Long before people began posting their homemade video mashups on the Web, hip-hop musicians were perfecting the art of audio montage through sampling. Sampling \u2014 or riffing \u2014 is as old as music itself, but new technologies developed in the 1980s and 1990s made it easier to reuse existing sound recordings. Acts like Public Enemy, De La Soul, and the Beastie Boys created complex rhythms, references, and nuanced layers of original and appropriated sound. But by the early 1990s, sampling had collided with the law. When recording industry lawyers got involved, what was once called \u201cborrowed melody\u201d became \u201ccopyright infringement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Copyright Criminals<\/i> examines the creative and commercial value of musical sampling, including the related debates over artistic expression, copyright law, and money. The film showcases many of hip-hop music\u2019s founding figures like Public Enemy, De La Soul, and Digital Underground, as well as emerging artists such as audiovisual remixers Eclectic Method. It also provides first-person interviews with artists who have been sampled, such as Clyde Stubblefield \u2014 James Brown\u2019s drummer and the world\u2019s most sampled musician \u2014 and commentary by another highly sampled musician, funk legend George Clinton.<\/p>\n
Computers, mobile phones, and other interactive technologies are changing our relationships with media, blurring the line between producer and consumer and radically changing what it means to be creative. As artists find more inventive ways to insert old influences into new material, Copyright Criminals<\/i> poses the question: Can you own a sound?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Can you own a sound? Copyright Criminals<\/i> examines the history and influence of musical sampling, provoking debates about copyright, compensation, and creativity in the age of intellectual property.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"topic":[1216],"class_list":["post-20","films","type-films","status-publish","hentry","topic-arts-and-culture"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n