Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with text Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, guys, and welcome to
Speaker 1: text Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland, and I've got
Speaker 1: some rather unusual audio i'd like you to listen to.
Speaker 1: And uh, do you know how many time zones there
Speaker 1: are in the Soviet Union? And about power? We've got
Speaker 1: so much power now, do you know how many time
Speaker 1: zones there are in the Soviet Union. We've got so
Speaker 1: much power. Now, that's ridiculous. Do you know how many
Speaker 1: time zones there are in the Soviet Union? Power? And
Speaker 1: all that that's power. We've got so much power. That's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: We have power, power and power power. What you're hearing
Speaker 1: is the work of a performance group called Negative Land.
Speaker 1: The band creates interesting sounds from accommodation of electronics, musical instruments,
Speaker 1: and an enormous library of prerecorded audio from sources as
Speaker 1: diversus political speeches to music numbers to old television commercial
Speaker 1: Guess what I spoke with Mark Hustler, one of the
Speaker 1: founding members of Negative Land. Our conversation lasted for more
Speaker 1: than two hours, and we talked about topics like art, music,
Speaker 1: intellectual property, and more. Well, this episode has highlights from
Speaker 1: that conversation. I really learned a lot, and the first
Speaker 1: thing I wanted to know was how Mark got interested
Speaker 1: in this type of art in the first place. I
Speaker 1: was really into all kinds of music as a teenager,
Speaker 1: and there was just some kind of record that I
Speaker 1: wanted to hear that didn't seem to exist. And so
Speaker 1: at some point, when I was sixteen or seventeen, you know,
Speaker 1: I said, well, I want to let's make We're gonna
Speaker 1: make that record, and that's who we did, and it
Speaker 1: came out when I was still in high school. The
Speaker 1: we in this case was Mark Hustler and Richard Lyons.
Speaker 1: Others would join Negative Land over the years, including Don Joyce,
Speaker 1: who hosts the band's weekly radio show, and Ian Allen,
Speaker 1: who passed away in early The group's membership changed many
Speaker 1: times throughout its existence, and each member contributed a unique perspective.
Speaker 1: The band has always been about experimentation. You've got a
Speaker 1: good beginning, God meers and trial and era. It's just
Speaker 1: the pens again. I'm breaking the records over radio. We've
Speaker 1: been around an extremely long time. I've actually known the
Speaker 1: guys in the group for thirty six years. Our first
Speaker 1: record came out of night and for some reason which
Speaker 1: I don't really quite understand, we all just love strange, weird,
Speaker 1: funny noises and found things and reusing stuff in ways
Speaker 1: they weren't intended to be used. And so our very
Speaker 1: first recordings were making tape loops, so you could cut
Speaker 1: real to real recording tape and stick one end to
Speaker 1: the other and they repeat over and over again, you know,
Speaker 1: an echo. And you could stick pieces of metal into
Speaker 1: a guitar and make the guitar string sound all strange.
Speaker 1: And we were recording things off the TV and radio
Speaker 1: and our parents, you know, making in the kitchen and
Speaker 1: the sound of the our dog barking outside, and all
Speaker 1: this stuff made its way into our into our recorded work,
Speaker 1: and it was kind of surreal data, coufy collage. We
Speaker 1: also put in beats and sometimes sang little songs, and
Speaker 1: it had a somewhat pop kind of sensibility to it
Speaker 1: in a way, in a screwy sort of way, one
Speaker 1: too stupid, great or dumb five six idiotics. The experiments
Speaker 1: would evolve into projects, and while the tools of the
Speaker 1: band used to create their sounds would change, the medium
Speaker 1: in which they worked would remain sound collage. Collage is
Speaker 1: a medium that I think is one of the easiest
Speaker 1: art forms in the world, whether it was sound or
Speaker 1: film or visual art, to do something really crappy. It's
Speaker 1: really easy to do collage and just have it be
Speaker 1: really mediocre. And I but to to to really get
Speaker 1: it to where it's it's it's at a level that
Speaker 1: we think it's, you know, our our standard. You know.
Speaker 1: It requires a lot of work and thinking about it.
Speaker 1: And we've had lots of pieces that get to a point,
Speaker 1: but they're just not there yet, you know, and we
Speaker 1: sit on them for six months or even a year
Speaker 1: later we'll go back. In fact, the band might sit
Speaker 1: on a piece for decades. One piece Negative Land recently
Speaker 1: revisited is a work called Like Cattle Act the Gun
Speaker 1: by the late Vian Well. I was thinking of a
Speaker 1: Cadillac Cadillac got Wreck, Cadillac Catillac, Cadillac Cadillac, Cadillac, La Cadillac,
Speaker 1: Lack Cadillac Cadillac, Cadillac, Cadillac Cadillac Cadillac, La Cadillac, Lack,
Speaker 1: Cadillac Catillac. Alan first worked on the piece back in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties. Before his death, Alan gave his blessing
Speaker 1: to Negative Land to revisit and finish the recording. Alan
Speaker 1: was also instrumental in shaping the band's cultural and social perspectives.
Speaker 1: Before long, the band was using its quirky techniques not
Speaker 1: just to make interesting sounds, but to provide commentary on
Speaker 1: various issues. It just kept being really interesting that you
Speaker 1: could use collage, you know, to talk about stuff in
Speaker 1: this way that invited the listener to work on figuring
Speaker 1: out what you were getting at into some degree. You know,
Speaker 1: we don't spell everything out, but we try to do
Speaker 1: something where it's both about stuff, but there's some thing
Speaker 1: about it. It's open enough that you're engaged and you're
Speaker 1: drawn in and you're trying to work with it, and
Speaker 1: hopefully that's the place where you know, you get something
Speaker 1: out of it that's interesting and it's and different for
Speaker 1: every person who hears it. And because so many of
Speaker 1: the sounds Negative Land uses in its collage work are
Speaker 1: taken from other sources, you can't just assume that what
Speaker 1: you're hearing and what the band itself thinks are necessarily
Speaker 1: the same thing. While we do sometimes actually write song
Speaker 1: lyrics and do songs, most of the spoken word you
Speaker 1: hear in our work is appropriated in collage. So it's
Speaker 1: not us saying it. We're not. It is not the
Speaker 1: author's voice you're hearing it. It's what we chose to use.
Speaker 1: Well did we choose to use it? Because we agree
Speaker 1: with it? We disagree with it. We like it and
Speaker 1: we hate it. We think it's funny, stupid, smart, sad, creepy, annoying,
Speaker 1: you know, surreal, and usually for negative Land, will the
Speaker 1: things we pick to you is will usually be something
Speaker 1: that will be of many of those things all at
Speaker 1: the same time. Listen, this is all that shouting, all
Speaker 1: that noise. Ian Allen's involvement would lead to another pivotal
Speaker 1: moment in negative lands development, meeting Don Joyce. Joyce is
Speaker 1: a radio DJ who not only joined Negative Land, but
Speaker 1: also helped create a venue for the group to express
Speaker 1: themselves to a larger audience. It's called Over the Edge
Speaker 1: for Negative Land. One of the kind of laboratories for
Speaker 1: us to work on new ideas and try out new
Speaker 1: stuff is our weekly radio show. It's called Over the Edge.
Speaker 1: It's been on, it's still on to this day, and
Speaker 1: it's three hours of audio collage that's always about a
Speaker 1: theme of some sort or another, and Negative Land member
Speaker 1: Don Joyce is the one who has been kind of
Speaker 1: the steward of keeping that flame alive all these years.
Speaker 1: He uses old radio station cart machines. If any of
Speaker 1: you out there are radio makers or listeners are old
Speaker 1: enough to know, he uses old school dead analog technology
Speaker 1: to play dude live cut ups stuff on the air. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we get to try out stuff and occasionally ideas of
Speaker 1: emerge from that that we think are good enough to
Speaker 1: take out and turn into studio recordings or maybe a
Speaker 1: live show. And for those Negative Land fans who want
Speaker 1: to explore that material, band member Tom Maloney has been
Speaker 1: hard at work transferring files to archive dot org so
Speaker 1: that the thousands of hours of programming will become available
Speaker 1: to anyone with an Internet connection. It's a mind blowingly
Speaker 1: huge amount of work that will be available for free.
Speaker 1: As any artist will tell you, art doesn't exist in
Speaker 1: a vacuum. Art doesn't just reflect the world around us.
Speaker 1: It comments on that world. We see elements of the
Speaker 1: artists thoughts and feelings within his or her art. And
Speaker 1: while you might think that creating a collage out of
Speaker 1: appropriate material limits and artists ability to comment upon the world,
Speaker 1: you'd be wrong. As Mark explained to me, collage is
Speaker 1: just another artistic medium, not significantly different from any other
Speaker 1: means of artistic expression. Basically, to me, our work is
Speaker 1: no different than somebody lives in a cave ten thousand
Speaker 1: years ago who takes a stick out of the fire
Speaker 1: and uses the burnt end to draw on the cave
Speaker 1: wall what's outside of his cave, which could be buffalo
Speaker 1: or a mammoth, you know. So that's no different than
Speaker 1: me taking a computer, a tape deck, a cassette deck,
Speaker 1: a real tool, chape recorder, a digital capturing device, and
Speaker 1: I'm capturing the world around me that I live in
Speaker 1: the world. It's in my home, the world it's outside
Speaker 1: my door. And that world is not just walls and
Speaker 1: furniture and trees and blue sky and buildings. It's advertisements,
Speaker 1: it's logos, it's pop songs, it's media absolutely everywhere you go.
Speaker 1: And it's great, that's com and so negative lands are
Speaker 1: often comments on these facets of life, the way messages
Speaker 1: are communicated to us and how we are expected to
Speaker 1: react to them. Asciated, and there's another conversation happening as well,
Speaker 1: one about ideas ownership and the peculiar institution has changed
Speaker 1: the way we treat concepts. Corporations who are immortal, who
Speaker 1: now have these ideas of intellectual property. They own this stuff,
Speaker 1: so they want to profit from it. They've privatized it.
Speaker 1: They've all said, you can consume it, will sell it
Speaker 1: to you, but don't ever think of messing with it.
Speaker 1: Don't think about doing anything with it, because we own
Speaker 1: it our property. And I'm kind of saying, well, no,
Speaker 1: it's not just your property, because it's inside my head.
Speaker 1: You know, it's in my brain, So I'm gonna I
Speaker 1: think I'm allowed to do things that have been inserted
Speaker 1: into my brain. You know, I don't want to see
Speaker 1: your giant pepsi billboard every time I drive into town,
Speaker 1: but I do, so you know, yes, I'm going to
Speaker 1: take some of your pepsi ad and I'm going to
Speaker 1: cut it up and I'm gonna use it in something
Speaker 1: that maybe makes fun of you. And in this case,
Speaker 1: it was a project negative landid called Dyspepsi. Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully, hopefully, hopefully,
Speaker 1: what you're compiling is going to be a positive reflection
Speaker 1: of for what PEPSI is all about. And the makers
Speaker 1: of their advertising. So I think it's fair to say
Speaker 1: that if that's all the case. Uh yeah, this is
Speaker 1: part of the marketing spin of Pepsi calif. One of
Speaker 1: my favorite pieces by the band involves a surreal, absurd
Speaker 1: radio call in show. This is Pennywise, Joan, You're next,
Speaker 1: nice Sue, How can I help Jem? I really have
Speaker 1: a problem impulse buying. I never have money left for anything.
Speaker 1: That's a piece of truth and advertising, and that was
Speaker 1: where we were able to take it so that every
Speaker 1: time the talk show host hung up on the caller
Speaker 1: to go to the next caller, it was the same
Speaker 1: caller over again and over again because of how we
Speaker 1: were able to edit it together and that was all done.
Speaker 1: We've always used to call those edits razor takes, because
Speaker 1: those were done with analog, real to real recordiers, and
Speaker 1: we would cut them with a razor blake, you know,
Speaker 1: to rearrange those things. Okay, let's go to line four.
Speaker 1: This is Pennywise. I'm Jim Phillips and your name is Bob. Hi, Bob,
Speaker 1: what can I do for you? I get confused by
Speaker 1: all the claims main commercials. This is Pennywise. Line stakes
Speaker 1: you're on and your name is. I think it definitely
Speaker 1: kind of grabs your attention. There's a real rhythm, there's
Speaker 1: a real musicality to the way the voice has been
Speaker 1: is the repeats itself and folds back in on itself.
Speaker 1: But but also it gets that something that actually is
Speaker 1: a real thing, which is about how advertising impacts us
Speaker 1: and how advertisers maybe aren't telling you the truth, you know.
Speaker 1: And I don't think it's didactic. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: having handed I don't think it's like a we are
Speaker 1: we're wagging wagging our finger at you about the subject.
Speaker 1: But it does kind of get get it out there.
Speaker 1: It really hit me that what Mark and Negative Land
Speaker 1: are doing is incredibly challenging. Anyone can grab a dozen
Speaker 1: or so clips of sound and edit them together to
Speaker 1: make something new, but to create something that has a
Speaker 1: sense of musical rhythm that can be entertaining and that
Speaker 1: can also be a comment on our culture is extraordinary.
Speaker 1: It explains how the group can work on a project
Speaker 1: for years before it's ready to be released. Once it
Speaker 1: is released, that work can get a lot of attention.
Speaker 1: Negative Land is no stranger to criticism, controversy, or even
Speaker 1: legal action. In fact, one of their most famous works
Speaker 1: landed the group in legal trouble for several years. But
Speaker 1: it all started out innocently enough. A fan at a
Speaker 1: show of ours handed as a cassette and uh at
Speaker 1: a show that we were partying in Portland, Oregon, and
Speaker 1: it had outtakes of top for D d J. Casey
Speaker 1: Cason having a really bad day in the studio. Casey Cayson,
Speaker 1: as you know, just passed away this summer, and I
Speaker 1: think the engineer's revenge was to get these tapes out
Speaker 1: to some people in the public via cassette. Now, back then,
Speaker 1: the Internet didn't exist, and so this stuff had a
Speaker 1: very very limited audience of just people sharing this stuff.
Speaker 1: And I think if it had come out now, we
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been inspired to make that record that we made,
Speaker 1: because everyone would have had it. But we had something
Speaker 1: that was kind of seemed very precious, you know, and
Speaker 1: and like, you know, and and rare. And it was
Speaker 1: also you know, Peter pants funny and just so inspiring.
Speaker 1: And he was trying to do a dedication with family's
Speaker 1: dead dog, and he was trying to introduce a new
Speaker 1: song by a band. He got the name of their
Speaker 1: country origin incorrect, but a band who's been around as
Speaker 1: long as Negative Land has a group, You Too. That's
Speaker 1: the letter you and the New World Too. The fore
Speaker 1: Man band features Adams Clayton on bab Larry Moren on drums,
Speaker 1: Dave Evan and nickname the Edge. This is nobody cares.
Speaker 1: These guys are in England and we give it. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of waste. The name that don't mean Italy.
Speaker 1: We ended up using doing a kind of a weird
Speaker 1: mutated cover version of a YouTube song. We had Negative
Speaker 1: Land member David Wills the Weatherman, do his own dramatic
Speaker 1: reinterpretation of Bono's lyrics. We used the casey caseum stuff.
Speaker 1: The song was I still found what I'm looking for
Speaker 1: and kind of at the end when we were deciding
Speaker 1: how to present it, we ended up deciding to call
Speaker 1: the whole thing you Too by Negative Land, And originally
Speaker 1: it was actually gonna be you with the dash between
Speaker 1: the U and the two, because that's actually how the you.
Speaker 1: That's as slight variation on You two's name, which has
Speaker 1: no dash, and the YouTube is the airplane, the spy
Speaker 1: plane that was shot down and it's where you two
Speaker 1: stole their name from. In the course of designing the
Speaker 1: whole thing, our graphic designer we were working with a
Speaker 1: guy named Randall Hunting. Uh. He suggested that we could
Speaker 1: make the Uh he says, well, what am I making
Speaker 1: the airplane of the YouTube airplane itself, which we were
Speaker 1: using as part of the cover design. What about making
Speaker 1: that the dash? And how about we could make the
Speaker 1: you two really huge and negative Land really small. I
Speaker 1: think he was just kind of joking, you know, like
Speaker 1: because of course you wouldn't really do that, because that
Speaker 1: would be insane, right. But of course when we saw it,
Speaker 1: we said, that's great genius, you know, yes, that's what
Speaker 1: we're gonna do. This is even better. We're gonna make
Speaker 1: it look like something it isn't. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: this particularly mischievous release would have a long lasting effect
Speaker 1: on the group. It didn't take long for you Two's
Speaker 1: management to respond, and it came out in two weeks
Speaker 1: after it came out, or I think maybe it was
Speaker 1: less maybe ten days after it came out. YouTube's record
Speaker 1: label and their publisher, uh, at the instigation of You
Speaker 1: Two's manager. We've only found that out about fifteen years later.
Speaker 1: But yeah, they suit us for copyright infringement, trademark infringement. Uh,
Speaker 1: it has lots of swearing on it, courtesy of Casey Cason.
Speaker 1: So they suits for defamation of character for associating this
Speaker 1: foul language with the clean cut image of the band
Speaker 1: you two. They sued us for failure to get a
Speaker 1: license to do a cover version of a song because
Speaker 1: we change the lyrics. You can do a cover version
Speaker 1: and just pay a licensing fee, but if you change
Speaker 1: the lyrics, you have to get permission. And they also
Speaker 1: suit us for fraud, saying it was a get rich
Speaker 1: quick scheme intended to du millions of innocent YouTube fans
Speaker 1: into you know, buying this record so we could make
Speaker 1: you know, lots of money, so pay through everything we
Speaker 1: could think of at us, we had to really look
Speaker 1: at what we were doing, even more deeply than we
Speaker 1: ever had, you know, and really examine if it was
Speaker 1: worth the fight. You know, do we really want to
Speaker 1: destroy our lives and lose at the tiny bit of
Speaker 1: money we might be making. And we you know, we
Speaker 1: were gonna lose a lot by choosing to fight it,
Speaker 1: but we we really felt like it was you know,
Speaker 1: it was it was a fight that needed to happen
Speaker 1: because at the time, there was nobody making any smart,
Speaker 1: thoughtful cultural arguments about this from a progressive point of view.
Speaker 1: It was just lawyers, and it was just so it
Speaker 1: was just all very conservative, you know, thinking around money,
Speaker 1: profit in ownership in ways that just were culturally very
Speaker 1: very smart. And we've been headed this amazing opportunity because
Speaker 1: we've been has sued on behalf of the largest rock
Speaker 1: band on the planet Earth. So we thought, well, maybe
Speaker 1: we could use as a platform to talk about this stuff.
Speaker 1: And that turned into an odyssey that took up the
Speaker 1: next four or five years of all of our lives.
Speaker 1: I could say literally every day of my life for
Speaker 1: the next four or five years, literally, I was dealing
Speaker 1: with some aspect of it. The FBI got involved, there
Speaker 1: were threats made against Casey. We tricked you Tube's guitarist,
Speaker 1: The Edge, into an interview he didn't know we were anyway,
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff. It's all documented in a book
Speaker 1: we put out called Fair Use The Story of the
Speaker 1: Letter You in the numeral two, which actually shows you
Speaker 1: the behind the scenes facts. Is lawsuits, press releases, phone calls, transcriptions,
Speaker 1: everything you're never supposed to see when these cases settled
Speaker 1: out of court. Is all there in the book in
Speaker 1: short chapters, so it makes good bathroom reading. Ultimately, the
Speaker 1: band settled out of court and their album was withdrawn,
Speaker 1: but that was only the beginning of the battle. Negative
Speaker 1: Land only settled because there was literally no way for
Speaker 1: the group to afford to fight the charges in court.
Speaker 1: They wished to argue that their appropriation fell under fair use,
Speaker 1: that they were creating art from appropriation the same way
Speaker 1: that other artists had for years. Andy Warhol's famous works
Speaker 1: were commentaries on consumerism and pop culture. How could that
Speaker 1: instance be okay? But Negative lands work be considered illegal?
Speaker 1: The experience with you two ended up having the opposite
Speaker 1: effect on the band then what was intended. It's been
Speaker 1: endlessly fascinating and then we got, you know, actually sumed
Speaker 1: for doing it. It politicizes more. It actually made us
Speaker 1: kind of bear down on wanting being more committed to
Speaker 1: doing this work than ever before. And uh, it's certainly
Speaker 1: kept it really really interesting. While Negative Land has always
Speaker 1: been interested in culture and consumerism, the legal proceedings brought
Speaker 1: to light the complicated matter of copyright and fair use,
Speaker 1: which became a new focus for mark Copy Right is
Speaker 1: meant to protect the owner of an original work of authorship.
Speaker 1: In the United States, it's defined as such a work
Speaker 1: quote fixed in a tangible medium of expression end quote.
Speaker 1: It covers all works, whether published or unpublished. Now, it
Speaker 1: doesn't protect facts ideas methods of operation. Some of those
Speaker 1: can be protected under other means, like trademarks or patents.
Speaker 1: As soon as you have your original work in a
Speaker 1: fixed tangible form, it's protected by copyright. That tangible form
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be a piece of paper, it can
Speaker 1: be code. The law provides for protection of works that
Speaker 1: require a machine or device in order for someone to
Speaker 1: see or experience it. Registering a copyright is a way
Speaker 1: of ensuring protection of your work. Technically, your work is
Speaker 1: protected even without registration, but registering creates an official legal
Speaker 1: document that establishes your authorship in case you should ever
Speaker 1: have to pursue a claim of infringement against someone else.
Speaker 1: If you were to create an original work but not
Speaker 1: register the copyright, it's possible someone else could steal your
Speaker 1: work and register it under his or her own name,
Speaker 1: making a claim of ownership more complicated. The concept of
Speaker 1: copyright dates all the way back to seventeen ten and
Speaker 1: it's changed significantly over the years. Yeah, it was like
Speaker 1: twelve thirteen, fourteen years the Statute of Queen Anne. And
Speaker 1: whenever I do lectures about this, which I've done quite
Speaker 1: a few, it's very rare that people actually know this,
Speaker 1: because it sounds shocking to hear it now, because copyright
Speaker 1: nowadays last for the life of the creator. Plus it's
Speaker 1: seventy years seventy two, seventy three. The Statute of Anne
Speaker 1: establishes copyright lasting fourteen years for new unpublished works, works
Speaker 1: that had already been published, and we're under ownership of
Speaker 1: some party or another, we're granted twenty one years of protection.
Speaker 1: Ever since copyright was established in British law, people and
Speaker 1: entities have attempted to expand its protection. According to Mark,
Speaker 1: this trend has become truly destructive, largely due to the
Speaker 1: rise of a particular type of institution, this very strange
Speaker 1: creature called the corporation. And we've decided to give corporation
Speaker 1: these rights as if they're human. We give them free
Speaker 1: speech rights. What I would argue has led to the
Speaker 1: total destruction of democracy in this country. But we we
Speaker 1: give them all these the perks and privileges of being
Speaker 1: a human being, none of the responsibilities. And you know,
Speaker 1: when a corporation does things that lead to the deaths
Speaker 1: of thousands of people, we we don't we don't seem
Speaker 1: to give the corporation the death penalty unfortunately. But because
Speaker 1: corporations are immortal, in fact, they're not like anything human
Speaker 1: at all. They from their perspective, understandably they want to
Speaker 1: profit from their property forever. And since we've decided that
Speaker 1: ideas are property, intellectual property, you know, it all sort
Speaker 1: of it also, you can see how this all starts
Speaker 1: to play out in this very bizarre way, um that
Speaker 1: eventually goes kind of off the rails, you know, at
Speaker 1: this point. And that's kind of what what Negative Land
Speaker 1: got drawn into was. Because our work does appropriate things
Speaker 1: and makes this collage and to to talk about the
Speaker 1: culture and the country in the world we live in,
Speaker 1: we found that our work was kind of colliding, you know,
Speaker 1: head first into these these these ideas about copyright, which
Speaker 1: had just become completely crazy, you know, just ridiculous. I
Speaker 1: agree with a lot of what Mark saying. He and
Speaker 1: I both acknowledge that copyright has an important role. People
Speaker 1: who create original works should have some measure of protection
Speaker 1: so that they can receive compensation for their work. A
Speaker 1: world without copyright could be chaotic and unfair, but so
Speaker 1: can a world with copyright that extends well beyond what
Speaker 1: its creators intended. Remember when I said that copyright protection
Speaker 1: originally only lasted fourteen years for new works, the story
Speaker 1: has changed significantly today in the United States, a new
Speaker 1: original work last the life of the author, plus an
Speaker 1: additional seventy years. This has had enormous implications and the publishing, music,
Speaker 1: and artistic spheres. It's a balancing act. And that's what
Speaker 1: kind of has been lost in a lot of the
Speaker 1: conversation about all this is that it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: treated like it's an omnipotent property right of some sort.
Speaker 1: And that's why I was saying that when copyright first began,
Speaker 1: it was an incredibly short period of time. But but
Speaker 1: the this was not some radical idea that would be
Speaker 1: that short. In fact, it was that that was a
Speaker 1: conservative idea, you know, that was that seemed long enough,
Speaker 1: you know, to give you a chance to profit from
Speaker 1: your your creativity. And I should also add that just
Speaker 1: the very idea of taking the word intellectual and property
Speaker 1: and jamming them into each other to make one expression
Speaker 1: is very strange when you think about it, that we've
Speaker 1: decided that ideas are things. You know. It's it's an
Speaker 1: incredibly abstract idea and it and it only is true
Speaker 1: because we've all just sort of agreed that it's true.
Speaker 1: Though in the case of negative Land, we decided that
Speaker 1: we didn't really like that particular hallucination and we wanted
Speaker 1: to a nord A lot. This shift toward extending protection
Speaker 1: beyond the life of the creator has had other consequences
Speaker 1: as well. Corporations that own intellectual property go to great
Speaker 1: links to protect that property. If there's a prospect of
Speaker 1: generating revenue off of an original work, it's worth investigating
Speaker 1: how to protect it. This leads to ideas like digital
Speaker 1: rights management, which is intended to provide protection to corporations,
Speaker 1: but often has the unintended consequence of negatively impacting the
Speaker 1: honest consumer more than any pirate. As Mark explains, this
Speaker 1: is a problem that the industry itself is painfully aware
Speaker 1: of and yet isn't sure how to change. I was
Speaker 1: actually at a conference on copyright law in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: And I remember speaking to somebody who was from the
Speaker 1: r I double a. I said, this is what do
Speaker 1: you guys talk about behind closed doors? You know, isn't
Speaker 1: it kind of bizarre that you're basically taking legal action
Speaker 1: again at your customers? I mean, you don't you you
Speaker 1: realize that every fourteen year old kid growing up basically
Speaker 1: hates you, you know, just knows the cat is out
Speaker 1: of the bag about how absolutely ugly your business is
Speaker 1: and how you take advantage of artists, etcetera, etcetera. He
Speaker 1: kind of sheepishly kind of said, well, yeah, we kind
Speaker 1: of look at it like chemotherapy, and I just hope
Speaker 1: that that the patient doesn't completely die, you know, during
Speaker 1: given the treatment that we're giving it. You know. But yes,
Speaker 1: we're perfectly aware that this just comes off really horribly,
Speaker 1: you know, but we don't know what else to do.
Speaker 1: As Mark points out, the concepts of ownership are deeply
Speaker 1: ingrained in culture and economic models. That's not to say
Speaker 1: ownership is bad, but it does complicate matters, particularly when
Speaker 1: we extend the concept of ownership to institutions that could
Speaker 1: potentially live forever. But there are limits to copyright, and
Speaker 1: not just in how long protection lasts. You don't have
Speaker 1: to wait until the work goes into public domain before
Speaker 1: you can talk about it in some other format. For example,
Speaker 1: This brings up the concept of fair use. Hey, well,
Speaker 1: here's an example. Anyone listening, I'm sure you've read a
Speaker 1: review of a book or seen a review of a
Speaker 1: movie on your television or digital device. And that's where
Speaker 1: fair use comes into play. When you review that, you
Speaker 1: don't have to get permission to use a clip of
Speaker 1: the film, You don't have to get permission to excerpt
Speaker 1: from the book. That's considered fair use. You were using
Speaker 1: someone else's intellectual property within your intellectual property to talk
Speaker 1: about that other intellectual property now, and so fair use
Speaker 1: was trying to acknowledge that, and fairies had four factors
Speaker 1: to it. But the first one, I think was you know,
Speaker 1: are you are you using any bit of someone else's
Speaker 1: intellctual property? The next one was you know how much
Speaker 1: of it are you using? And in what way are
Speaker 1: you are? Are you not transforming it in some way
Speaker 1: or changing it? And what is the context in which
Speaker 1: it is reappearing? Is it in a different medium, is
Speaker 1: it in a different market? Could there be some confusion
Speaker 1: between what you've done in the original in some way?
Speaker 1: So there's these different factors that are supposed to be
Speaker 1: weighed when the courts are looking at these things, And
Speaker 1: for many, many years, the courts didn't look at all
Speaker 1: four factors. They just looked at the first one. Did
Speaker 1: you use some of it? Well, if you did, then
Speaker 1: you're a thief and you lose, you know, and you're
Speaker 1: you know, you're you're you're the bad guy here. And
Speaker 1: for many, many years, that's kind of how the courts
Speaker 1: look at things, and that's why there's a lot of
Speaker 1: really bad legal decisions that have been made over the years.
Speaker 1: Um So the laws haven't changed, you know. Unfortunately, we
Speaker 1: haven't seen any any smart, progressive legal changes to intellectual
Speaker 1: property law. There haven't been any cases that have gone
Speaker 1: through the court systems to really do that in a
Speaker 1: long long time. And this is a big problem. Very
Speaker 1: use is something that ends up being decided in a
Speaker 1: court on a case by case basis. Very use is
Speaker 1: a defense. There's no codified set of rules that lets
Speaker 1: you create a checklist to make sure you won't be food.
Speaker 1: You could create a work that sites of pre existing
Speaker 1: piece owned by someone else and follow all the rules
Speaker 1: and still get sued. You might eventually win that court case,
Speaker 1: but it's going to cost you just to be involved.
Speaker 1: Some entities like YouTube respond to copyright infringement notices by
Speaker 1: immediately taking down the infringing material. Sometimes this happens automatically,
Speaker 1: and the content owner has to flip a virtual switch
Speaker 1: to allow the other video to go back up online.
Speaker 1: So if you create a video series in which you
Speaker 1: critique films or television or some other form of media,
Speaker 1: you could run into the issue of having your work
Speaker 1: taken down. Even if you're following the rules. You could
Speaker 1: get that video restored if it meets fair use criteria,
Speaker 1: but it takes a lot of effort. If all original
Speaker 1: works were truly original, perhaps I would see this entire
Speaker 1: system as being tough but fair. But the truth is
Speaker 1: no work is truly original. Creators have influences. Art doesn't
Speaker 1: bloom spontaneously in a vacuum. The real question is to
Speaker 1: what extent does a work stand up on its own
Speaker 1: versus relying upon the pre existing work that influenced it.
Speaker 1: That's not an easy or an expensive question to answer.
Speaker 1: It is deprogram from the universal media netted well as
Speaker 1: for Negative Land, they released a new album late in
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen called It's All in your Head. It's
Speaker 1: a college piece that examines religious beliefs, not necessarily specific beliefs,
Speaker 1: but why we believe things in the first place. You're
Speaker 1: listening to It's All in your Head FM monotheism but
Speaker 1: in stereo. The project was born out of discussions within
Speaker 1: Negative Land itself. None of us had ever talked to
Speaker 1: each other about our religious beliefs. I mean, I've known
Speaker 1: these guys, some of them since i was a teenager.
Speaker 1: And we had to work all that out because in fact,
Speaker 1: we don't all agree. You know, there's atheists, there's a NaSTA,
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's different perspectives on this, and we
Speaker 1: had to be sure that was all reflection in the
Speaker 1: work as well. Um, So that that was another really
Speaker 1: interesting kind of behind the scenes part of creating the
Speaker 1: whole thing. So we would have huge debates over single
Speaker 1: words that we're being used in it. You know, one
Speaker 1: sentence that what is it going to be there, We're
Speaker 1: gonna cut it out, you know, typical just super o
Speaker 1: c D negative lanned, you know, obsesso, you know, microscopic
Speaker 1: thinking that we do the poetry. We reached to arts
Speaker 1: to try to begin to articulate what those things are.
Speaker 1: And I think that we have to acknowledge that we're
Speaker 1: in this realm when we begin to talk about this,
Speaker 1: and if we take the symbols and don't acknowledge that
Speaker 1: they're symbols, then we get into this trouble. The album
Speaker 1: is organized on a pair of c ds referred to
Speaker 1: as acts. If you buy the physical album, your packaging
Speaker 1: is a King James version of the Bible. There was
Speaker 1: a limited edition version packaged in copies of the Kuran,
Speaker 1: but it has since sold out. While the album takes
Speaker 1: a critical look at belief systems, it also avoids passing judgment.
Speaker 1: Sections of the album explore ideas such as how the
Speaker 1: brain processes information to how cultures define and interpret beliefs.
Speaker 1: Mark explains why the group chose to package the album
Speaker 1: inside a Bible, but having it inside of a Bible
Speaker 1: framed it in this way that I personally just love,
Speaker 1: you know, and I think all of us just love
Speaker 1: the idea that you're using the Bible as a repurposed
Speaker 1: found object, and also anyway that the Bible is the
Speaker 1: liner notes you know to the record. I've listened to
Speaker 1: the album in full and found it provocative. There were
Speaker 1: times that it made me think, in times when I
Speaker 1: had a very strong emotional reaction to what was going
Speaker 1: on in the album. It's the sort of reaction I
Speaker 1: imagine many artists hope for when they create their works.
Speaker 1: And it marked a very different experience to listening to
Speaker 1: audio entertainment than what I'd become used to. It's rare
Speaker 1: these days that sit down to listen to an album
Speaker 1: in full. I'm more likely to listen to my entire
Speaker 1: music collection on shuffle or even a larger collection streaming
Speaker 1: online following some cryptic algorithm that supposedly anticipates what I'll
Speaker 1: want to hear next. But that's not how negative Land
Speaker 1: intends you to listen to their work. I actually when
Speaker 1: I give people copies of our of our music, and
Speaker 1: I say, you know, I know it's a lot to
Speaker 1: ask in this day and age, but wait until I
Speaker 1: don't care if it's a year from now, wait until
Speaker 1: you have an actual hour of your time to do
Speaker 1: nothing else except just listen to this thing from beginning
Speaker 1: to end. And um and I think you might enjoy it,
Speaker 1: I said, if you just have it on in the
Speaker 1: background or just listen to separate tracks. I said, it
Speaker 1: won't even make sense, it will probably even just be annoying.
Speaker 1: And so It's All in Your Head is like that.
Speaker 1: It's too complete. It's one complete work, it's got two
Speaker 1: acts to it, but it's very much designed to be
Speaker 1: listened to in its entirety. We have a huge debate
Speaker 1: about whether or not to put track points in it
Speaker 1: for for downloading and for CDs, because it kind of
Speaker 1: suggests or encourages people to put it into random shuffle play.
Speaker 1: But we also don't like the idea of trying to
Speaker 1: control someone's experience that much and just have to be
Speaker 1: one long track. Plus I know people will just break
Speaker 1: it up into tracks anyway. Negative Lands It's All on
Speaker 1: Your Head is available for purchase from their website negative
Speaker 1: land dot com. That's n E g A T I
Speaker 1: V l A n d dot com. You can also
Speaker 1: find their other work exploring all sorts of issues as
Speaker 1: well as learn more about concepts like culture jamming. I
Speaker 1: really appreciate Mark taking the time to talk with me
Speaker 1: about his career, the world of art and collage, and
Speaker 1: and how copyright law has made it difficult to provide
Speaker 1: artistic commentary on the world around us. I've also got
Speaker 1: to thank my producer Noel for putting in a ridiculous
Speaker 1: amount of work to bring all this together and for
Speaker 1: his expertise in general. As for the future, I imagine
Speaker 1: that as younger generations who have grown up with tools
Speaker 1: to create mashups and remixes grow into leadership positions, will
Speaker 1: see a shift in copyright law. Will artists went out
Speaker 1: over corporations? What do you think? Let me know by
Speaker 1: sending your thoughts to text stuff at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. Remember that you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook,
Speaker 1: and Tumblr at the handle text stuff hs W, and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon for more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com