Archive for the ‘copyright’ Category

China is an emerging 21st-century superpower, but its outer-limit indie sonics are still somewhat dormant, especially stateside. The electronic-music compilation eXpo is hoping to help tear down the musical firewalls, and perhaps some internet ones in the process.

Commissioned for and coinciding with Shanghai’s World Expo — which launched earlier this month and extends through October — eXpo is a collaboration of Chinese online community NeochaEDGE co-founder Sean Leow (pictured above, left) and the Shanghai Restoration Project, the U.S.-based brainchild of musician Dave Liang (above, right).

The two enterprising transnationalists curated the compilation after coffee in Shanghai, sifting through the notable electronic musicians of China and collecting a healthy dose of sonic head trips in search of exposure.

“The Shanghai Restoration Project aims to restore the unique fusion of Eastern and Western musical traditions captured in the Shanghai jazz of the 1930s,” Liang told Wired.com by e-mail. “Mirroring Shanghai’s cosmopolitan nature, we blend jazz, hip-hop, electronica, classical and Chinese folk elements, incorporating actual street sounds and voices.”

The eXpo compilation arrived May 4, and marks the Shanghai Restoration Project’s eighth effort since Liang’s indie label debuted in 2006. The SRP partnered in 2007 with China Records, the nation’s official label, to remix selections of ’30s Shanghai jazz, which eventually made their way into commercials at home and abroad. For its part, eXpo fortifies that international relationship with tracks ranging from techno and ambient to dubstep, instrumental hip-hop, house and more, all celebrating Shanghai as a culturally vital world destination.

Continue Reading “Shanghai Restoration Project Mines Chinese Electronica” »

Who could possibly have seen this coming?

[via Boing Boing]

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“Free culture is counterculture,” says Jonathan Zittrain, co-founder of Harvard University’s Berkman Center. “It’s not seen as mainstream, stable, safe. Instead we see it put into calmer euphemisms like user-generated content.”

Zittrain and the collegiate open-sourcers of Students for Free Culture share their love of open-network activism at the pay-what-you-want Free Culture X conference Saturday and Sunday in Washington, D.C. The plan? To champion the evolution of free culture from today’s underground digitalism into tomorrow’s mass consumption.

Zittrain, who will be delivering one of Free Culture X’s keynote addresses, will be joined by fellow speakers Public Knowledge co-founder Gigi Sohn and American University’s Center for Social Media prof Pat Aufderheide. Attendees who drop sizable donations will nab signed books from University of Southern California media theorist and author Henry Jenkins and open source pioneer Lawrence Lessig, whose 2004 effort Free Culture inspired the recurring conference’s title.

“It’s critical that people see themselves not only as potential consumers of culture but as potential creators of culture,” Aufderheide explained to Wired.com in an e-mail.

“Free culture doesn’t need to overturn copyright in order to make a huge difference in the world. If we achieve the recognition that new creators and creative users of copyrighted material have important rights under copyright, that copyright can both honor creators and honor the collaborative spirit of creativity, we will have achieved a major milestone.”

Continue Reading “Counterculture Creeps Into Mainstream at Free Culture X” »

Five years ago he’d never heard of the "godfather of soul," James Brown. Now an Israeli mashup artist is basking in the spotlight after making the funkiest tracks on the internet, using YouTube clips of musicians who’ve never met each other.

Earlier this month, Ophir Kutiel, aka Kutiman, released seven videos made by mixing and matching found footage for his project, called ThruYou. The clever musical mashups have since been viewed more than a million times, and Kutiman is basking in the glow of raves from MySpace commenters and mainstream media alike.

"I didn’t expect it to blow up like this, even in my wildest dreams," the 27-year-old Kutiman told Wired.com by phone from his self-described "crib" in Tel Aviv, Israel. "I live in a small city in a small neighborhood in a small house in a small country. I didn’t expect it to get this big this fast. It sometimes feels impossible to reach out to the world’s music scene from Tel Aviv, but now it’s all good."

The videos Kutiman used to create ThruYou are mostly low-budget recordings of amateur musicians playing at home or taking music lessons. Kutiman cut the performances together so that the musicians appear to be playing together in real time –- with truly astonishing results.

Kutiman compiles multiple video reels within a single frame, accentuating a particular lick, riff or vocal pattern being performed. Taken together, it’s beautiful, body-rocking music.

Just as sample-based hip-hop by innovators like De La Soul, The Bomb Squad and DJ Shadow changed the sound and style of pop culture back in the ’80s and ’90s, the work of Kutiman and other video remixers are doing the same for the YouTube age.

Continue Reading “Kutiman’s ThruYou Mashup Turns YouTube Into Funk Machine” »

A 10-minute, freak-out version of The Beatles’ track "Revolution 1" leaked onto the internet this week, exciting Fab Four archivists and download enthusiasts alike.

And for good reason: "Revolution 1 (Take 20)," as it is colloquially named, fuses parts of both the classic White Album rocker ‘Revolution 1" and its less-accessible counterpart "Revolution 9" into a long, psychedelic head-trip of a tune.

But should it have stayed in the vault?

The tune will reportedly appear on a forthcoming U.K.-only bootleg collection called Revolution: Take … Your Knickers Off!, where it will be complemented by outtakes of well-known songs like "Julia" and lesser-known ones like "Come and Get It."

The timing for the tune to resurface is right, given that Paul McCartney is currently seeking permission from Ringo Starr and the estates of George Harrison and John Lennon to release the much stranger, 17-minute epic "Carnival of Light," which was once rumored to be a figment of fandom’s imagination.

Continue Reading “Should The Beatles’ ‘Revolution’ Bootleg Have Stayed in the Vault?” »

The Associated Press says it wants credit and compensation for use of a copyright-protected photo in the creation of Shepard Fairey’s widely imitated "Hope" campaign poster for Barack Obama.

"The Associated Press has determined that the photograph used in the poster is an AP photo and that its use required permission," said Paul Colford, AP’s director of media relations, in a statement Wednesday.

Fairey’s lawyer said the artist’s use of the image is covered by fair use, and refused to comment further on the matter. Fairey reportedly found the image through an image search on Google.

AP says the photo was taken April 2006 by Manny Garcia, who was on assignment for the wire service, at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

The source of the influential Obama image has been the subject of some mystery, with bloggers attempting to track down the original and floating potential matches.

Visual search company Idee used image-recognition software to confirm AP photog Garcia as the shooter.

Fairey’s image has had an undeniable cultural impact. His red-white-and-blue poster of Obama with the word "Hope" at the bottom (pictured) has spurred an ongoing parade of parody images showing everyone from Sarah Palin ("Nope") to Heath Ledger ("Joke").

Paste magazine’s easy-to-use, web-based Obamicon generator — one of many online tools that make it easy to modify an picture to look like Fairey’s poster — has reportedly created more than 500,000 of the images.

"I’m thrilled that my image has become an unofficial image for the campaign," Fairey told Wired.com in the heat of last year’s presidential contest. "It’s awesome."

Image courtesy Shepard Fairey/Obey Giant

See also:

• From ‘Hope’ to ‘Dope,’ Imitators Spoof Fairey’s Obama Poster
• ‘Obey’ Street Artist Churns Out ‘Hope’ for Obama
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Files purporting to be advance copies of the highly anticipated Watchman movie are cropping up on file-sharing networks under the aXXo brand name — but they appear to be fake.

One such file surfaced Wednesday on Mininova.org, posted under the name of aXXo, one of the most reliable and famous of rippers. It was taken down quickly after commenters said it wasn’t what it appeared to be.

As probably the biggest blockbuster in 2009’s popcorn movie crop, it’s easy to see why Zack Snyder’s Watchmen is a likely candidate for fakers more than a month before its March 6 release. A similar, or possibly the same, file surfaced last week on torrent-tracking site isoHunt.

"This is the first one any of us have seen," said Eric Garland of file-sharing market researcher company BigChampagne Media Measurement. "There is a lot of Watchmen material out there now, including short films and viral videos, so there is a lot out there for the fanboy community."

Continue Reading “Who’s Leaking Fake Watchmen Torrents? Probably Not aXXo” »

Stephen Colbert’s battle with copyfight champion Lawrence Lessig over downloading, remixing and intellectual property was itself remixed earlier this month by a gang of what the unhinged host called "DJ Jazzy Jerks."

Now The Colbert Report’s brilliant loudmouth has widened his call for copyfight remixes, and even posted his own hilarious techno anthem (video embedded). You’re probably going to need a pacifier and some Piracetam to truly realize its genius.

Colbert issued the remix call as he usually does, by asking that it not be done. This time, not only does he not want members of the Colbert Nation to remix his interview with Lessig, but he also doesn’t want viral videographers using any of his copyright-protected source material to funk it up further.

"Nor do I want you to remix excerpts from my [audio]book, I Am America and So Can You, particularly Chapter 7, entitled ‘Homosexuals,’ which is full of soundbites that would set fire to any disco dance floor," Colbert warns in the video above.

View more Wired videos.

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• 3001: A Stephen Colbert Space DNA Odyssey
• I Am Not a Jerk, Says Stephen Colbert

Nina Paley, director of the award-wining animated feature Sita Sings the Blues, is selling a night with her to the highest bidder in an effort to get her film out of what she calls "copyright jail."

"Don’t get your hopes up," Paley warns. "I’m actually selling the seat next to me at the Spirit Awards."

The eBay fund-raising effort stems from a copyfight struggle that has made Paley’s movie a cause célèbre for advocates of copyright reform.

The problem? Sita Sings the Blues is built around blues recordings from the 1920s, songs that Paley says "should have been in the public domain in the 1980s."

But frequent changes to copyright law in the 1980s and ’90s mean that copyright protection lasts longer, and fewer works fall into the public domain. To get her movie distributed, Paley would have to pay about $50,000 in licensing fees to various music rights groups.

"Thanks to copyright extensions," she explained, "this is what artists have to resort to."

Auctioning off a dream date to see the indie film awards show is just one tactic Paley’s using in an effort to see Sita released.

"Getting Sita made, compared with everything that followed, was the easy part," Paley said.

Continue Reading “Sita Director Sells Herself Over Copyright Blues” »

The final numbers are in on the deal that paved the way for release of the Watchmen movie and shut up the lawyers at 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros.

Under the deal, Fox will not be a co-distributor of the film. But, the studio will receive a heaping helping of greenbacks in one, well-raked pile and up to 8.5 percent of the box office (which should make bookkeeping entertaining at Warner Bros.).

More importantly, Fox enjoys a taste of everything Warners Bros. earns off sequels or spinoffs. The final cash payment amount has yet to be determined as Fox demands reimbursement of its development costs and attorney fees, according to Deadline Hollywood Daily.

Variety, quoting unnamed sources, put the lump-sum payout at "between $5 million and $10 million, covering reimbursement of $1.4 million the studio invested in development fees, and also millions of dollars in legal fees incurred during the case."

The two sides issued a feel-good joint statement:

"Warner Bros. and Twentieth Century Fox have resolved their dispute regarding the rights to the upcoming motion picture Watchmen in a confidential settlement. Warner Bros. acknowledges that Fox acted in good faith in bringing its claims, which were asserted prior to the start of principal photography. Fox acknowledges that Warner Bros. acted in good faith in defending against those claims. Warner Bros. and Fox, like all Watchmen fans, look forward with great anticipation to this film’s March 6 release in theaters."

Image courtesy Warner Bros.

See also:

• Watchmen Trial Canceled as Settlement Nears
• Watchmen Producers State Case Against Fox
• Warner Bros. Wants Watchmen Hearing Moved Up
• Japanese Watchmen Trailer Offers Sad Fans More Evidence
• Watchmen Showdown Postponed as Studios Look to Settle