Forums › nerdy › “Innovative” NIN support act, stealing CC chiptune music.

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This topic has 3 voices, contains 7 replies, and was last updated by  buildingonfire 1356 days ago.

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May 15, 2008 at 10:50 am #6836

Litis

Timbaland (or what’s his face) is not alone!
Is this becoming a trend or something? Seriously. The worst thing, though, is that the cases before were copyrighted, and this one was licensed under cc-by-nc-sa… meaning that yet another somebody doesn’t take Creative Commons seriously.
May 15, 2008 at 12:02 pm #6837

Brad

I think it’s pretty interesting that most tech folk were upset by record labels & artists penalizing musicians for sampling them, but they seem to be equally outraged when it happens to one of their own.
May 16, 2008 at 8:41 pm #6838

buildingonfire

Personally I never thought Crystal Castles was worth much at all. Their only redeeming feature was their beat-programming… and now they don’t even get to claim that.

They’re thieves and fakers in a scene that claims to value innovation and experimentation. They deserve to get booed out of the joint at their next show.
May 21, 2008 at 12:57 pm #6839

Brad

I haven’t heard much of their music — were they really riding on their authenticity or something?

Daft Punk samples the hell out of things but they’re OK with me.
May 22, 2008 at 2:59 pm #6840

Litis

You can check them out at their MySpace page (“Crystal Castles” in Google + “I’m Feeling Lucky” = that horrible, horrible place).
Now that I’m listening to the music, it’s nothing special. You can find a better female vocalist and less expected melodies and progressions easily if you look around a bit – I think she doesn’t even try to keep in tune with something. And given the MySpace profile is ridden with pictures of the vocalist, it’s easy to figure that she’s the main – and only – feature of this act.
Given this story, they don’t exist for me. Sure, Public Enemy sampled tons of records, but at least they didn’t offend anyone with that, and sound awesome – “Welcome to the Terrordome” is still one of my favorite songs. By the way, I found out about Public Enemy when I saw that song was sampled in Saul Williams’s “Tr(n)igger” and decided to check it out.
I’m sampling quite heavily in my new stuff, and I really hope that if I ever get to buy Renoise and release it, none of the people that I sampled pop out and suddenly declare that they add a “no derivatives” clause to their Creative Commons licenses, or that they didn’t even know what Creative Commons is and just uploaded the album on Jamendo for easy hosting – given that a huge amount of the albums there is licensed under the default license, it’s quite possible.
Brad, no surprises please.
May 23, 2008 at 12:23 am #6841

buildingonfire

The way I see it, the difference between Daft Punk and Crystal Castles is that Daft Punk is putting their cards on the table.

Daft Punk (at least on their classic ‘Discovery’) have got their samples fully-credited and easily-readable by anyone who cares to read the liner notes. I’m making the (perhaps incorrect) assumption that they’ve come to some sort of mutually-satisfactory deal with the various music-publishers, or however that works, and I’m also assuming some money from Daft Punk sales goes to the originators. So I think of Daft Punk as being ‘paid up,’ and am willing to discuss the merits of what they have created using those original samples. (Short version of discussion: Daft Punk is awesome.)

What Crystal Castles have done, on the other hand, is to use work without proper attribution, thereby trying to pass off someone else’s work as their own. This is manifestly unjust, and on a personal note it seems really low-class and petty to me. In my mind (though I recognize that not everyone will feel this way) this issue precludes any discussion of the merits of the resulting Crystal Castles songs (and the merits of the artists themselves if you ask me, though as I said before I didn’t much care for their music before I learned about this, so I’m probably biased against them).

I think a good-faith negotiation of appropriate compensation for the sampled parties and a public apology would be a good show on the part of the Crystal Castles.
May 24, 2008 at 9:40 pm #6842

Brad

Litis: I blogged about the issue of people changing their CC licenses a long time ago back when Creative Commons was kind of new. I still don’t think it’s really been tested. I’d love to do a sample-heavy album at some point but I’m not sure I trust it all enough.

buildingonfire: Interesting insight, makes sense to me. I tend not to care too much about sample sources or really pay much attention to the morality thang. Seems like shitty behavior to take and not credit but it’s impossible to know the intent and circumstances behind it.
May 25, 2008 at 1:24 am #6843

buildingonfire

Seems like shitty behavior to take and not credit but it’s impossible to know the intent and circumstances behind it.

True. I’m not sure exactly why this issue got my knickers in such a knot.

I now return to my long weekend, already in progress.
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Forums › nerdy › “Innovative” NIN support act, stealing CC chiptune music.

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