Kutiman – [brilliant] Art Outlaw
p2pnet news view | P2P | Music:- Mike Masnick introduces us to a great new work, the like of which I have not seen since the Grey Album.
Let us wonder why this musician ‘Kutiman’ may not have either prepared his derivative art or even obtained our reward without seeking the permission of all those whose work he sampled.
Even if each of his sampled videos was CC-NC licensed, this mixing artist may not receive a single one of our pennies without theoretically becoming liable to copyright litigation – unless they painstakingly obtain permission from each and every copyright holder.
Why should such permission be required?
Why must this artist’s liberty be so suspended?
Why may we not even reward them for their excellent intellectual work?
Kultiman has provided attribution and links to each of the constituent works, so it is not as if we’re discouraged in also discovering and rewarding the underlying artists.
If such art can only be created and rewarded outside the law, then we must look to outlaws for such art, and reward them as outlaws.
Copyright is an unethical constraint on society’s cultural liberty and those societies who choose to remain bound by it choose cultural stagnation and obscurity.
Crosbie Fitch – Digital Productions
[Fitch says he's researching and developing revenue mechanisms and business models for producers of digital art and in the process, 'has discovered that copyright is not only an ineffective anachronism, but is unethical and unconstitutional'.]
[Check Thru You out. It's bloody amazing! - Jon]
March, 2009
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March 5th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
No wonder the Big 4 are excreting in their pants.
They’re ded DAID!
Cheers!
March 5th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
What they’re scared of is losing control of all distribution channels (p2p), and being disintermediated by the ability of artists to have a commercial relationship with their audiences directly.
See my comment on Mike’s other recent article: What The RIAA Efforts Have Really Been About: Controlling Channels.
March 5th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Jon,
The Thru-You link doesn’t resolve.
Looks like a “permission” error.
March 5th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
^^ Thanks. Fixed.
Cheers!
March 5th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
If it gets overloaded you can bung .nyud.net on the end of the URL to get a cached version, e.g.
http://thru-you.com/#/videos/2/.nyud.net
March 5th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
I’m still getting the permission error on both links.
Maybe it’s just really busy.
March 5th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
Bung Kutiman into YouTube if all else fails…
March 5th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
^^ Just tried it and it’s OK for me.
Cheers!
March 5th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Since neither link will work from here, I’m going to assume it’s a “Bell thing”.
So I pulled up what YouTube had, which seem to be 3 songs multiple times, featuring “Karolina” / “Funk’n’stein”/”Sabbo”/etc.
If this is what you’re talking about, I think I’m missing the point.
March 5th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
DA:
Why not use one of the free VPN’s?
Tunnel right past your “Bell” thing?
(I’m not super-techie, but would that work?
March 6th, 2009 at 5:40 am
Here’s the first one: Kutiman – 01 – Mother of All Funk Chords
2nd: Kutiman – 02 – This Is What It Became
3rd: Kutiman – 03 – I’m New (I like!)
Maybe you are indeed being shafted by the cartel keen to ensure you have no access to channels they don’t control?
March 6th, 2009 at 10:26 am
“Maybe you are indeed being shafted by the cartel …”
It is possible that Bell’s DPI is throwing away connection attempts from its network to selected sites.
I would never put that past Bell, naturally. Such a scenario IS why we DPI needs to be completely outlawed.
I’m just not so sure anything like that is actually happening here.
Those links are pretty well the only ones I’ve had that particular error from.
However, the YouTube links certainly work.
The music’s certainly solid. Nice dense blend of funk/reggae/hiphop.
Has promise. But, how does this thing all fit together here?
Is Kutiman the mixer, a player and/or singer…?
Most of the YouTube posts begin with “I’m NOT Kutiman”.
I know I’m still missing half of the point.
March 6th, 2009 at 10:33 am
@Henry:
If it is Bell that’s doing it, it would through the use of DPI.
(Any other method wouldn’t be worth their while, from where I’m sitting.)
But, if they are doing it with DPI, there’s nothing a user like me could do to circumvent it, as it would be the actual connection attempt to the destination being tossed as it passes through the “main pipe” itself.
[cringe!]
Just thinking about Bell and DPI is getting me into a “funk”!
: )
March 6th, 2009 at 11:18 am
The point is that Kutiman’s musical instruments are other people’s videos, and they have an automatic privilege of copyright, which means he either obtains permission from everyone or they get to prosecute him for infringement (if they can afford it), and can otherwise have his work taken down from YouTube under the DMCA. Copyright suspends what would otherwise be a musician’s natural liberty to build upon others’ published work. I think that is not only questionable, but highly unethical. Unfortunately, it’s the most I can do to convince people to at least question this state of affairs.
The elders among us have simply grown up with the idea that it’s wrong to share and build upon each other’s published work without obtaining permission first. One day this will be looked back on as a ridiculous cultural aberration.
March 6th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
“The elders among us have simply grown up with the idea that it’s wrong to share and build upon each other’s published work without obtaining permission first. One day this will be looked back on as a ridiculous cultural aberration.”
It’s actually worse than that, Crosby:
The “Elders” have grown up with the notion that they have a “sacred right”, NOT merely to monopolies such as copyright and patents, but the “sacred right” to break THEIR side of that contract by not allowing them to expire as originally promised. That’s the essense of the whole issue: every copyright extension is ultimately tantamount to “breach of contract”: it WOULD have expired on time, but now it won’t. Reason? Whining + Money = Law.
Even a “backwoods amateur” such as myself gets that much.
I’d gladly continue this discussion, but that would probably involve me “cut and pasting” something like links or quotations, and our pal “Sam” would end up having an aneurysm. Dunno about you, but I don’t wanna be responsible if they find him slumped over his desk, crumpled printout of the DMCA clutched lovingly to his chest. That’d make me really sad. (I mean, whoever would they get to design the next motorcycling campaign in Munich or whatever it was.)
March 6th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
@Crosbie:
Yeah, I was thinking that’s what was going on, I just wasn’t sure (arriving late to this story).
In that light, the guy’s amazing!
(Thanks, Crosbie.)
March 6th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
^^ In any light he’s amazing.
Cheers!
March 6th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
In case the http://thru-you.com site is down, and “unofficial” mirror site was set up here http://www.innerlogics.com/media/kutiman/
March 10th, 2009 at 11:31 am
you can find all of the videos at the following sites.
1: thru-you.com
2: youtube.com/kutiman
3: youtube.com/downwithutube
you can also download a copy of the album or individual tracks @
thru-you.org
=)
March 10th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
I am a strong proponent of copyrights… I think you can be copyright-friendly and still appreciate Kutiman’s right to do this kind of collage, with attribution. It’s not really all that different from collage or random tape loops in Beatles songs. Kutiman gives more to the copyright owners of these videos than they could ever have hoped to see via his exploitation. If you don’t want to participate in the forced collaboration, then I have no doubt Kuitman and his ilk wouldn’t see the need to use you. The argument used to be that Dre had to pay for those samples because it was the quality and recognizable nature of the sampled tracks that made the derivative works valuable. that hardly holds water in light of what Kutiman used to make his work. It’s like building a mansion from stuff you found at a garbage dump. He created the value and is still pushing credit, viewers, and rewards onto the sampled artists… this is IMO way better a situation than the majority of artists, songwriters, & producers who got piddly squat from record labels and traditional record sales/radio play. I’d much rather have a new paradigm, where we recognize that all of our art is just a tool to get recognition; we derive revenue in other ways and after the fact of our notoriety. It’s a new world.
March 12th, 2009 at 5:42 am
The music industry is losing its grip. I hope they didn’t think they could monopolize art and feed us bullshit forever. Kutiman should not be repressed because his art is a metaphor for something the world really needs to realize. We’re one entity.
March 15th, 2009 at 10:51 am
watch all of the kutiman videos at http://matisyahu.co.uk
Also loads of other cool israeli music and matisyahu.