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// Vinyl, on the Importance of Intellectual Property 
// Story: Dream On: Vinyl and Tavi's Private Weblog 
// by Koiyuki 
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As a DJ, one of the biggest parts in how I make jams is how I mix samples. Yeah, of course there’s the skills it takes to make it hot, but aside from that, there's also the legal beagle side of it to take care of, so that hot jam can make me the most money with the least legal headaches. If, for example, someone wanted to use a piece of your original cello work in what they make, you'd want in on the action, right? It's a natural part of using your creativity to pay the bills; because of that, folks doing what I do gotta make sure that every sample, no matter short it may be, gets the OK from the suits, that the folks who need to get paid get paid. You know what happens when they don't? The lawyers are let off their leash, and won't be afraid to take a big ol' bite outta your duckets, if not something worse. 

There was one time a bud in the biz put out a tune with a real strong Near East vibe, one that made you wanna shake it like you were belly dancing(kinda like this one!). Part of that was because it used a sample from an old Bollywood movie he watched with his girl, which he didn't try to clear because he figured nobody would ever know where it came from. Trouble with that strategy is that if it blows up enough, it will eventually reach the demo that would recognize it, including those loaded enough to lawyer up and get their cut. Sure enough, soon after it got globally hot, the suits came calling, and eventually told him, "We won't sue you into the ground, but you can't make any money from this song anymore" This sorta stuff was something my dad brought up a ton when he talked about his job, exposing a ton about the business to me at a very early age. Shoot, when I was a kid, me and my pops-you know, the goatee'd muscle mountain with a dirty tan you call Mr. SwayBreeze, brought it it up when we were vacationing over in Las Pegasus. My mom partied it up on the strip while I went with my dad to both get a hands-on view of the wild world of drifting and learn more about what Intellectual Property law-you know, IP law!-means to artists. 


***


My dad used to be stationed at an army base near Kakegawa, and one of his favorite things to do off base was catch a ride with a local pal to the mountain roads deep in the countryside; over there, tricked out autos pulled off the same high speed slides into the corners as the pros. Some call it Drifting, others Touge, and the best way to understand it is to be in the car while it's in that controlled near spinout, and it feels like you're floating above the road, above the ground, above everything (if you're interested, I can fill you in on it later on!). His love of it stayed with him when he and my mom moved to a little place in the red hook part of Manehattan, and he watched a copy of the first video on the stuff whenever the itch came calling. I watched with him a couple of times before the trip, and thought it looked super cool, so through the ol' puppy eyes treatment, I convinced him to take me along the next time he wanted to go drifting. Naturally, any parent would be sketchy on taking their kid along on something where one wrong move could lead to a violent tumbling of heavy metal down a mountainside, right? So of course I was strapped in tight as his friend's Devil Z screamed around the corners, the G-forces pancaking me into my seat. I swear, the faster that speed demon went, the more everything outside my window looked like a rusty pink blur, his icy blues set dead ahead as the sweat streamed down his face. It was only after we came to a stop that I was able to catch my breath, and soak in the sunset washing over the Joshua trees and rust colored rocks on the horizon, my dad tuning the radio to the local classic rock station as we cruised back to the strip. 

I remember it putting on 'Runnin' Down a Dream' when I asked why that station was playing the same songs he played back home, leading to him eventually bringing up IP law. I was kinda curious and didn’t get it the first time he explained it, so over our vacation he showed me that it falls under four fields: Property, which says you own and control what happens to the stuff you make, Trademark, which does that for the stuff representing and publicizing it, Copyright, which protects stuff like the music we whip up off the top of the dome, and Trade Secrets, which does that for stuff like the 13 herbs and spices in that fried chicken joint's recipe. I wasn't sure what any of that meant to a musician, so as we got seated for a Speedwagon concert, he told me "All of that ensures that when Speedwagon makes a song, they can make money for their hard work, whether it's when someone buys their music, sees them live or gets their merch," like the shirts he bought for us after the concert. In those days, it seemed pretty cut and dry: if they ain't getting compensated when someone uses their stuff, it's taking.  potential money from their pockets. 'Course back in those days, the worst that could happen was burned CDs being sold on the downlow, knockoff merch and scalped tickets, some of which my mom bought when we got back home from a dealer near our local Bodega. I didn’t think of it as much of an issue until I started getting into the DJ game, and the net became more of a thing at my house, bringing with it the first versions of Peer to Peer networks, what some folks call P2P. 


***


P2P networks basically let every computer connected to one use it like we would use the library, making everything made available on it open to download and share with other folks connected. Convenient stuff, right? That's why when the tech to do this grew cheaper for Jane and Joe Blow, it grew more commonplace; shoot, when my dad saw my mom setting a P2P file manager up on her computer, he was one unhappy camper, asking her “So how many artists have you stolen from today?” after coming home from a rough day on the job (and yeah, he totally slept on the couch that night). The folks I spoke with about this were just as upset, with a lot my DJ friends saying how IP law is a bunch of suits trying to put their foot on the little guys' throat while they're making the stuff that lines their pockets. I know when I got to know my producer buddy, Neon Lights, he let on more and more how much IP laws pissed him off, more so when we were doing some mastering on my album in his studio one night, and he got a call from his label. 

I don’t think you’ve seen it, yet, right? It’s a totally sick studio he rents out in the burbs. It’s got mixing equipment out the flank , big screens and video games for when we need to chill, a big ol’ comfy black couch, and all the other stuff you’d expect. I was getting my Classical Gas with the guitar in the recording booth when all of a sudden I hear him scream, “WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY WON’T CLEAR THE SONG!? Are you telling me that this is because of a HALF BUCKING SECOND SAMPLE THAT’S SUPPOSED TO BE PUBLIC DOMAIN?” His shades were off, so I could see that furrowed brow closing in tight on his round ocean blues as he wound his arm up to chuck his smartphone. I caught his wrist right before he could and persuaded him to chill on the couch with me for some quality R&R. As we fired up co-op Gunstar Heroes on his sexy PC gaming rig, I asked him why he was so aggro about them not clearing the song. His first response? “Let me put it this way: You know the Happy Birthday song? The one that everyone sings at their birthday parties? The second they do, they’ve opened themselves to getting the legal dogs unleashed on them to get the money the suits think they’re owed.” 

As we worked our way through the game, I learned about a lot of the messed up stuff the music industry do against its consumers, including how a mom living in a trailer home in the woods was sued by them for tens of thousands of dollars for making a bucking digital mix tape. I couldn’t wrap my head around how the people in charge of IP laws could condone this crap, so as we finished the last level, he said, "It makes them too much cash to not stand behind such a broken system. Who cares if it spits in the face of the people who wash their dishes, teach their kids and make the products that line their bucking pockets, right?" As we sat there at the mixing station tweaking the track I laid down, I saw his hands still shaking, though I couldn't tell if it was from the IP law thing or how much rage the last boss brought out (Maybe a bit of both? 'Cause that boss was pretty cheap, and I wasn't exactly screaming pleasantries by the time we beat him, either). It’s something he probably talked a ton about with his girl, too, because when I ran into in Little Kakegawa, she seemed to be way more knowledgeable on the issue than I was expecting.

Have you been there, yet? It’s totally awesome how they took a piece of Kakegawa, and put it right in the middle of Manehatten, with a 3 level mall, a store full of Japonican groceries, humongous places to buy anime, manga and a bunch of other stuff from Japonica, a really awesome arcade and bowling alley, and Japonican restaurants out the wazoo (as my mom likes to say, for some reason). I was lazing about in The Japonican Village Plaza, when the red and white lanterns hanging above lit up. The sun sank into the horizon while the sounds of soulful guitar strings filled the air, sounds that were more than a bit familiar; the closer I got, the more I recognized the raven-haired, bobcut little waif sitting on a circular planter ledge, the daisies and red maple tree behind her framing her performance. As she played in her pastel pink, kimono-lookin' top, I saw her charm a pretty deep crowd of folks wanting to see her play, that song I heard from her the first time we met echoing through the air while I waded my way through the crowd. At her feet was an open guitar case with a sign “Donations are greatly appreciated” propped above the stack of cash inside. Knowing how much she’s made as a musician, I was super puzzled why she would even do something like this, waiting until the crowd cleared to ask her why. Before I knew it, she was smiling at me, gesturing to the pile of cash and saying, “You see all this? This is how much people care about giving kids a chance to express themselves through music, to let their schools afford the instruments and training they need to express themselves the way they want to” before she started packing her stuff. 

We were making our way towards the nearby Mrs. Pizza joint while she told me about the trips she makes to busk at that spot to both help support her charity and keep in touch with her roots as a performer. While we waited in line(one that extended out of the storefront, I might add), she asked, “Do you remember what it was like to spin for a crowd like I had? How people didn’t really know your name  and in that moment could only tell who you were by how you chopped it up? How you were just hoping for someone to give you a chance to prove yourself and show your chops?” 

“Totally. I still remember all the ‘No’s I got when I was just starting out, and even after my first gig at that wedding reception. All the clubs I contacted slammed the door in my face before I could even give them my bucking name! I imagine you went through a lot of the same stuff when you were starting out.”

“That I did. Naturally, I was still developing original material to put out for others to enjoy, so the best way I could show people what I was made was doing what you just saw me do: find a nice spot to settle in, and busk my backside off covering other artist’s material.”

“Do you think those artists would be cool with that?”

“Knowing the business like I do? Fat chance. I imagine lots of artists would be mad salty that others are getting their shine off of their hard work, but that’s just the natural cycle of improving at your craft; you imitate, then you improve, then you innovate, repeat as often as needed. Shoot, the work my boy does is founded on remixing and reimagining the works of others into a brand new whole, as is yours, isn't it?”

“Right. That’s why I’m still kind of shaky on the whole Intellectual Property thing. Part of me fears that one day I’ll make a super hot jam that’ll get shelved because some artist loaded with cash and lawyers will try and shut it down for using a ½ second clip from a song with copyright laws on it that I had no idea existed” By that time, we had gotten to the front, so before we headed to our table, she ordered something that she was always telling me try: the Potato Gold(a pizza with a sweet potato crust, mushrooms, ground beef, corn, onions, potato wedges, bacon, nacho chip flakes, and sour cream. Totally tasty, trust me). While we were waiting for our pie to cook, she looked across the table at me, chin resting on hand, and said, “My boy says you two talked a lot about how abusable this system is, like with companies popping out of nowhere to wring money out of wildly successful tech makers using patients they filed for decades ago, and that big pharmaceutical company arguing for plants being something you can have exclusive rights to.”

“We have, and I’m starting to think the whole thing is a pile of crap”

“I’m sure you realize, though, how much you, him, me and all us creative folks need that kind of system so we can make some amount of money off of our hard work, and make sure we can continue to for as long as we can. That in mind, there’s something I want to ask you: with all the developments in how music can be made and developed, why does that way have to be the only way? Why not go straight to Public Domain? Why not give Creator’s Common’s a try? Why not go a different route?” That way, while we stuffed our face on pizza, she filled me in on the different kinds of IP law creatives can apply to their work, ways that not only ensure that they get the shine they deserve, but ensures that people can also remix it and make it their own without having to worry about the suits coming for them. To use what she told me before I headed home, “What use is protecting what you create if it prevents a culture from growing, expanding and becoming something that helps the community grow?”

I still think my dad has a point about artists deserving to get their shine and get paid for what they do, and want to help create new ways for them to compensated, so they don’t get screwed like a lot of musicians from my dad’s day were when they signed with big labels, and got pennies from each dollar the label made off of them at best. At the same time, though, like Neon, I feel like the current IP laws are way to easy to abuse, like the time some rich blockheads actually tried to trademark the phrases, “You’re fired!” and “That’s hot” I mean seriously, what kind of jerkwad tries to trademark a phrase? If Rainbow Dash tried to do that, and asked me for cash every time I said “20 percent cooler,” I’d probably laugh and throw my drink in her face (knowing how she is, though, I'd probably throw my drink in her face, regardless). Honestly, though, as a DJ, one of the most important things I think a musician or any creative folks can have is to be able to remix, re-do and reinterpret the stuff they take in into what their imagination and experiences can whip up. After all, how can someone get better at something if they don’t have the elbow room to imitate, improve and innovate with what they know and what their creativity lets them create?