The first remix is already up at Three Notes and Runnin'.

What's the contest? Make something good by sampling the music and they'll post it to their site. Here are the details:

SEPTEMBER 15, 2004: Michael Bell-Smith and Downhill Battle are seeking submissions for 3 Notes and Runnin', an online music compilation commemorating and protesting The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in Case No. 01-00412 (pdf).

In the case, the court found that NWA violated copyright law when they sampled 3 notes of a guitar riff from Funkadelic's "Get off Your Ass and Jam" for their song "100 Miles and Runnin'". The ruling reversed a district court finding that because "no reasonable juror, even one familiar with the works of George Clinton, would recognize the source of the sample without having been told of its source", sampling clearance should not be required.

Hear the guitar riff in question from Funkadelic's "Get off Your Ass and Jam"

Hear a sample of the NWA song, "100 Miles and Runnin'", which contains the sample. (hint: the sample comes in after the line "when in a black and white the capacity is two", and is looped for 16 bars).

In doing so, the court broke from decades of established sample practice by ruling that all samples, regardless of how heavily manipulated or unrecognizable they may be, are subject either to "clearance" (obtaining permission for use of the sample, usually in exchange for money), or litigation. In an instant, this act made the majority of sample based music illegal. For more, read Why Sample Rights Matter.

To protest this decision, we are creating a forum for sample-based musicians and artists to share their own 30 second songs which have been created using only the sample in question. By doing so, we hope to showcase the potential and diversity of sample based music and sound art, and to call into question the relationship between a sample and its use. All entries will be posted on this site as they are received.

Rules for Submission

1. Your song must be thirty seconds in length.

2. Your song must use only the designated two seconds of the intro to Funkadelic's "Get off Your Ass and Jam" as source material. You can slice it, layer it, loop it, stretch it, filter it, smack it up, flip it, and rub it down, but you can't bring any other sounds into the mix.

Download the sample: 1.5 second 44.1 khz 16 bit Aiff 200k

3. All Entries should be encoded as mp3s and emailed, along with artist name, email or URL, and a brief description / statement to mike@burncopy.com. All entries that adhere to the format of the call will be posted to the website.

Participants are encouraged to process the sound in creative, unconventional and excessive manners, stretching the relationship between the finished result and the source material.

Courtesy of Jason Schultz.

This blog entry combines various sources to come to the titled conclusion. It all starts in New York City some months ago at a talk I went to at the Yale Club by the Dean of the Engineering College at Dartmouth. He presented a very interesting vision of our world in 50 years. In general it was an aggressive vision (we will be melded with machines a la The Matrix), but the main point I remember is his belief that we are on an exponential curve of innovation. This innovation is driven by technologies such as computing and nanobiology. Which brings me to a recent Wired article that mentions that others too share a vision of accelerating change. Given my technical background, I tend to agree - our lives will become increasingly improved via technology, so much so that our grandchildren will probably consider us as unfortunate as we do those who had to use a outhouse.

Unfortunately, this rate of accelerating innovation isn't guaranteed to continue. There are many roadblocks, but the most significant are software patents. The software patent system is already troubling for various reasons, very ably explained by the father of GNU/Linux, Richard Stallman. He does not go far enough though. Software patents may become so onerous that software developers will cease to be productive, as they will be unable to clear the regulatory hurdles that patenting software creates. Progress (aka the rate of accelerating innovation) may stall. In the end, the powers that be will hopefully realize that software patents hinder more than help, but until then technological innovation is in peril.

(For all the programmers out there, I would be remiss to not attribute inspiration for the title of this article to the great Dijkstra.)

This week I attended a talk given by Tom McCarthy (of McCarthy on Trademarks fame). He discussed Victoria's Secret and Dastar, two trademark cases decided recently by the Supreme Court. Both decisions imposed limitations on some of the more expansive theories of trademark law (trademark dilution in Victoria’s Secret and reverse passing off in Dastar).

Two things struck me as I read the cases. First, in both decisions, the court mentions overlap with other areas of the law (copyright in Dastar, and unfair competition in Victoria’s Secret). Second, there was no obvious harm to consumers in either case by letting the offending activities continue. Two cases may not be enough to constitute a pattern, but I wonder if there isn’t something to these similarities. Perhaps the court is reluctant to expand trademark law beyond its traditional justification of consumer protection, believing that other legal doctrines are better suited to address other societal ills. If so, these cases may present a glimmer of hope to those concerned about the expansion if IP law.

Professor McCarthy also spent some time explaining trademark dilution theory (the idea that use of a famous mark by a third party can dilute the value of the mark even without consumer confusion). He noted that it is a widely misunderstood doctrine, and that a number of young scholars have derided it as bunk. Though I haven’t (yet) read the work of those scholars, their conclusion has intuitive appeal. After the Victoria's Secret decision, dilution must be something more than mental association (e.g., “Greatest Snow on Earth” makes you think of “Greatest Show on Earth”), and something less than (and different from) likelihood of consumer confusion (which would be trademark infringement).

But is there a there there? What exactly is between mental association and confusion? Moreover, if there is no confusion where is the harm to the holder of the original mark? I have a tough time buying the idea that a mark is damaged in any significant way without any consumer confusion, even if later users do not produce goods of the same quality as the original user’s.

Mark Lemley attempts the impossible when trying to convince people that IP isn't property in the classical sense (and hence should not be treated/regulated as such). The **AA's probably won't listen, but once their economics (a.k.a dying business models) are upstaged by the new (non-voodoo) economics described by Lemley, it probably won't matter. My only regret about this piece is that it isn't property of UC Berkeley.

Also, this fiercely argued Slashdot thread addresses some political aspects of the claims in Lemley's article, namely that "in IP, traditional liberals are often calling for less and less government, while conservatives demand regulation in order to protect their exclusive right to use their intellectual creations."