"Mashups Bad! Covers Good!" - Should Copyright Prefer Cover Songs to Remixes?

Here's a dangerous game: let me share some notable illegal art with you, and see what you think.

Mashups:

• Sweet Home Country Grammar: Nelly vs. Lynyrd Skynyrd. listen here - Time Magazine says "the unlikely pairing of Lynyrd Skynyrd's riff and Nelly's spliffs improves both."


• Evolution Control Committee - Rocked By Rape: a high-larious mix of the darkest things Dan Rather has said with Back in Black (unlike other pieces here, this one's at least partly covered as parody). listen here - threats and plaudits.


• George Bush Don't Like Black People: original lyrics over Kanye West's "Gold Digger," referencing his criticism of the President after Hurricane Katrina. music video here - wikipedia - hilarious copyright hijinx (OK, so Kanye West sampled some old blues song to complain about gold-digging women, but then these guys stole the prominent lyric from Kanye's song, and the sample, to criticize George Bush. So then naturally they were sued by ... JibJab, the internet comics who made a video called "This Land" in 2004 to criticize George Bush and John Kerry, and were sued by the estate of Arlo Guthrie, until it turned out Arlo had stolen the tune from the Carter Family ... aw, just click the link.)


• The Grey Album: remixes Jay-Z's Black Album with the Beatles' White Album. listen here - wikipedia - the Grey Video (played in class)


• The Kleptones - A Night At The Hip-Hopera: remixes Queen songs with a hundred other things. sample song - download album - wikipedia lists the sources.


• Deen Gray - American Edit: remixes Green Day's American Idiot with lots of stuff. sample song - download album - wikipedia - Green Day calls the mix "really cool".


• Mei Lwun - Marshall's Been Snookered: apparently Eminem raps in ragtime. (If you don't like him, skip this one). listen here - love from the Village Voice.

If you read the related links, you'll see some common themes: artistic applause and extended legal harassment. Now let's turn to ...

Cover Songs:

Here's a few interesting covers. Unlike the previous list, these songs are blessed by the Copyright Act.

• Nina Gordon - Straight Outta Compton: Nina Gordon of Veruca Salt covers NWA on acoustic guitar. listen here - song generously shared by Nina herself.


• Cake - I Will Survive. listen here.


• Iron & Wine - Such Great Heights. listen here.


• Johnny Cash - Hurt. music video here.

These ones aren't quite as obscure, huh? Well how about Respect covered by Aretha Franklin? All Along The Watchtower covered by Jimi Hendrix? Twist and Shout covered by the Beatles? Any song ever recorded by Elvis? (See wikipedia for a zillion more ...)

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So, I hope you've checked out and enjoyed at least some of the links. My main point is: mashups can be delightful -- and incidentally, they serve a similar role to cover songs in making unique and important contributions to our culture.

I should probably talk about the law as well, though. There's a reason that the covers I listed are all available on CD, while the mashups live in an underground, online ghetto. (By the way -- if you liked any of the covers, maybe you should buy the albums ...) That reason is the "Compulsory license for making and distributing phonorecords" provided by the Copyright Act.

Under this section, artists are free to release cover versions of songs as long as they pay 9.1 cents for every copy. Because this is a compulsory license, effective markets such as HFA Songfile have emerged to make compliance pretty easy.

Paper Idea One: Is there something different about mashups -- which use an artist's actual voice and music, after all -- from covers, which justifies leaving them out in the cold? Or do the files I linked to make enough of a cultural contribution that the copyright system should support them somehow? How would you write that statute?

Paper Idea Two: Most of the mashup artists in the first list violated the copyright act by distributing derivative works without a license for the original material. YOU violated the copyright act ($750 minimum per violation!) by clicking on the links, knowingly requesting copyrighted material. Question 1: how does that make you feel? Question 2: have I violated the act, by providing links to a third party site that hosts copyrighted material? Can it be that HTML links to third party sites subject this post in our class blog to many thousands of dollars in liability? Napster seems to suggest so. If Wendy fails to delete this post, is she liable as well?