NEW Copyright Criminals (DVD)

Honestly this is a movie that has been waiting to be made for over twenty years. Ever since the rise of sampling and most recently downloading the concept of what constitutes for "music" and what constitutes for "stealing" has been debated again and again. Usually when I've witnessed the discussion or it's baught up it's usually the anti group. This movie elegantly gathers together people from all side. Hip hop sample artists/scrachers themselves,recording engineerers,entertainment lawyers and even those musicians who've been sampled most all show up here to discuss the situation head on. You'll hear about people such as De La Soul,Biz Markie and Danger Mouse,all of whom had wounded up on the wrong side of the sampling question legally at one point or another and all of whom had different results for the ware. The anti group,most of whom happen to be lawyers do have a very concise opinion on sampling: that it's very lazy musicianship and that even an unidentifiable fragment of sound used for someones recording is plagerism. Through the use of overlapping visuals you also get great examples of the sampling process-hearing how everyone from James Brown,Led Zeppelin to The Jackson 5 would sound sampled or mashed up,as they call it for mixtapes. Sometimes the ears really do have it;by the time you finish hearing this and seeing the visuals of the individual acts presented as "visual sampling" as it is here you'll agree not only can you see how dancable,funky and creative it all sounds but individual as well-hardly sounds like outright plagerism at all. You also see how jazz musicians borrowed riffs and sound freely from eachother and how even The Beatles themselves were early samplers with many of their post 1967 musical experiences with tape loops and such. No irony should be lost how even here it's presented how Beatle samples have resulted in more trouble with copywrite lawyers over the years. James Brown's drummer Clyde Stubblefield is interviewed extensively here. Being the most sampled drummer ever becaused of "Funky Drummer"....all Clyde the musician cares about is that his name is credited alone: money doesn't matter to him. Not only that but he also brings home that nine times out of ten it's publishers of music who collect the money from sampling fee's,not the artists themselves. Also James Brown,as is pointed out about many trip hop acts after him using newer technology, often got around the issue of borrowing riffs from others by "sampling" their own music in different ways to create new songs from it. The tale becomes one of artistry versus the law and the fundamental differences in their approch to the topic. What it all comes down to in the end is that all great musical art throughout history is based on borrowing bits from the past,like an archivist and that at it's best sampling and modern mash up's act as strong commercials to get the original music back into public interest. One could only imagine the fate of James Brown and George Clinton's music,out of print for over a decade would've been had hip-hop and DJ sampling hadn't rebooted it into the public consciousness. If it wasn't already evident this brings into the forefront the strong and often controntational scism between musicians,artists and the people who are elected to control the music they make. In the end 'Copywrite Criminals' is not only the story of the issue of sampling but also of the confusing and still artistically unfair practices within the music industry. I'd strongly recommend this not only to aspiring DJ's and hip-hoppers but to anyone on either side of this topic looking for some resolutions to the whole situation.

I teach Writing & Rhetoric at a private arts college and showed this documentary to my students to start a conversation about proper citation, fair use, and intellectual property rights. I feel that this documentary does a good job presenting the sides of both samplers and remixers, and those who want credit and compensation for their original work. Plus, it has lots of great music in it, which both I and my students loved.

I've always been amazed at how artists could utilize numerous samples and fuse them together to make something new and fresh. "3 Feet High and Rising" by De La Soul, "It Takes A Nation of Millions" by Public Enemy, and "Paul's Boutique" by The Beastie Boys are glaring examples of this. It's great to see so many different parties represented on this issue giving their views. Although I may be a little biased on this it seemed that the pro-sample side had more ammunition giving more valid points. I would definitely recommend this to both anti-sample and pro-sample parties because I'm sure anybody can come across somebody in this film that they will learn something new from.

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