Wired News: Wilco Pays Up for Spycasts. Consider this, a person, let's call him Akin, sets up a recorder to tape certain shortwave channels. Most of what is broadcast in these channels are gibberish, indecipherable, and enigmatic. No one claims to be the broadcaster. However, Akin now says he owns it. In comes an artist, let's call him Jeff, wanting to sample these sounds in his next creation (i.e. in his song). It's unknown whether Jeff got the sounds from Akin's recording or he actually recorded the same shortwave channel himself. But Akin cries foul and says Jeff has to pay up to use the sounds. If Akin didn't create the sounds himself, does he have a legal claim in owning it? Shouldn't the onus be on Akin to prove that Jeff used the samples from Akin's CD set and not from Jeff's own recorder? Copyright law, you gotta love it.
Posted by johnvu at June 23, 2004 12:12 PM