Copyright Criminals: This Is a Sampling Sport

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Audience Member Short documentary on the history of sampling. Many interesting stories and interviews. Steve Albini is having none of it, however Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 01/26/23 Full Review Audience Member Though a little directionless, the movie still effectively discusses remix and sampling culture in an intelligent way. If you also happen to hate Steve Albini, this might be one worth watching. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/27/23 Full Review Audience Member Short but sweet. Definitely biased towards the artists but so am I. Interesting interviews and a fun look at the history of sampling. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/30/23 Full Review Audience Member I'm more than passingly familiar with the sampling approach to making music. After all I'm a big fan of hip-hop from way back, and like what those artists and those who came afterwards do. They go into both sides of the story, including not just hip-hop producers and artists, but also two of the main people who were sampled from in the early days: Stubblefield (the Funky Drummer) and Clinton (Funkadelic/Parliament). They also include a very MBA-like White (with a capital W) lawyer and a recording engineering (don't remember the name, but he's a big deal) to have their take on it. I thought it was fairly well balanced despite being pro-sampling. I took away 2 main things: 1) The situation with copyright law (intellectual law in general) is in shambles. Why can what Disney does be viewed as laudable (basically repurpose old fairly tales in new ways) but what these artists is doing is theft? Why? People would have you believe it revolves around permission. But if you have to get permission for everything you want to use, art and culture will be stifled and won't progress. 2) It shouldn't more to use 3 seconds of a song (say a drum break) than it does to just recreate the whole original with studio session musicians. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/26/23 Full Review Audience Member Interesting question: I'm sure all the samples (audio and video) used in this film were never cleared. If the film was strictly not-for-profit I could see a "fair use" argument holding up. But the film is for sale on their website and on iTunes and Even with the imprimatur of PBS involvement, how is this legal? Whatever the case, I really enjoyed it. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/15/23 Full Review Audience Member A documentary about the issues with sampling in music, the film looks more on the positive side of these artists, interviewing a smorgasbord of samplers from the start of hip-hop which sampled funk and soul, and then into the prosecution and copyright infringement that came from other artists' lust for money, and the samplers' lack of perception to an industry with stringent laws and regulations. The film itself is quite short and the scope isn't truly broad, but a mash of interviews and scenes that include rappers and other musicians' work. The filmmakers never put themselves in front of the camera, which I think weakens this overall. It's such a one sided view of the industry and it doesn't even cover the past decade in terms of the genre. The history was covered pretty well, including the evolution of Public Enemy, the lawsuit against Biz Markie, the work of the Beastie Boys, and the short lived and ridiculous career of one MC Hammer and his sampling of Rick James. That in itself was an interesting detail of the film. They did give us one sad sack of a narrative about James Brown's funk drummer who is sampled in many rappers' work but isn't paid or given name recognition on the album's credits, the only thing he really wants. It's not researched enough to be a thorough documentary, but what is shown is pretty entertaining and finger snapping good. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/11/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Copyright Criminals: This Is a Sampling Sport

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