Friday, February 15, 2013

A Quick Little Copyright Rant

A DJ I know had her latest mix pulled from her Soundcloud account because of copyright issues. Soundcloud uses a robot to analyze the music people post and flags things that match well-knows copyrighted material. Unfortunately, this means pretty much every DJ mix ever recorded is a candidate for rejection.

Now, I'm no attorney, but as I understand US copyright law, DJ mixes fall within the realm of "fair use" law because the very act of mixing records is transformative. Legally speaking, she is completely in the right. The problem is that this is a case of 'might' winning out over 'right.'

The RIAA's army of expensive lawyers will threaten, harass, intimidate and bully DJs who post mixes on places like Soundcloud because they can. They're fully aware of Fair Use, they simply don't care because they know that 99.9% of the time they'll get their way through threats alone. Even if you know what you're doing is absolutely legal, who has the money to fight back? I don't know any artist who would take on the challenge, and even companies like Soundcloud wouldn't touch copyright litigation with a ten foot pole.

The Soundcloud copyright robot is a little overzealous in this artist's opinion; false positives aren't uncommon. It's flagged my original compositions in the past — songs that were absolutely, positively not someone else's work (one song didn't have a single sample in it; even the drums were synthesized). I get it. Soundcloud needs to protect themselves from the RIAA's wrath, too.

So who has the DJ's back? Can anyone step up, represent artists (and the common good of humanity) and go toe-to-toe with the RIAA until they back down? In a pay-to-play legal system, I wonder how we can get to a place where 'right' will trump 'might,' where the regular everyday musician doesn't have to worry about a faceless, amoral organization trying to bankrupt them for sharing the music they love with the world.

Sorry. Just had to vent.