Comments on: Girl Talk Is Not Fair Use

By: Niko

Niko — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 07:30:12 +0000

word. I disagree with only one thing – I almost felt like committing suicide after listening to girl talk and I’m only 40.

By: Jacek

Jacek — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 11:14:40 +0000

I second that last post. It’s just stupid…

By: Pnin

Pnin — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:07:22 +0000

Any lawsuit against Girl Talk would be thrown out of court simply because no judge or jury would be able to listen to the evidence. It is the most irritating crap I have heard in years. My girl friend plays it to punish me when she's mad at me.

By: jpmelito

jpmelito — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:24:37 +0000

You cannot justify fair use merely on the basis that no confusion exists between Girl Talk’s works and the originals. There are countless examples of sample use in hip hop music where the sample is only a few seconds long, and the finished song bears no resemblance to the original (e.g. Herb Alpert’s “Rise” and B.I.G’s “Hypnotize”.) Yet, royalties were paid in those songs, so there is a tremendous legal precedent that exists with regards to samples.

See Malcolm Gladwell’s piece “Something Borrowed” for a great article about the controversies over when copyright law should be applicable.

By: 2fs

2fs — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 04:18:41 +0000

The quality of Girl Talk’s music is irrelevant to the issue of whether it falls under fair use. Anyway, I agree with the commentors above that Barthel takes an overly narrow view of “critical” or “academic”: these words do not require that the engagement be earth-shattering or brilliant. The strongest point in Girl Talk’s favor is simply that no one would confuse his work with the original, and there’s no inherent economic harm to his sources from his use of them. The law should be written narrowly to protect rightsholders from such harm (which would include music that piggybacks excessively on the previous success of a single source – going way back, like “Ice Ice Baby”) – with any other use being allowed. It would be nice if credit were given – but that would be likelier if doing so now didn’t risk bringing on a lawsuit.

(By the way: my new idea is to “compose” a series of pieces consisting of every available two-note sequence; I will then argue that any subsequent music that uses any of those two-note sequences infringes on my copyright…)

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:21:14 +0000

Ok, well my take on Girl Talk (based off of only hearing Feed the Animals) is that he is not fair use. What he constructs are simplistic lowest common denominator mash-ups of pop songs for hipster irony nostalgia that is enthralling and entertaining for about 5 minutes and then grows incredibly tedious thus after. He takes two songs, smushes them together, and then changes it to two different tunes 30 seconds later, rinse repeat. He is not creating anything new, he’s just making a collage of “oh remember that jam” or “oh funny haha, ganster rap misogyny with 80′s new wave.” He is not hip-hop, and he is not sampladelic hip-hop, like Prince Paul, Dust Brothers, Meat Beat Manifesto, or the Bomb Squad which took shit loads of samples and made something new out of the source materials. To me his work is nothing more than a glorified dj mix where he is too lazy/cheap to clear the songs he is spinning together.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 11:03:41 +0000

nobody ever seems to find this fact half as interesting as i do, but i would like to point out that fair use (as i understand it – i work in publishing but i’m hardly a lawyer) is a legal defense, not a right. so even if you think it protects a certain work or its creator, that protection is pretty limited. of course, people rely on it every day anyway.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 10:18:01 +0000

I think what Girl Talk is doing is awesome. Even though he states he is not a dj, he gets what been a dj is. I’ve been djing for 15 years now and i still get exciting on what he is going to do next. His live show is nuts. Keep it up, Greg.

By: RGve

RGve — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:43:06 +0000

@RaptorAvatar: I think that's the key point which Barthel misses. If you define music criticism as the stolid, workmanlike typing which most of us do for a day job, then sure Girl Talk is not participating in that 'discourse'. But the threads he draws between different genres and approaches to themes like 'love/lust in popular song' totally work as commentary - though you could argue he's maybe labouring that point, it's not like critics aren't guilty of the same.
Also sampling one verse of a rap song (which I think he's done maybe once or twice, far more frequently it's a couple of bars) is in no way 33% of a song, as it's less a hook, a beat, intro/outro etc. I don't know how you break that stuff down, but I doubt that he's ever got near that figure.
Lessig's perspective that the sampling of music vs. the quoting of books is interpreted completely differently also deserves more scrutiny than it gets here.
Personally I think he wins on three of the four, and as far as I'm aware no one has yet taken a case against him, so all of this is kinda conjecture right? Until a court of law even considers the issue it's more or less irrelevant what anyone thinks.

By: NoOneCaresAboutYourFuckingBlog

NoOneCaresAboutYourFuckingBlog — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 09:07:35 +0000

Any lawyer should be able to argue either side of any case–though, yes, some arguments REALLY reach sometimes. Even though each lawyer will only tell you which side they WILL argue, they know how to argue the other side.

By: baconfat

baconfat — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 07:56:33 +0000

@chaircrusher: Actually, Shadow cleared a few samples for Endtroducing, including songs by Metallica, Bjork, and Jeremy Storch. They're listed in the liner notes. Now, he did have a ton of unlisted samples, but he has definitely alluded to paying some of the rights holders for their work (including David Axelrod). Not sure how extensive his efforts have been, but it's worth noting that Shadow's wife Lisa owns a management company which represents artists that have been sampled without clearance and/or bootlegged.

By: T'Challa

T'Challa — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 07:06:06 +0000

And let’s not forget that his shows are like the best party ever!!!

By: RaptorAvatar

RaptorAvatar — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 05:17:28 +0000

@chaircrusher: Personally, I'm psyched to see what happens when the next wave of artists start to run with different aspects of what Girl Talk is doing. Don't know if you've heard Graf Orlock or From Monument to Masses, but those are both bands that use samples really well. What excites me is the extrapolation of that idea along the sort of songwriting line Girl Talk opeates with in addition to the atmospheric idea those bands both use. Now that Girl Talk has defined an end of the spectrum, shit is about to get really interesting on all the ground in between. But then the really pressing issue is that there are still only 12 fucking notes.

By: Mike Barthel

Mike Barthel — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 05:13:36 +0000

@Ned Raggett: thanks ned! I had (gulp) pretty much forgotten about this whole thing; glad to know it's coming to some resolution.

By: RaptorAvatar

RaptorAvatar — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 04:59:24 +0000

Great article, it’s nice to see someone actually think through the problem instead of taking a totally reactionary position. 70% of the commentary surrounding Girl Talk is either “I like him, thus he should be allowed to do whatever he wants.” or “He sucks, off with his head.” Personally, I’d take some degree of exception to 1. Girl Talk is actually a big fan of using contrast in sentiments or aesthetics between two or more samples in what, I think, could be termed a critical capacity (althought not necessarily to the detriment of either work). Think about his habit of contrasting epic, romanticized pop song moments with blunt, aggressive sexual declarations lifted from hip hop. By default, the samples he uses are commenting on each other. You don’t necessarily have an arguemnt that all of them have academic value. However, I do think that there’s a little more room on that one that people realize.

By: TheContrarian

TheContrarian — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 04:57:53 +0000

@Maura Johnston: re: Creative Loafing: Totally.

@Ned Raggett: Totally.

Great post. Now back to work.

By: Ned Raggett

Ned Raggett — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 04:51:14 +0000

The details I could go into about fair use (seriously, it's part of my regular job). There are indeed plenty of people working on the issue but it's going to be a long time before there's actual consensus that's understood and widely applied. I will note however that, based on some discussion I've read recently, the recent Google/publishers agreement, once it's fully set in stone, may be more of an overall gamechanger than might at first be realized. I strongly recommend Siva Vaidhyanathan's post in response to it, but that's just the tip of a huge iceberg.

By: Michaelangelo Matos

Michaelangelo Matos — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 04:42:26 +0000

because, you know, NO ONE IS WRITING SONGS ANYMORE ZOMG etc.

By: Michaelangelo Matos

Michaelangelo Matos — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 04:41:27 +0000

@chaircrusher: I believe people have been saying this for, oh, 20 years now. It's called "crying wolf."

By: Michaelangelo Matos

Michaelangelo Matos — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 04:40:49 +0000

LOL the two people I know who like the new Girl Talk the most are both over 50