So it is legal and ethical to make money by selling used dvds, of which not a penny goes into the pocket of Jack Nicholson.
Yes, that is legal.
Selling a used DVD (or CD, or VHS tape, or book, etc, etc) to one person is a very different scenario from what we are talking about here.
But it is illegal and some would say unethical to sample a piece of his spoken audio from said DVD because poor Jack needs financial compensation for anytime his already ridiculously distributed voice (via movies, interviews) is put into an audio mix...
It is illegal.
Jack Nicholson likely gets no compensation from the use, though. The owner of the copyright of the *film* would get the payment.
If you recorded a song and somebody else sampled your synth hook, you wouldn't want to be fairly compensated? (and, let's face it, those movie quotes are what people always identify the song with)
of which his particular waveform might compose .002% of the digital information that makes up the song? That doesn't seem to be a bit ridiculous?
Well, if it is important and valuable enough for you to use in the song... why would it not be important and valuable enough to be worth paying for?
...and, like i said, the fact is that the thing people always remember about those songs are the movie quotes... "take the blue pill"
It is odd that we are generally raised to question government, our parents, and some of the stranger parts of our given religions... but copyright law created by lawyers, wealthy entertainers, and the very wealthy corporations that largely benefit from them seems to be sacred.
Actually, the purpose of copyright law is to foster creativity by giving artists and writers ownership in their own work so they can reap the benefits of their own work...
...and the copyright law prevents monopolies in copyrighted works by allowing for compulsory licenses (i.e., everybody is automatically given permission to do covers of other peoples songs)...
...the updates to the copyright law over the years have been enacted to prevent struggling artists from being taken advantage of like in the old motown days.
If you decide to sell away your rights in a way that does not benefit you, then that is your own fault, because from the instant you record your song, you own 100% of it and are entitled to 100% of the benefit of it.
This is similar to the Google digital book archive that is protested against by those that would rather the books rot on unseen shelves than to miss out on making a few dollars off of old work.
I am not familiar with this google case... but if *you* wrote an album (or book) that people wanted to buy, wouldn't *you* want to get compensated for your work?
Would you do your job without getting paid?
20-30 years should be plenty enough time for an artist to benefit from work that has been mass copied for profit already. If a drug company's patent can expire in the decade or so before generics can start production, I don't see why a guitarist can lock up their sounds for life+70 years (as was posted earlier).
Ahhh, spoken like someone who is just making music as a hobby.
If you are fortunate enough to have written a song that people want to hear and is capable of generating money... *that* is your job... *that* is your retirement plan... *that* is what you can pass on to your kids.
In a world where it is hard enough to make any money from music already, *you* should feel very lucky that you can have ownership in your own work.
These legal traditions should be challenged to allow freedom of creativity.
Freedom of creativity? You can be as creative as you want to be. Nobody will stop you from that.
Go ahead and sample all the movies you want. Sample all the songs you want.
Nobody is stopping you from being "creative".
But if you want to *make money* from your work... you don't think you should, in turn, pay the people whose work *you used* to create yours?