De Minimis, Funkadelicus
Saturday, February 2nd, 2008http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbXLp2z6xL4
I was going to compare this “illegal” DangerMouse video with Jud Yalkut and Nam June Paik’s Beatles Electroniques from 1969, but unfortunately their video has been removed from YouTube. Probably the removal had nothing to do with the Beatles (the DangerMouse clip gets much more play but is still up), but with the distributors of Paik/Yalkut; avant-garde filmmakers have been particularly unfriendly to the world of digital copying, even there is obvious irony when their work takes a Beatles video as its only source material. Both artists have transformed the original material, and, in the past, that has been enough to exert their legal right to sample. But even that may not be enough in the future. Another strange bedfellow of draconian copyright lawyers is Parliament Funkadelic’s George Clinton. A few years back, his label sued an artist for using 3-notes of “Get Off Your Ass and Jam,” in a decision that created a serious challenge to notions of “fair-use” and the defense of de minimis non curat lex (the law does not concern itself with trifles). See also Grey Tuesday, UbuWeb Hall of Shame, and there are various other sites I wanted to reference, but they have since been taken down!