Today, the German Federal Constitutional Court decided that under certain conditions, artistic freedom can take precedence over copyright.
As dw.com reports, the specific case the court was about sampling two seconds of a Kraftwerk song without permission:
The legal dispute originated when electro-pop legends Kraftwerk complained, angered at [musician Moses] Pelham "sampling" a two-second segment of the 1977 track "Metall auf Metall" and using it on an endless loop for rapper Sabrina Setlur's song. Initially, Kraftwerk won an injunction from Germany's top criminal court (the BGH) - prompting Pelham to use his only remaining recourse for appeal and to apply for the Constitutional Court to reconsider the verdict.
In particular,
The court ruled that composers can, under certain conditions, incorporate external audio clips into their own music without asking permission and do not have to pay royalties. If the copyright infringement is only "marginal," the court said, then artistic freedom takes precedence over the intellectual property rights of the original musician.
Related Stories
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which aims to promote world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences, and culture, has added Berlin's techno scene to its cultural heritage list.
According to UNESCO, intangible cultural heritage refers to mainly cultural forms of expression, which are directly linked to human creativity and traditions, and which people pass those on through generations and are constantly evolving.
This includes practices, rituals, knowledge, skills and performing arts such as music, dance and theater, which are meant to be preserved and kept alive.
"Kraftwerk and African-American DJs and producers like Underground Resistance from Detroit, made a significant contribution to the creation and spread of techno culture," said Leichsenring.
- – Berlin techno on Germany's intangible cultural heritage list, Deutsche Welle
And
Techno is a fundamental part of the city, according to Peter Kirn, a Berlin-based DJ and music producer. In 2021 he told the Observer: "In other cities, people wouldn't accept music that's really hard or weird and full of synthesisers and really brutal, distorted drum machines. You can't play that at peak hour in a club, let alone over lunch. And here it's totally acceptable to play that over lunch.
And
Over the course of the 1980s, the Berlin club scene developed into one of the world's leading centres of the beloved techno subculture of the time.
The electronic music genre in particular became a kind of soundtrack to the years following German reunification, symbolised by legendary clubs such as Tresor, which opened in 1991, and the annual Love Parade.
- – Berlin's techno scene added to UNESCO World Heritage list, The Local DE.
Previously:
(2020) Florian Schneider, Kraftwerk Co-Founder, Dies Aged 73
(2016) German Federal Constitutional Court: Artistic Freedom Sometimes Takes Precedence Over Copyright
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 31 2016, @09:18PM
Oh my god, there will be gushing praise from torrent freaks over this.
The idiots won't even notice that this ruling merely codifies what is generally called "fair use" or "fair dealing" in English, and doesn't have any impact on wholesale infringement at all.
Torrents. Not the best way to get pirated crap for free, just the popular way among stupid elitist posers.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday May 31 2016, @09:27PM
I didn't know that torrenting is now considered an art.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 31 2016, @09:32PM
Nobody stated or implied that torrenting is an art. Pro-tip: think before replying when someone says, "Stupid people will reply to this."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 31 2016, @10:44PM
And you should think before spewing a bunch of trollish predictions. Pro-tip: don't be a troll, contribute something worthwhile.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday June 01 2016, @09:09AM
Err … did you, by chance, read the summary, or even the title? What do you mean "artistic freedom" means?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Touché) by takyon on Tuesday May 31 2016, @09:51PM
The summary is quite clear that the ruling is about a song being sampled. I've seen your anger towards "torrent freaks" in past comments (or at least similar comments by other ACs) and I can only conclude that you're the one with the problem, not the "torrent freaks", "elitist posers", "freetards" or whatever.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Touché) by frojack on Tuesday May 31 2016, @10:47PM
Where did the reference to torrents even come from?
Both the songs are legally on YouTube,
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 01 2016, @01:44AM
Not the infringing song. Youtube only has the remix that doesn't contain the infringing sample.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 31 2016, @11:41PM
fair use
Err, not exactly.
Prior to the whole furor over sampling, with the extensive licensing agreements and huge costs therein today; prior you had fairly lenient requirements for sampling under fair use (some percentage of a song... I forget the exact specification).
Under the newer requirements, something like "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back" couldn't really be produced today.
The German ruling restores the older, more lenient idea of fair use.
Expect to see more studios and labels forming in Germany, and Deutschland becoming a major player in some musical genres.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday June 01 2016, @12:29AM
Wholesale, retail, doesn't matter - it's the "sale" that matters. Using other people's work for PROFIT has always been wrong. Using other people's work without attribution has always been wrong. Downloading a song? Not so much. Mention is made of "fair use", of course. Many people have mentioned that torrented movies and games are of far more use than the DRM protected trash sold by official vendors. And - music. There are artists and groups whose works some of us older people have paid for multiple times, in multiple formats. Downloading a new, more useful format is somehow "wrong"? "Fair use" is exactly that - fair use.
I have no empathy or sympathy for the "entertainment industry" or it's gestapo enforcement. If RIAA, MPAA, and all of their related organizations were outlawed, world wide tomorrow, the world would be a better place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 01 2016, @12:35PM
Wholesale, retail, doesn't matter - it's the "sale" that matters. Using other people's work for PROFIT has always been wrong. Using other people's work without attribution has always been wrong.
Wow! That's amazing. I had no idea that the British Statute from which the USA copied to create its own copyright legislation has always existed for the whole of human history and was not instead some bullshit that rich assholes lawyers invented long after the billions of years of evolution got us all the way to sentient civilized society without said view that copying information is wrong.
I'm astonished! This is mind blowing primarily because you are a collection of trillions of cells which are all copies of other (mostly now dead) cells, the latest in a long line of copying. Imagine the royalties you should pay to all of your ancestors for using the DNA they all collectively created. Imagine the look of surprise on the microbiologists faces when they discovered the copyright notice embedded in the DNA of all life forms! Truly, a historic moment.
Point being: There is zero evidence that the current copyright system is beneficial to society at all. The hypothesis has not been tested. You have an assumption that copyright laws are good for human society, but you have no evidence to back this up, moron. Humans are information copying machines. The only substantial ability we have over other creatures is our ability to freely share information and ideas, and you think it's a good idea to suppress this?! You might as well lobotomize yourself and return to the trees then, chimp. The very definition of a police state is to create and enforce laws against human nature. Copyright law is against human nature. God did not create Copyright Law, and the product of Evolution -- life itself -- runs contrary to the idea.
Go ahead. Prove to me via comparison that Copyright is beneficial. Protip: You can't, the comparisons all prove the opposite is true: that copyright is harmful or not required at all. There are industries such as Fashion and Automotive Design which have no Copyright restrictions and yet are far more lucrative than all of the other copyright encumbered markets combined. [youtube.com] So there you have it. The Fashion and Automotive industries, Life itself, and our Dominance of Earth are examples of which prove your statements utterly false.
You have only proven yourself ignorant about the subject.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday June 01 2016, @02:54PM
"You have an assumption that copyright laws are good for human society"
I think that I'll dispute that claim. I have seen that the supposition behind copyright is probably good. That being, if I create something, and that thing should prove profitable, then I should have a share in the profit. But, that's about where any assumption of mine ends.
Today's copyright laws are entirely bullshit. Walt Disney, Sonny Bono, and all the rest of the rich sunsabitches who have pushed for existing copyright law should all be stood up in front of a firing squad, and shot randomly. And, no, I don't care how many of the bastards are dead - we can dig their asses up and desecrate their bodies..
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Tuesday May 31 2016, @10:18PM
How many times can you sample 2-seconds did they say? ;-)
This should mean 66 artists can sample 2-seconds and then someone can point out which ones did that so that people can sample the artistic samplers and concatenate that into some other artistic collage of 2-second samples.. 2-seconds for the win! :P
Can one artist be many artists? or does one need a split personality disorder for that? I am many artist(s)..
(Kraftwerk - Metall auf Metall 1977 is 131 seconds long)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Tuesday May 31 2016, @10:44PM
It does seem like a pretty loose ruling, but presumably it lost something in translation from German being filtered through the bias at dw,com.
Still, two seconds seems pretty small, but once you listen to "Metall auf Metall" [youtube.com] you realize it too was composed of looping 2 cuts ad nausium. So the two seconds sampled probably contained a significant portion of the Metall.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 01 2016, @03:40AM
"Metall auf Metall" you realize it too was composed of looping 2 cuts ad nausium.
in which case it might count as a parody in US law? ;)
(Score: 3, Touché) by arslan on Tuesday May 31 2016, @11:13PM
So Germany considers Vanilla Ice an artist...?!!!??!!!!!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by butthurt on Wednesday June 01 2016, @12:05AM
Spin.com has an article [spin.com] with links to the songs. I haven't managed to listen to the version of the Sabrina Setlur song that they link to.
When I downloaded the Kraftwerk song [youtube.com] and the Sabrina Setlur song [youtube.com] and listened in a cursory and impatient manner, skipping through them, it wasn't apparent to me that the latter has a looping sample from the former. I'm not saying that it doesn't, just that the songs, superficially, sound like distinct works (transformative use).
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Wednesday June 01 2016, @12:07AM
Oops, "I haven't managed to listen to the version of the Sabrina Setlur song that they link to" should be omitted.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 01 2016, @12:52AM
The Sabrina Setlur song you linked to is not the infringing one. The infringing song is http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2zo2q_sabrina-setlur-nur-mir_music [dailymotion.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Wednesday June 01 2016, @01:04AM
I do admit that I'm a huge fan of Kraftwerk. So I'm all for them, or Ralf, getting all the money - they got a fair share from me already with a couple of decades worth of concerts, lp:s, cd:s etc. While it might seem somewhat petty that you can't take two seconds of something I do understand that you have to stand up for your work if you want to retain copyright and ownership.
With that in mind this could set a somewhat odd precedent. If it was ok for Pelham to sample but others in the past that sampled such as Afrika Bambaataa (Planet Rock) had to pay for sampling Trans-Europe Express and Numbers back in the 80's; and he didn't even sample as we know it today - I think their claim was that they just recreated the song or patterns and recorded that. Afrika Bambaataa is hardly the only one either - the combo of Trans-Europe Express and Numbers have been sampled a lot of times. Kraftwerk gets paid. So why on earth shouldn't Pelham pay? What makes his sampling so special? The ruling seems somewhat problematic. After all what is "marginal"? Just how much can you sample (or take from any other work - I guess it doesn't have to be music) and still claim it's yours and not pay royalties? Two seconds is apparently fine, what about three? Could I take any song and just split it up into little 1 second segments and then just chain them together and not pay since it's not a song but just one really long string of samples.
12 years in court for a 2 seconds sample. That will be some very expensive seconds of music and I doubt the clock is going to stop here.
https://books.google.com/books?id=9fJCAJ-UqRYC&pg=PT305&dq=%22planet+rock%22+kraftwerk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=kzbTUIuuF8X2qwGLuoHABQ&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22planet%20rock%22%20kraftwerk&f=false [google.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 01 2016, @07:38AM
The answer to all of your questions is that this was entirely decided in a German court in a case between two German artists. If you had an American artist in the mix the RIAA et al would have swooped in a stirred the shit like you wouldn't believe. Given that they were excluded from jurisdiction and GEMA (German RIAA) wasn't heavily involved this ruling isn't very surprising.
Cui bono. Cui bono. Cui bono.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 01 2016, @12:04PM
In the USA they ruled the other way and basically destroyed the sampled music genre. Now every sample must be licensed, and in some cases there are copyrights over individual notes -- there have been disputes over taking a note from one synthesizer and using it in another.
Meanwhile, it's a rite of passage to sample the Amen Break in all Pop music, (18) [youtube.com] it's the most sampled and most important 6 second audio sample in the world but the original creator is not some rich asshole so there have been no lawsuits over the B side track called Amen Brother by The Winstons upon which entire musical genres are based on, and the original creator makes no money from royalties.
Copyright Criminals (56min) [youtube.com] is a documentary about how the Copyright Industry is suppressing the Sampling / DJ remix culture.
Today in the US, UK (and soon the world via the TPP, TTIP, and other international treaties), you're supposed to only use samples that you have licenses for, but many famous artists protest and do it anyway. Daft Punk, for example, made it big with his Discovery album which has a song called One More Time in which the Amen Brother track was heavily sampled. Daft Punk publicly denies he sampled the track, but here is a video which creates an exact reconstruction of the intro loop for One More Time (7min) [youtube.com] via sampling and warping the Amen Brother track (from which comes the literally infamous "Amen Break").
Many artists sneak in samples without licensing them to protest the ridiculous state of copyright law.