In some ways copyright laws suck

[Shepherd_of_Anu]

I understand musical producers need to protect their creative productions but sometimes I can't help but feel like copyright laws just suck. Today I came across a file I had made years ago which was a blend of a spin off of a Hooverphonic's remix of Issac Hayes track "Walk on By" with the original. It was not a big leap since the Hooverphonics track was a direct directive of the Hayes track.

It made for a very pleasant extended track but unfortunately because of the nature of our laws I can never play it for anyone publicly or in the media. I have no intention of making money from my dalliances but still it seems strange to me that I can never play it for anyone legally for fear of repercussion. This has made me really consider the validity of copyright protection... can a person really claim own to a series of words or frequencies? Short of exact reproductions of creative works I can't help but think the concept of stealing of sound is anything but ridiculous. Not to say that my own mixing of those two tracks was an original creative work so much. I only overlaid a juxtaposition of the two things. How can a comparison of a juxtaposition which was acknowledged by the creative parties' works be a crime? Its just that is it unfortunate that I can not play them together for fear of legal issues.

Should analytic works be subjected to copyright law if they reference or compare copyrighted works? Who owns the analytic output? The analyst or the producer of said works?

Makes you think about the arrogance of human law vs the continuance of the universe... who owns thought?

[Shepherd_of_Anu]

If only they could charge royalties for jingles and songs stuck in your head from music, commercials and mtv.... heh, its only a matter of time before they have mental tollgates at every public juncture harvesting your mental jingles. Every time you board a plane they already grab your private areas so its not really that big of a step to passively scan your brainwaves because they already scan every other internal orifice you have. Doesn't passive brainwave scanning sound like a good way to screen out terrorists? Not to mention mental music pirates?

OMG! She was mentally humming The Girl from Ipanema! 2 Euro surcharge (plus VAT tax to be remitted to a european tax authority) on the flight!

[Shepherd_of_Anu]

I am getting onto a bit of a mental tangent tonight. When considering the song “The girl from Ipanema” I explored several different versions of the song it occurred to me that in order for a crime to take place there must be two components to the indecent. First there must be mens rea, second there must be Actus reus. I am not convinced that these two activities can be shown to be congruent to an original performance without an exact duplication of the original work.

Of course this begs the question of the exact breadth, depth and confines of an original work.

If one were to examine a few variations of “The girl from Ipanema” one might see what I am getting at.

It seems hard to find a solid version of the girl from ipanema except for this one... although you only get a short snippit of the full original performer.



There are several versions of this song out there over the years... but I am pretty sure that is one of the only good quality ones by the original performer... until Andy Williams takes over that is.

When I examine the question of the two components of criminal activity I really can't draw comparison between that version of the original by Antonio Carlos Jobim and most others. For example...



The imitator was not even close in actus reus... being that the execution of the act was at very best pale in comparison to the original work and when it comes to mens rea it is pretty obvious that the woman performing has little clue regarding the sensuality nor the situation surrounding the music she is supposedly reproducing. I am not disrespecting her voice at all because she has a beautiful disco voice but she obviously is totally detached from the content of the music itself... she seems kind of like that smart computer geek from the show 24... not to disrespect the actress or anything.... just an impression / comparison of archetypes.

Now on the other hand when I listen to the version done by Astrud Gilberto... but wait a minute you say... Ah Ha!!! Both the preceding version and this one where performed by the same female vocalist! (except in the earlier one she sings like she has a gun to her head) EDIT: I know this video will not play embedded, just click on the link to see it on the youtube website.



This version is different. The words are the same and act is truer to the original performance but the woman's performance and the connotations held within her performance and demeanour convey a totally different mental space / emotional conveyance to the entire experience. When you hear this woman sing you hear the song from a woman who you could imagine either being or have been perhaps the very girl the song was written about.

Considering that the song was inspired by a 15 year old girl walking down the strip in Rio that the writer used to spend his days watching can certainly leave room open to interpretation.

We might consider all these spin offs to be just tokens of history but in fact they are just different facets of an expression. Each from different performers, inspired from different views and inspirations. Even a single performer can create totally different spaces from a single musical expression. Who really owns that moment of musical experience that a listener has? The writer or the singer? The singer or the band? The producer or the performers/writer? Its so hard to say!

On a personal note.. This song becomes more amusing as time goes on in a persons life... especially the part regarding the part about the girl looking ahead but not at the singer... only young men stop looking. Those that keep looking almost always see that she checks to see is you are not looking

Then there is the Nat King Cole version... I don't really have a point to this one except to say its cool and has its own different interpretation to the whole affair. EDIT: I know this video will not play embedded, just click on the link to see it on the youtube website.



That is the wonder of music... you can take the score, lyrics and paradigm yet still create totally different creative works which are unique in their own respects.

Personally I like the Astrud Gilberto (non-disco) version... I like to imagine an older woman walking through the mind a younger (or older) man who is always watches a particular young girl walk by the cafe and revels in his youthful masculine nature. Yet sometimes I imagine the other perspective... the watcher as the aroused person in the cafe themselves(man or woman, both interesting versions) or the girl walking by and of course the watcher of the watcher as I have already mentioned.

All this makes me wonder what copyright is all about. They all have different sequences of frequencies, but hold the same lyrices. They may have the same lyrics but they all contain different connotations in terms of perception and content. Regardless of either claims to proprietary I can't help but question the validity of a claim in either respects. Who has a claim on sound? Who can claim a story that is played out in human interactions endlessly?

I always come to the same conclusion... nobody.

[Shepherd_of_Anu]

I can't believe how much time I spent musing about this last night. What the hell was I doing? Maybe its a warning sign that I might need a blog. Im putting a sticky note on my desk to remind myself not to write long and nearly pointless post on internet forums, nor rants, or even emails for that matter. Got myself in trouble with that a few times. Sorry if anyone read that and thought it was a waste of time! I have a bad habit of typing and just spewing random stuff out there when sipping on wine.

[patrick bateman]

Drugs work!

[Themis]

actually i listened to all the different versions of this song you posted, was quit fun