Gregg Gillis aka Girl Talk is best known for his wild live shows, super hot beats and, most controversially, that his music is entirely derived from other popular artists. Under current copyright law, Girl Talk’s blatant use of samples is considered stealing. Gregg considers it fair use and positive promotion for other artists. As debates over copyright are fueled by the ever growing remix, mashup and digital sampling culture we now live in, we have to ask ourselves- Is it ok to have so many restrictions, with the threat of legal action, on what is fair game for making art?
Check out Brett Gaylor’s Open Source Cinema project for tons more Girl Talk clips. Look in the sidebar for Related Videos (on RyanIsHungry and Open Source Cinema). Thanks Brett for connecting us!
Runtime- 5:58
Technorati Tags: girl talk, illegal art, gregg gillis, creative commons, remix, mashup
Comedy is legally sacrosanct, as perhaps “educational” creations by students are also. Seeing the remixer’s behavior on video undeniably qualifies Girl Talk for the former genre.
RT
PS, This popup comments window opening up without navigation buttons and the following error page that complained about me not entering an email address not having a “back” option… forced me to go through a very aggravating sequence of keypressing to return to this comments section. May the Vishnu of the web smite the Javascript override codes from your webmaster’s mind and replace it with the hum of a billion mantras so it may never return
I think Gregg aka GirlTalk would say his work is legal under fair use since he’s making an original work out of different sources.
as for our commenting system, I agree it should be easier and more obvious. We’re planning a site overhaul this summer…so look out.
interesting to see that it’s legal to use samples and sell it as your own. and if that’s the case, why must artists pay to sample on their own songs? example: madonna paying abba to use “gimme gimme gimme” for that funked up dance video she did… or is it that they just have to ask permission? is it a courtesty thing?
p.s. comment pop up worked fine for me =)
copyright and reuse is still an emerging battlefield. In other interviews, Gregg says he would gladly pay fees for samples if A) they were appropriate an affordable B)a normal person could actually find a way to buy use rights.
As it stands now, only a big artist like madonna has the pull and the lawyers to deal with other lawyers. As an experiment, try licensing a sample from a Jimi Hendrix song. You probably wont be able to find out who to contact. If you do, they probably will not respond to you. If they do respond and do consider your request, the fee they will charge for the sample will probably be astronomical.
as Gregg says, regardless of how anyone feels about current copyright law, we must accept that remix tools are all too common now, and the web enables people to spread media too easily. It’s evolution. Change and be changed. It can be easy and logical…or it can be painful and ugly.
It was very cool to see this, since I had just seen the movie documentary “Good Copy Bad Copy”, which I strongly recommend and you can download for free (legally) - just google it.
He was featured in the documentary and it addresses a lot of the issues he discussed, but hearing them from him directly and seeing some of his work, makes the issues more alive and personnel, which is cool.
Great video.
Invention does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos.
Amy D/ Chicago