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: Copyfight - The Politics of IP

Why Is This Still So Goddamn Hard?

By Posted by Alan Wexelblat

Once upon a very long ago I wanted to hear a very specific song. I was at work, and was making a point to a coworker about how certain male and female voices went together. This duet was part of the point I was making, but I didn't have it at hand. Had someone said "Give me a buck and I'll give you a copy of that song you can play on your computer" I would have cheerfully handed over my USD and been pleased at the exchange.

Instead, one of my coworkers pointed me at Napster, and sure enough I had a copy of the song on my hard drive minutes later. I also had a large bucket of other music, none of which I paid for. Much of it was illegal, but not terribly interesting. I did, however, find that I could get tons of remixes, covers, and DJ mixes this way. That was interesting and I spent most of my time downloading things I couldn't have bought in almost any store.

Fast forward ten years. It's now 2009 and I still love this kind of thing. A friend recently pointed me to 8Tracks, one of many sites where DJs and folk can post mixes. Their motto, "a simple, legal way for people to share and discover music through an online mix" is just exactly what I want. Like anything new, it's very hit-or-miss. But sometimes it turns up real gems. Like La Roux - In For The Kill (Skream's Let's Get Ravey Mix). Go ahead and listen, I'll wait.

In many ways this is exactly what I like about remixes - Skream has stripped out La Roux's beautiful and eerie vocals and laid them over some interesting beats and vibrato thrums. Gone are the insipid pop bits you get with the original. I want to own this specific mix legally and, ideally, have my money compensate the artists. But once again, there's just no way to do that. I can come up with two or three ways to get the tune illegally, but none that involve the kind of "I like that I want to buy it" commercial transaction.

Maybe it's a uniquely American conceit of mine to think that I should be allowed to purchase things I like. Maybe neither the artist nor the remixer intend for this track to be sold. But set aside that specific idea; much as I respect the art-as-performance-only, I think it's pretty commonly the case that musicians and DJs want to be compensated for their work.

So why the hell is it still impossible for me to do just that?

Full post as published by Copyfight - The Politics of IP on April 13, 2009 (boomark / email).