Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host
Speaker 1: job in Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. It is time for
Speaker 1: a tech Stuff classic episode. This episode, originally published on
Speaker 1: January two thousand fifteen, is called tech Stuff Listens to
Speaker 1: Negative Land. Negative Land being a kind of outsider music group,
Speaker 1: transgressive music group, if you, If you will, also ties
Speaker 1: into topics that we've talked about recently on tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: like copyright and fair use. And I hope you enjoy
Speaker 1: how many time zones there are in the Soviet Junion.
Speaker 1: Power and all that. That's power. We've got so much power.
Speaker 1: That's ridiculous. Power, power and power. What you're hearing is
Speaker 1: the work of a performance group called Negative Land. The
Speaker 1: band creates interesting sounds from accommodation of electronics, musical instruments,
Speaker 1: and an enormous library of pre recorded audio from sources
Speaker 1: as diversus political speeches to music numbers to old television
Speaker 1: commercial guest 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 Nega of Land over the years, including
Speaker 1: Don Joyce, who hosts the band's weekly radio show, and
Speaker 1: Ian Allen, who passed away in early The group's membership
Speaker 1: changed many times throughout its existence, and each member contributed
Speaker 1: a unique perspective, and the band has always been about experimentation.
Speaker 1: You've got a good beginning list and trial and era.
Speaker 1: It's just a pend again on breaking the records of
Speaker 1: the radio. We've been around an extremely long time I've
Speaker 1: actually known the guys in the group for thirty six years.
Speaker 1: Our first record came out of Night and for some
Speaker 1: reason which I don't really quite understand, we all just
Speaker 1: love strange, weird, funny noises and found things and reusing
Speaker 1: stuff in ways they weren't intended to be used. And
Speaker 1: so our very first recordings were making tape loops, or
Speaker 1: you could cut real to real recording tape and stick
Speaker 1: one end to the other and they repeat over and
Speaker 1: over again, you know, and echo, and you could stick
Speaker 1: pieces of metal into with guitar and make the guitar
Speaker 1: string sound all strange. And we were recording things off
Speaker 1: the TV and radio and our parents, you know, baking
Speaker 1: in the kitchen and the sound of the our dog
Speaker 1: barking outside, and all this stuff made its way into
Speaker 1: our into our recorded work, and it was kind of
Speaker 1: surreal data koufy collage. We also put in beats and
Speaker 1: sometimes sang little songs, and it had a somewhat pop
Speaker 1: kind of sensibility to it in a way, in a
Speaker 1: screwy sort of way, too stupid great or dumb five
Speaker 1: six ideottics. The experiments would evolve into projects, and while
Speaker 1: the tools the band used to create their sounds would change,
Speaker 1: the medium in which they worked would remain sound collage.
Speaker 1: Collage is a medium that I think is one of
Speaker 1: the easiest art forms in the world, whether it was
Speaker 1: sound or film or visual art, to do something really crappy.
Speaker 1: It's really only easy to do collage and just have
Speaker 1: it be really mediocre. And I but to to to
Speaker 1: really get it to where it's it's it's at a
Speaker 1: level that we think meets that you know, our our standard.
Speaker 1: You know, it requires a lot of work and thinking
Speaker 1: about it. And we've had lots of pieces that get
Speaker 1: to a point, but they're just not there yet, you know,
Speaker 1: and we sit on them for six months or even
Speaker 1: a year later we'll go back. In fact, the band
Speaker 1: might sit on a piece for decades. One piece Negative
Speaker 1: Land recently revisited is a work called Like a Cattle
Speaker 1: Act the Gun by the late Well. I was thinking
Speaker 1: of a Cadillac Cadillac, got Wreck, Cadillac, Catillac, Cadillac, Cadillac, Catillac, Lack, Cadillac, Lack, Cadillac, Cadillac, Cadillac, Cadillac, Cadillac, Cadillac, Lack, Cadillac,
Speaker 1: La Cadillac, Catillac Alan First worked on the piece back
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties. Before his death, Alan gave his
Speaker 1: blessing to Negative Land to revisit and finish the recording.
Speaker 1: Alan was also instrumental in shaping the band's cultural and
Speaker 1: social perspectives. Before long, the band was using its quirky
Speaker 1: techniques not just to make interest sounds, but to provide
Speaker 1: commentary on various issues. It just kept being really interesting
Speaker 1: that you could use collage, you know, to talk about
Speaker 1: stuff in this way that invited the listener to work
Speaker 1: on figuring out what you were getting at into some degree.
Speaker 1: You know, we don't spell everything out, but we try
Speaker 1: to do something where it's both about stuff, but there's
Speaker 1: some thing about it. It's open enough that you're engaged
Speaker 1: and you're drawn in and you're trying to work with it,
Speaker 1: and hopefully that's the place where you know, you get
Speaker 1: something out of it that's interesting and it's and different
Speaker 1: for every person who hears it. And because so many
Speaker 1: of the sounds Negative Land uses in its collage work
Speaker 1: are taken from other sources, you can't just assume that
Speaker 1: what you're hearing and what the band itself thinks are
Speaker 1: necessarily the same thing. While we do sometimes actually write
Speaker 1: song lyrics and do songs. Most of the spoken word
Speaker 1: you hear in our work is appropriated in collage, So
Speaker 1: it's not us saying it. We're not It is not
Speaker 1: the author's voice. You're hearing that. It's what we chose
Speaker 1: to use. Well did we choose to Is it because
Speaker 1: we agree with it? We disagree with it, we like it,
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 not all that shouting,
Speaker 1: all that noise. Ian Allen's involvement would lead to another
Speaker 1: pivotal moment in negative lands development, meeting Don Joyce. Joyce
Speaker 1: is a radio DJ who not only joined Negative Land,
Speaker 1: but also helped create a venue for the group to
Speaker 1: express themselves to a larger audience. It's called over the
Speaker 1: Edge for Negative Land. One of the kind of laboratories
Speaker 1: for us to work on new ideas and try out
Speaker 1: new stuff is our weekly radio show. It's called Over
Speaker 1: the Edge. It's been on, it's still on to this day,
Speaker 1: and it's three hours of audio collage that's always about
Speaker 1: a theme of some sort or another. And Negative Land
Speaker 1: member Don Joyce is the one who has been kind
Speaker 1: of 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 the ideas
Speaker 1: of emerge from that that we think are good enough
Speaker 1: to take out and turn into studio recordings or maybe
Speaker 1: a live show. And for those Negative Land fans who
Speaker 1: want to explore that material, band member Tom Maloney has
Speaker 1: been hard at work transferring files to archive dot org
Speaker 1: so that the thousands of hours of programming will become
Speaker 1: available to anyone with an Internet connection. It's a mind
Speaker 1: blowingly 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 elm of the
Speaker 1: artist's 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, pop songs, it's media. Absolutely everywhere you go
Speaker 1: person needs. That's great, and so negative lands are often
Speaker 1: comments on these facets of life. The way messages are
Speaker 1: communicated to us and how we are expected to react
Speaker 1: to them amusing, 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's 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 what Pepsi is all about and the makers of
Speaker 1: their advertising. So I think it's fair to say that
Speaker 1: if that's all the case. Uh yeah, this is part
Speaker 1: of the marketing spin of PEPs of Call. One of
Speaker 1: my favorite pieces by the band involves a surreal heard
Speaker 1: radio call in show. This is Pennywise, Joan your next Nie, Sue,
Speaker 1: How can I help? Jim? I really have a problem
Speaker 1: with ampulse buying. I never have money left for anything.
Speaker 1: That's a piece called 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 recuoriers and
Speaker 1: we would cut them with a razor blood, 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 so it gets that something that actually
Speaker 1: is a real thing, which is about how advertising impacts
Speaker 1: us and how advertisers maybe aren't telling you the truth,
Speaker 1: you know. And I don't think it's didactic. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's having handed I don't think it's like we
Speaker 1: are 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: We'll be right back with more of tech stuff. Listens
Speaker 1: to Negative Land after these messages, it really hit me
Speaker 1: that what Mark and negative Land are doing is incredibly challenging.
Speaker 1: Anyone can grab a dozen or so clips of sound
Speaker 1: and edit them together to make something new, but to
Speaker 1: create something that has a sense of musical rhythm that
Speaker 1: can be entertaining and that can also be a comment
Speaker 1: on our culture is extraordinary. It explains how the group
Speaker 1: can work on a project for years before it's ready
Speaker 1: to be released. Once it is released, that work can
Speaker 1: get a lot of attention. Negative Land is no stranger
Speaker 1: to criticism, controversy, or even legal action. In fact, one
Speaker 1: of their most famous works landed the group in legal
Speaker 1: trouble for several years. But it all started out innocently enough.
Speaker 1: A fan at a show of ours handed as a
Speaker 1: cassette and uh at a show that we were printing
Speaker 1: in Portland, Oregon, and it had outtakes of top for
Speaker 1: D d J. Casey Cason having a really bad day
Speaker 1: in the studio. Casey Cason, as you know, just passed
Speaker 1: away this summer, and I think the engineer's revenge was
Speaker 1: to get these tapes out to some people in the
Speaker 1: public via cassette. Now, back then, the Internet didn't exist,
Speaker 1: and so this stuff had a very very limited audience
Speaker 1: of just people sharing this stuff. And I think if
Speaker 1: it had come out now, we wouldn't have been inspired
Speaker 1: to make that record that we made, because everyone would
Speaker 1: have had it. But we had something that was kind
Speaker 1: of seemed very precious, you know, and you know, and
Speaker 1: and rare, and it was also you know, Peter Pants
Speaker 1: funny and just so inspiring, and he was trying to
Speaker 1: do a dedication to a family's dead dog, and he
Speaker 1: was trying to introduce a new song by a band
Speaker 1: he got the name of their country of origin incorrect,
Speaker 1: but a band who's been around as long as Negative
Speaker 1: Land has You Too. That's the letter You and the
Speaker 1: New World Too. The four Man Band features Adam Clayton
Speaker 1: on bank, Larry Moren on drums, Dave Evan's nickname the
Speaker 1: Edge on if this is both nobody cares. These guys
Speaker 1: are from England and we'll give it. It's a lot
Speaker 1: of wasted name that don't mean diddaly And we ended
Speaker 1: up using doing a kind of a weird mutated cover
Speaker 1: version of a YouTube song. We had Negative Land member
Speaker 1: David Wills the weather Man, do his own dramatic reinterpretation
Speaker 1: of Bono's lyrics. We used the casey caseum stuff. The
Speaker 1: song was I still found what I'm looking for and
Speaker 1: kind of at the end when we were deciding how
Speaker 1: to present it, we ended up deciding to call the
Speaker 1: whole thing you Too, by Negative Land, And originally it
Speaker 1: was actually going to be You with a dash between
Speaker 1: the U and the two, because that's actually how the U.
Speaker 1: That's a slight variation on you two's name, which has
Speaker 1: no dash in the you tube is the airplane, the
Speaker 1: spy plane that was shot down, and it's where you
Speaker 1: two stole their name from. In the course of designing
Speaker 1: the whole thing, our graphic designer we were working with
Speaker 1: a guy named Randall hunting Uh. He suggested that we
Speaker 1: could make the the hell what am I making the
Speaker 1: airplane of the YouTube airplane itself, which we were using
Speaker 1: as part of the cover design. What about making that
Speaker 1: the dash? And how about we could make the U
Speaker 1: two really huge and negative Land really small. I think
Speaker 1: he was just kind of joking, you know, like because
Speaker 1: of course you wouldn't really do that, because that would
Speaker 1: 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 and two weeks
Speaker 1: after it came out, or I think maybe it was
Speaker 1: less maybe ten days after it came out. You Two's
Speaker 1: record label and their publisher. Uh at the instigation of
Speaker 1: You Two's manager. We only found that out about fifteen
Speaker 1: years later. But yeah, they suit us for copyright infringement,
Speaker 1: trademark infringement. Uh. It has lots of swearing on it,
Speaker 1: courtesy of Casey case So they sued us for defamation
Speaker 1: of character for associating this foul language with the clean
Speaker 1: count image of the band You Two. They sued us
Speaker 1: for failure to get a license to do a cover
Speaker 1: version of a song because we change the lyrics. You
Speaker 1: can do a cover version and just pay a licensing fee,
Speaker 1: but if you change the lyrics, you have to get permission.
Speaker 1: And they also suit us for fraud, saying it was
Speaker 1: a get rich quick scheme intended to dupe millions of
Speaker 1: innocent YouTube fans into you know, buying this record so
Speaker 1: we could make you know, lots of money. So they
Speaker 1: through everything we could think of at us. We had
Speaker 1: to really look at what we were doing, even more
Speaker 1: deeply than we ever had, you know, and really examine
Speaker 1: if it was worth the fight. You know, do we
Speaker 1: really want to destroy our lives and lose at the
Speaker 1: tiny bit of money we might be making. And we
Speaker 1: you know, we were gonna lose a lot by choosing
Speaker 1: to fight it, but we we really felt like it
Speaker 1: was you know, it was it was a fight that
Speaker 1: needed to happen because at the time there was nobody
Speaker 1: making any smart, thoughtful cultural arguments about this from a
Speaker 1: progressive point of view. It was just lawyers, and it
Speaker 1: was just so it was just all very conservative, you know,
Speaker 1: thinking around money, profit in ownership in ways that just
Speaker 1: were culturally very very smart. And we've been headed this
Speaker 1: amazing opportunity because we've been had sued on behalf of
Speaker 1: the largest rock band on the planet Earth. So we thought, well,
Speaker 1: maybe we could use as a platform to talk about
Speaker 1: this stuff. And that turned into an odyssey that took
Speaker 1: up the next four or five years of all of
Speaker 1: our lives. I could say literally every day of my
Speaker 1: life for the next four or five years, literally, I
Speaker 1: was dealing with some aspect of it. The FBI got involved,
Speaker 1: there were threats made against Casey. We tricked you Tube's
Speaker 1: guitarist The Edge, into an interview he didn't know we
Speaker 1: were anyway, all kinds of stuff. It's all documented in
Speaker 1: a book we put out called Fair Use. The Story
Speaker 1: of the Letter You in the numeral who which actually
Speaker 1: shows you the behind the scenes facts, lawsuits, press releases,
Speaker 1: phone calls, transcriptions, everything you're never supposed to see when
Speaker 1: these cases settled out of court is all there in
Speaker 1: the book in short chapters, so it makes good bathroom reading. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: the 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 than what was intended. It's been
Speaker 1: endlessly fascinating, and then when we got you know, actually
Speaker 1: sumed for doing it, it politicizes more. It actually made
Speaker 1: us kind of bear down on wanting being more committed
Speaker 1: to doing this work than ever before. And uh, it's
Speaker 1: certainly kept it really really interesting. While Negative Land has
Speaker 1: always been interested in culture and consumerism. The legal proceedings
Speaker 1: brought to light the complicated matter of copyright and fair use,
Speaker 1: which became a new focus for mark. Copyright is meant
Speaker 1: 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 lasts for the life of the creator. Plus it's
Speaker 1: seventy years seventy two seven three. The Statute of an
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, none of 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 and 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 work old with copyright that extends well beyond
Speaker 1: what its creators intended. We'll be back with more of
Speaker 1: tech stuff listens to negative Land in just a moment.
Speaker 1: Remember when I said that copyright protection originally only lasted
Speaker 1: fourteen years for new works. The story has changed significantly
Speaker 1: today in the United States, a new original work last
Speaker 1: the life of the author plus an additional seventy years.
Speaker 1: This has had enormous implications in the publishing, music, and
Speaker 1: artistic spheres. It's a balancing act. And that's what kind
Speaker 1: of has been lost in a lot of the conversation
Speaker 1: about all this is that it's it's kind of treated
Speaker 1: like it's an omnipotent property right of some sort. And
Speaker 1: 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 on 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 ignore it a lot. This shift towards 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 that I said, this is what
Speaker 1: do you guys talk about behind closed doors? You know,
Speaker 1: isn't it kind of bizarre that you're basically taking legal
Speaker 1: action against your customers? I mean, you don't you you
Speaker 1: realize that every twelve fourteen year old kid growing up
Speaker 1: basically hates you, you you know, just knows the cat is
Speaker 1: out of the bag about how absolutely ugly your business
Speaker 1: is and how you take advantage of artists, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: He kind of sheepishly kind of said, well, yeah, we
Speaker 1: kind of look at it like chemotherapy, and I just
Speaker 1: hope that that the patient doesn't completely die, you know,
Speaker 1: during given the treatment that we're giving it. You know.
Speaker 1: But yes, we're perfectly aware that this just comes off
Speaker 1: really horribly, you know, but we don't know what else
Speaker 1: to do. As Mark points out, the concepts of ownership
Speaker 1: are deeply ingrained in culture and economic models. That's not
Speaker 1: to say ownership is bad. But it does complicate matters,
Speaker 1: particularly when we extend the concept of ownership to institutions
Speaker 1: that could potentially live forever. But there are limits to copyright,
Speaker 1: and not just in how long protection lasts. You don't
Speaker 1: have to wait until the work goes into public domain
Speaker 1: before you can talk about it in some other format.
Speaker 1: For example. This brings up the concept of fair use. 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 fairious 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 and 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. Fair
Speaker 1: use is something that ends up being decided in a
Speaker 1: court on a case by case basis. Fair 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 sued.
Speaker 1: You could create a work that sites of pre existing
Speaker 1: peace 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: This is deprogramming the universal media netted well as for
Speaker 1: Negative Land, they released a new album them 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 of discussions within Negative
Speaker 1: Land itself. None of us had ever talked to each
Speaker 1: other about our religious beliefs. I mean, I've known these guys,
Speaker 1: some of them since i was a teenager, and we
Speaker 1: had to work all that out because in fact, we
Speaker 1: 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 that was all reflection in
Speaker 1: the work as well. Um, So that that was another
Speaker 1: really interesting kind of behind the scenes part of creating
Speaker 1: the whole thing. So we would have huge debates over
Speaker 1: single words that we're being used in it. You know,
Speaker 1: one sentence that what is it going to be there,
Speaker 1: We're gonna cut it out, you know, typical, just super
Speaker 1: c D negative planned, you know, obsesso, you know, microscopic
Speaker 1: thinking that we we do the poetry, we reached to
Speaker 1: arts 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 triple. The album
Speaker 1: is organized on a pair of CDs referred to as acts.
Speaker 1: If you buy the physical album, your packaging is a
Speaker 1: King James version of the Bible. There was a limited
Speaker 1: edition version packaged and copies of the Kuran, but it
Speaker 1: has since sold out. While the album takes a critical
Speaker 1: look at belief systems, it also avoids passing judgment. Sections
Speaker 1: of the album explore ideas such as how the brain
Speaker 1: processes information to how cultures define and interpret beliefs. Mark
Speaker 1: explains why the group chose to package the album inside
Speaker 1: a Bible, but having it inside of a Bible framed
Speaker 1: it in this way that I personally just love, you know,
Speaker 1: and I think all of us just love the idea
Speaker 1: that you're using the Bible as a repurposed found object,
Speaker 1: and also anyway that the Bible is the liner notes
Speaker 1: you know, to the record. I've listened to the album
Speaker 1: in full and found it provocative. There were times that
Speaker 1: it made me think, in times when I had a
Speaker 1: very strong emotional reaction to what was going on in
Speaker 1: the album. It's the sort of reaction I imagine many
Speaker 1: artists hope for when they create their works, and it
Speaker 1: marked a very different experience to listening to audio entertainment
Speaker 1: than what I've become used to. It's rare these days
Speaker 1: that I'll sit down to listen to an album in full.
Speaker 1: I'm more likely to listen to my entire music collection
Speaker 1: on shuffle or even a larger collection streaming online following
Speaker 1: some cryptic algorithm that supposedly anticipates what I'll want to
Speaker 1: hear next. But that's not how Negative Land intends you
Speaker 1: to listen to their work. I actually when I give
Speaker 1: people copies of our of our music, and I say,
Speaker 1: you know, I know it's a lot to ask in
Speaker 1: this day and age, but wait until I don't care
Speaker 1: if it's a year from now, Wait until you have
Speaker 1: an actual hour of your toy to do nothing else
Speaker 1: except just listen to this thing from beginning to end.
Speaker 1: And um, and I think you might enjoy it, I said,
Speaker 1: if you just have it on in the background or
Speaker 1: just listen to separate tracks, I said, it won't even
Speaker 1: make sense. It will probably even just be annoying. And
Speaker 1: so It's All in your Head is like that. It's
Speaker 1: too complete. It's 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 had 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 that wraps up
Speaker 1: the episode. Tech Stuff listens to negative Land. It was
Speaker 1: a really cool experience to get to talk to someone
Speaker 1: and they're a pro coach to making sort of transgressive
Speaker 1: music that has a real point of view. It was
Speaker 1: something that I don't get to do that often. And
Speaker 1: big thanks to Noel Brown of you know, ridiculous history
Speaker 1: and stuff they don't want you to know fame because
Speaker 1: he's the guy who got me in touch with negative
Speaker 1: land in the first place. So big thanks to him.
Speaker 1: And that wraps up this episode. If you have suggestions
Speaker 1: for topics I should cover in future episodes, please reach
Speaker 1: out to me. Do so on Twitter. The handle for
Speaker 1: the show is tech Stuff hs W and I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Tex Stuff is an I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.