We all remember Vanilla Ice. Who could forget him? His hit, "Ice, Ice Baby" is epic. It's lyrical genius. I would venture to say that no one is unfamiliar with this song. That hair, those dance moves, those pants, that hook...wait. That wasn't his?
We've all been in a bar, at a party, or in the car and heard that familiar hook that signals you to get ready to bust your best running man moves. And then- the unfamiliar voice singing, instead of rapping. David Bowie, is that you? It is. Rob Van Winkle (aka the Ice man) allegedly copied Bowie's "Under Pressure" for "Ice, Ice Baby". Van Winkle was sued, and the case was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. Oddly enough, I found this information on a site called Low_Life.fsnet. The author of the site goes on to say that most cases of music fraud aren't even called into question until the artist who sampled another's begins to gain fame and make money; then the original creator of the sampled lyric, hook, etc. wants a piece of the pie.
This is the general idea of what we discussed in class last week. Jeff Rice discussed the use of previously existing works of art to cultivate new work. This sampling is often criticized as being plagarism. He cited the songs of Will Smith and Public Enemy in his chapter on music. We began to discuss if there was a difference between plagarism and sampling. The general consensus is that if an artist takes an already existing piece of media, and changes in a way that makes it his own, then it is sampling and not plagarism. Also, it is not plagarism if the original creator is given credit where it is due. Ok, fine. I get that. But if that's the case, Vanilla Ice is innocent! He says that his beat is distinct from Bowie's. That one note that was added on the end apparently was not enough to convince the lawyers otherwise. So now, this man who is solely known for his contribution to pop culture (and now his anger management issues- but wouldn't you be mad if you were caught in photos with that hair style and in that outfit?) which has been branded as stolen goods.
I would go out on a limb and say we are all guilty of plagarism at some point. As I'm typing this, I'm looking up things on YouTube.com. Somehow I doubt that these people got permission from New Kids on the Block to post thier cartoons, music videos, and concert footage. But I could be wrong (on an interesting side note to this, Captain Planet stole the NKOTB Cartoon theme as its opening theme song). A situation that might be a bit more familiar to you would be that talent show in second grade. You wanted to sing your little heart out and showcase your awesome ability to sing the popular songs of the time. We all know moms are wonderful and amazing, but I highly doubt she wrote Paula Abdul and said "Hey Paula, Little Janie is going to perform "Straight Up" at the talent show next week. Hope that's cool."
Finally, with the ridiculous frivolty of lawsuits that is familiar to today's culture, we are all in danger of being hauled into court. People like Paris Hilton and Donald Trump are copyrighting catch phrases that people repeat all the time. So the next time you burn your hand on the stove and utter, "That's hot" beware of Hilton's lawyer ready to slap you with a lawsuit.
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4 comments:
Very nice post. I do agree that lawsuits are far too common and I think you had an underlying idea that there is far to much copyrighting and ownership going around, which I agree with. I do have to disagree a little in the Vanilla Ice situation. I would still say he is innocent, because in reality he may have changed the beat a little, but it was, for all practical purposes, the exact same. Plus, he really didn't give any credit to Bowie, so I think he failed on both accounts.
I think that it is hard to distinguish what is stealing and what isn't when you have a guy like Vanilla Ice that probably really believed that he was innocent. If he truly felt that he created his piece of art (if you could call it art), who is to say that his artistic expression is not his own.
Viacom is suing Google now for copyright infringement because of the multitudes of Daily Show and other Comedy Central clips on Youtube.
You pointed out, correctly, that individuals won't sue another person until profits are involved, so I find it very hard to understand this lawsuit. Why does Viacom worry about youtube when surely youtube's publicity of the daily show et al has only meant more success for viacom?
I agree with Jon. But in the spirit of avoiding plagiarism, I must point out that I did not make the connection of no one sues until money is made at their "expense"...I found that sentiment on the Low_life.fsnet website.
With Liz's comment- I really think that people create so-called false memories. I think it's entirely possible that people hear something at one time, and years later, re-create it forgetting that they had once heard it, and then pass it off as original. I'm not at all saying that this is what Vanilla Ice did, but I think that it could happen.
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