforms the material enough to change the context and essentially become something completely new. So Girl Talk ultimately steers clear of Copyright infringement by taking already existing songs and transforming them into completely new songs. As long as the purpose of his music sampling is transformative and to generate altogether new content, Gregg can continue to do his thing and be Girl Talk.
Photo:
http://www.sunfest.com/blog/words-girl-talk
Great information Jaimee! I feel Girl Talk is in no way breaking copyright laws when he mashes up other material. Although he is using original copyrighted music, he's making it his own and creating something completely original himself. Also, if he was making these original artist mad, they would have already filed a lawsuit against him. In reality, I feel he is making theses artist more popular. People listening to Girl Talk may hear a part of the song they want to head more about and start searching that specific artist. Good job!
ReplyDeleteGreat job Jaimee! I think you said it all in your article. Girl Talk is an artist, who's art just happens to use other people's music. I think he should have the right to continue doing what he's doing because he's transforming the original works into something completely new.
ReplyDeleteThis is very eloquently put! I think that you did a great job of applying fair use/transformative use to Girl Talk. I am indecisive as to how I feel about Girl Talk taking bits and pieces of other people's songs. While I think he can create some truly original content by mixing all of these music types together, I can understand the frustration many artists would have over pieces of their work being implemented in other ways and never having a say in it.
ReplyDeleteGood job of getting all this information in here! I am very fond of the concept that nothing is unique. Everything we do is based upon something else we've seen or heard in our lives. All the songs we here today are remixes of older songs.
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