HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

More about the Amen Break: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac

Speaking of Wilhelm Screams of music, the Amen break is nearly as ubiquitous as the 808 clap. It helped catalyze Hip-hop, while Rave, and then Jungle and dnb, were virtually born out of that loop as Athena was born from Zeus' skull.

https://youtu.be/5SaFTm2bcac

and that, in turn, reminds me of The Most Important 6 Second Drum Loop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac

and Raiding the 20th Century

http://www.djfood.org/raiding-the-20th-century-is-10-years-o...

That's substantially overstating the case. The TR-808 is an iconic drum machine, but you're far more likely to hear a cut-up sample of the Amen Break or the Funky Drummer Break.

The importance of the TR-808, TR-909 and TB-303 is largely accidental. These units were a commercial failure and gained cult success largely because they could be bought cheaply. In much the same way, grunge musicians tended to use whatever horrible old guitars were languishing at the back of pawn shops - Fender Jaguars and Jazzmasters, Mosrites, Teiscos and Danelectros.

In my opinion, by far the most important work done by Roland was the development of the MIDI standard. Ikutaro Kakehashi and Dave Smith moved mountains to get the industry to agree on a common standard. MIDI was the starting pistol for the modern age of music production.

http://www.whosampled.com/The-Winstons/Amen,-Brother/ http://www.whosampled.com/James-Brown/Funky-Drummer/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac

⬐ betaby

Frequently amen break and others are replayed and not sampled. Some of those on the link not even amen breaks. Whosampled has tons of the false reports - many of those are not samples but replays, either on 'real' drums or drum machines. Whosampled more accurately is who borrowed

⬐ jdietrich

A novice producer was walking in the forest with Sensei Akai. The novice asked Akai "If I extract the groove from the Amen Break using Beat Detective, then replay it with identical-sounding samples, is it still the Amen Break?". Sensei Akai replied "Mu". The novice was enlightened.

⬐ stephancoral

>The TR-808 is an iconic drum machine, but you're far more likely to hear a cut-up sample of the Amen Break or the Funky Drummer Break.

Lol it's not 1993 anymore dude. If you listen to ANY hiphop track now, especially ones charting such as Migos, Future, (not dancehall) Drake etc there's an 808 hi hat as the rhythm and a subsonic 808 kick as the bass. This combo is the basis of an entire sound that comprises both underground and mainstream (read: number one in the nation) music. The 808's influence is massive and can hardly be overstated - it's like overstating the influence of the electric guitar on rock. Rappers and producers constantly shout it out more so than any other piece of equipment save for maybe microphones / turntables. "Just a snare and the 808" one of Lil Wayne's iconic lines. One of Kanye's biggest albums is "808s and Heartbreak". The 808 Mafia is one of the most influential production teams of the past decade. And this is a piece of technology that came out in 1980.

⬐ SyneRyder

> grunge musicians tended to use whatever horrible old guitars were languishing at the back of pawn shops

Roland had a connection to grunge too - Boss effects pedals were a division of Roland, and Kurt Cobain used the DS-1 and DS-2 Distortion pedals on Nirvana's albums.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boss_Corporation

Echoing thoughts from one of the best documentaries of all time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac

⬐ J_Darnley

I wonder how many times that has been removed, blocked, or otherwise interfered with by Big Music.

⬐ S_A_P

The content I suppose is interesting if a bit pretentious, but the voice over is like nails on a chalkboard.

This is a very informative video on the "Amen break" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac

I am sure most readers have heard it somewhere. It really is ubiquitous.

⬐ DiabloD3

I watch this documentary every few years because of how well put together it is. The fact that it, itself, is being played on a record is awesome.

The TR-808 is up there with samplers and the Amen Break in terms of defining modern music. If you have twenty minutes, there's a wonderful video explaining the Amen Break that I suggest everybody watch at least once:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac

⬐ blt

IMO Amen was much more fleeting than the 808. Can't remember the last time I heard Amen in a mainstream track. Amen is super gritty and compressed which limits its style. 808 is an instrument, much more malleable.

For those who don't know what the Amen Break is, here is the most important documentary ever done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac

Here is an excellent 18 minute piece on the Amen Break, mentioned in TFA:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac

For anyone interested in more thoughts on copyright and (the killing of) culture, I highly recommend this video on the Amen break: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac

Additionally, this comic is informative and fun: http://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/comics/

If you want to go farther down the rabbit hole, this is an excellent 20-minute video about the history of the Amen Break, the "six-second clip that spawned several entire subcultures" and the rise of sampling:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac

⬐ gfody

fascinating video - curious I searched for Amen Break on whosampled.com and it returned a list of 789 tracks: http://www.whosampled.com/sampled/The%20Winstons/

⬐ meatsock

i estimate that number to be off by tenfold or more

There's a similar case with dance (club) music. eg the "Amen Break":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac

I wish you the best of luck Mdotstrange (if you didn't see it, he posted in this thread claiming BFM actively claimed copyright over the sound of wind.)

Yes, piracy and copyright infringement is rampant, but by both individuals and corporations. A great example is the Amen Break. If you've got 20 minutes, I can't suggest this video enough for everyone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac

It's in everything from old hip hop, to Oasis' "D'You Know What I Mean?" to the original Futurama theme song!

And all used with, according to the creators, absolutely zero royalties. (And they're fine with it, having been told. They get it.)

⬐ sp332

Sampling happens a lot in music. Using a few seconds of someone's performance in your very different song probably falls under fair use, or it might even meet the "transformative" criterion for being a completely different creative work. There's another discussion about this issue going on: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4120691

For anyone with 20 minutes to spare, here is a great video explaining the prevalence of the "Amen Break" sample.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac

My favourite is the story of "Amen Brother", a forgettable (?) b-side instrumental by sixties funk band The Winstons that just happened to feature a really sweet break beat ... which went on to spawn an entire musical genre.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac

⬐ p_monk

The "Amen Brother" drum break is far from the most sampled or most famous drum break in history. Check out a list of more heavily sampled breaks here: http://the-breaks.com/stats.php

The above list is far from complete, obviously. If I had to put my money on it, id say the most sampled drum break is "Impeach The President" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqbEsS5kFb8

⬐ jamesbritt

How does this site decide what to check for the use of a sample? We're at the point where sampling is so easy, so ubiquitous, that counting usage is impossible without some arbitrary selection criteria (e.g. "I've heard of it", or, "The people who compile <some chart> have heard of it").

⬐ parenthesis

Another ubiquitous break is the `Apache' break:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY-Z6wm6TMQ

⬐ mambodog

Here's a whole collection of them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLQyWoBXb2M

On a related note, I'm always amused by Youtube video descriptions breathlessly claiming "NO COPY RIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENEDED".

⬐ CrazedGeek

TV Tropes has a list of examples: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AmenBreak

⬐ Groxx

That's a horrible TV Tropes article. It reads like Wikipedia...

⬐ jinushaun

That's why drum and bass all sounds the same to me.

Reggaeton also has a similar situation, where everyone uses the exact same beat for the rhythm. It's called the "Dem Bow" beat.

⬐ yangyang

Only a fraction of current D&B uses the amen break. Plenty of current stuff doesn't use sampled drum loops.

Loxy & Resound: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0mcxqhJ2j8

Consequence ft. ASC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErwdSS--cgo

S.P.Y.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jnl_EumKXX4

⬐ dave1010uk

If you haven't seen it, Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music [1] is an interesting source of how different electronic music genres evolved and are influenced. It contains example samples of many tracks and I've found whole sub-generes of electronic music that I never knew existed.

[1] http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/ (warning: autoplaying sound)

⬐ meatsock

ishkur contends the whole thing was a pisstake and not to be taken seriously. i count as evidence of that the fact i am included in the list as a result of responding to a thread of his at the right time. you can get a sense of his generally snide/sarcastic tone all over his site. luckily almost all real internet discourse about the guts of electronic music are sheathed in many conflicting layers of indirect subcultural references. check hyperreal.org for details =)

⬐ phlux

I came to say the same... I take Ishkur's attitude much like I would Yahtzee Croshaw of the escapist...

A lot of snide attitude done in character.

⬐ rbxbx

I'm inclined to agree. Also considering the quality of info and relevance of associated audio samples. Also, meatsock? As in the dude from the c8 forums and slsk breakcore chat back in the day? Odd to catch you here. It's rob/robad/etc from sickmode etc :)

⬐ dgallagher

Lots of older drum and bass does sound very similar. Some of the newer stuff, like Pendulum, Sub Focus, and The Qemists, have taken the genre to the next level. It's much more interesting and exciting than in the past.

Pendulum - http://www.youtube.com/user/pendulumlive#p/u/9/X6BKBIOtRXw

Sub Focus - http://www.youtube.com/user/subfocustv#p/a/u/1/MYO_0Xfh58k

The Qemists - http://www.theqemists.com/youtube/video/OTGJW0-QPuw/

⬐ empika

BBC radio one recently had a pretty good programme on the Amen: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011nyd1

It is a shame that the true pioneers of the break were only briefly mentioned. They would be Equinox, Bizzy B, Breakage, Fracture and Neptune, Chris Inperspective et al.

Around 2006 there was a boom in what has become the "choppage" subgenre of drum and bass, revolving around the Scientific Wax, Inperspective, Bassbin and Mu record labels and the Technicality and Bassbin nights run at Herbal in London. It is a shame the R1 programme did not focus on any of this at all as alot of what came out of that pushed the break to it's listenable limits (Breakcore just baffles and confuses me).

If you want a regular dose of Amen, catch Equinox and the Scientific Wax show playing on jungletrain.com every other Sunday. He will draw some of the ruffest badman tunes you'll ever hear. He is one of the worlds most highly regarded connoisseurs of the Amen. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRTeToyyYwQ&feature=relat...

⬐ empika

Also there are newer artist still wrecking shop with the amen such as Dub One and Nebula. Much more soulfull and heartfelt music than most drum and bass.

⬐ yangyang

There have always been loads of sub-genres. The stuff you mention there is very commercial.

Looking at some of my vinyl from over 10 years ago, you can compare Jonny L http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qo1aoR96oI with Goldie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8u7MNG-ug8 or PFM feat Conrad (from '94) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxcMPPoZI7s, or Roni Size / Reprazent http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwI0gbGEyuI.

⬐ cdavid

Most of the interesting stuff did not use the amen break, or used it originally. It is true that a lot of DnB and Jungle was awful and repetitive, but that's the case in most electronic genres. OTOH, timeless (Goldie), Modus Operandi (Photek), New Forms (Roni Size) were going beyond the cliches while staing in the genre in the mid-nineties. And then you have the really good stuff like squarepusher (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yA8MRphI8w), the early Amon Tobin (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj_IjGVWtVY) or Spring Jeel hack (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Di6Mrr6yuF0&feature=relat...).

A lot of hip hop originally used the funky drummer beat as well, but it has ceased to define the genre a very long time ago.

⬐ derleth

> It is true that a lot of DnB and Jungle was awful and repetitive, but that's the case in most electronic genres.

Most genres, period, in fact.

⬐ Figs

Interesting video. I wish the narrator didn't sound so robotic though.

⬐ biot

He could give the "Alex" text to speech voice from OS X a run for its money.

⬐ sixtofour

I thought that was one of the best aspects of the video.

⬐ fedd

i found the presented samples different from the original.

it would be better if the drum lines from different songs were showed as notes, or i can't believe that they are derived.

i think it's a stretch to make a beautiful statement, that somebody invented some loop in 60-s. i even thought the author wants to tell that if i wrote a little break bit myself, i used that amen sample (just rearranged and manipulated in any number ways). but i didn't i swear. never heard of this before today.

⬐ quinndupont

Weirdly melodic and somber, but interesting video nonetheless.

⬐ fuddle

Checkout the Amen Break iPhone app too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph7HnNLKh6Q

⬐ bobstobener

The break started here (at :05 sec) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUImpeQG66U

⬐ lpolovets

FYI you can link to exact to exact times in youtube videos by appending #t=XXXmYYYs to the link (m=minutes, s=seconds). For example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUImpeQG66U#t=0m5s

⬐ code_duck

Strange, I just happened upon this for the first time 3 days ago seemingly at random.

⬐ pash

Glossed over in the video, and in the discussion here so far, is that even when a court rules a derivative work to infringe a copyright, there's no need to obtain a license so long as the derivative work is "creative enough" to qualify as fair use under US copyright law (and similarly in many other jurisdictions). So while it's true that the Sixth Circuit ruled in 2005 [1] that unlicensed samples of any duration constitute copyright infringement, what's left unsaid is that samples still may be used without bothering about licenses so long as they're used as part of a sufficiently creative new song.

But what's "creative enough"? Ah, there's the rub.

The real story here is how copyright owners are able to abuse a quirk of the law in order to strong-arm musicians into paying licensing fees, even when everybody knows full well there's probably no legal obligation to pay them. "Sample trolls" exist precisely because fair use is only a defense to litigation, which means it can only be invoked in the course of a lawsuit. So there's no sure way to know whether you need to license your use of a sample until you get sued, you claim fair use, and a judge tells you whether you should have (past tense) bought a license or not. It's much cheaper, of course, just to pay for a license up front and be done with it.

Unfortunately, its hard to imagine a way to resolve this conundrum if copyright holders are still to be granted monopolies over derivative works [2]. Consider the canonical law-school example of a derivative work, Marcel Duchamp's goteed Mona Lisa (LHOOQ) [3]. If Leonardo had been around to defend his copyright, would Marcel have been able successfully to invoke the fair-use defense? It all depends on how creative the judge thinks it is to give old Lisa a mustache. Reasonable judges may disagree.

And then consider Andy Warhol's colorful posterized Mona Lisa silkscreens, or Kazimir Malevich's collage-cum-painting Composition with Mona Lisa, which incorporates a small copy of Leonardo's painting. Even if you thought Marcel's work was a blatant rip-off, you might think Andy's or Kazimir's is fair use. (Then there's Salvador Dali's Self Portrait as Mona Lisa.) Point is, it's impossible to draw a bright line on fair use, even for a particular work.

But that's not to say there's no bright line anywhere. When it comes to recorded music, one such line is whether a work actually incorporates a copy of the recording. If it's not a sample, but a new recording that happens to sound the same, there's no issue. (A ruling that duplicating any portion of a musical composition constitutes infringement is nigh unimaginable.) So just go record your own version of the beat you want to use and there's no issue.

1: See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeport_Music,_Inc._v._Dimen... ; a good write-up on the case is at http://www.ivanhoffman.com/fairusemusic.html .

2: And maybe they shouldn't be. But then the debate would probably turn back to what constitutes a derivative work.

3: This and other riffs on the Mona Lisa are shown at http://www.aiwaz.net/gallery/mona-lisa-as-modern-lisa/gc234 .

By the way, for those of you who doubt the ubiquity and permutivity of the Amen Break in today's hip-hop, here are a few tracks I picked out in a quick once-over of two albums by The Roots. From almost-a-sample to you-gotta-be-paying-attention, these all use the Amen Break:

- "Rolling with Heat" (slowed down, but otherwise almost unchanged)

- "Thought @ Work" (syncopated by dropping a beat)

- "Duck Down!" (very slow, syncopated)

- "I Don't Care" (syncopated)

- "Web" (very syncopated)

- "Boom!" (very syncopated)

If you can hear the signature "bum bum BAH, buh-DUM buh-DUM" in those last few, you can see why people call it the most ubiquitous break. It truly is all over the place, albeit often in heavily manipulated form.

⬐ J3L2404

"Overprotecting intellectual property is as harmful as underprotecting it. Culture is impossible without a rich public domain. Nothing today, like nothing since we tamed fire, is genuinely new. Culture like science and technology grows by accretion. Each new creator building on the works before. Overprotecting stifles the very forces it is supposed to nurture."

⬐ jannes

I, too, found this quote very remarkable. But it left me wondering.

Can anybody tell me where the harm in underprotecting "intellectual property" comes from? This is an honest question. I don't understand it. Maybe it's because I'm too young and don't depend on "intellectual property" protection yet. I don't understand where this idea comes from that ideas can be owned by anyone.

What if the limit of copying would become what's copyable and not what is allowed to be copied? Wouldn't that accellerate innovation? Isn't innovation more valuable to a society than anything else? Why do we put a tax on it?

⬐ archangel_one

The usual argument is that protecting "intellectual property" encourages the production of culture, ie. you are forced to buy copies of CDs instead of copying them for free, which means that the artist earns more money and thus there is a financial incentive for them to record songs. Obviously the same argument can be taken to apply to TV, movies etc and IIRC is more or less implied by the US constitution (it says that a system of limited rights may be permitted for the progress of the creative arts, or something like that).

I guess the same thing is taken to apply to innovation as well, that Apple is encouraged to invent a cool new operating system for their mobile phone because they control it exclusively once they've done that. The argument would run that if anyone could then just copy it, Apple wouldn't gain relative to their competitors by creating it so wouldn't have spent the money in the first place, and hence less innovation.

I'm not necessarily arguing for this point of view - goodness knows I think that it's too far-reaching and over-enforced at the moment. That's just a description of some of the usual arguments in favour of it.

⬐ sigil

If your creation is completely unprotected, there's less incentive to create it in the first place. Would you be as likely to put a year of your time and money into creating something, if you knew it would just be ripped off and profited from the instant you released it?

On the other hand, if copyrights / patents lasted forever, the beneficial effects of competition might never kick in, and in the long run consumers would be the worse off for it.

So I see copyright / patents as a practical rather than a theoretical issue: what's the optimum term for the protection? What length of time will result in the greatest benefit for us all in the long run? Should it vary by type of creation maybe -- shorter terms for less capital-intensive creations, longer terms for others? It really is an optimization problem. The authors of the U.S. Constitution seemed cognizant of the tradeoffs and that they might need tweaking [2].

There was a fascinating story about a manufacturer of bra-rings in a National Geographic article about Chinese "Commodity Towns" a while ago [1]. I'm not sure what Chinese IP law is like, and what recourse if any the original inventor had, but it illustrates the problems quite well.

[1] page 2 and 3 of 8, http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0706/feature4/text2.ht...

[2] "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Sta...

⬐ tambourine_man

Would you be as likely to put a year of your time and money into creating something, if you knew it would just be ripped off and profited from the instant you released it?

If I could just as easily rip of and profit from other's work? Sure.

It turns out people either do a crappy job at copying you, in which case your are fine, or they do a much better job than you did, which means you just have to work harder.

⬐ adrianN

It's hard to pay rent when your only profit is the ability to copy other people's work.

⬐ derleth

> It's hard to pay rent when your only profit is the ability to copy other people's work.

Worked for Edison.

On a more serious note, if everyone is copying from everyone else, we're all on a level in that respect and the only differentiating factor becomes, again, some kind of individual talent. It might be an Edison-like talent for copying, a more Negativland-like talent for copying and remixing to make something new, or a Brian Wilson-like talent for creating something that's about as novel as anything can be.

⬐ Someone

That might work if everything we needed were copyable.

Let's say you spend a year writing some program, and let me freely copy it, I spend a year on the farm, show you my potatoes and apples, and tell you you are free to copy them, too, as long as you leave my copies alone. Would you consider that a fair deal?

⬐ derleth

So a song isn't an apple. We know this already.

⬐ squeed

This is a great question, and not a hypothetical one. In fact, there are places in the world that have essentially no IP protection. As always, it's hard to say what the "results" are, since these places didn't switch from a IP to non-IP environment, but it can be interesting to compare.

The first example is China[1]. Chinese consumers have been raised in an environment where everything can and will be pirated over and over. "Chinese consumers 'won’t pay a penny' for recorded music," claims the article. Yet, artists are still producing a steady stream of music. The article is, sadly, short on details about how musicians and music distributors actually make money. Perhaps it's via advertisement? In another article that I can't for the life of me find, it seems that the only Chinese musicians that make any money at all have massive star power and can command high ticket prices. So, the Chinese music market has turned in to a publicity machine to sell celebrity and the resulting high ticket prices.

The second example is "Nollywood", or the massive Nigerian film industry[2]. In this case, the film studios have about a week before pirates manage to distribute new films. The only way they can make nmoney is to produce, well, a new film each week. I posit that the films would be of higher quality if there was less piracy.

So, I think it's fair to say that there can be such a thing as too little IP protection.

1: http://www.economist.com/node/17627557

2: http://www.economist.com/node/17723124

⬐ GHFigs

I don't understand where this idea comes from that ideas can be owned by anyone.

Intellectual property is not about owning ideas. Consider that if you read a book and take in it's ideas, you have not violated copyright, because it applies to the text of the book, not the ideas. On the other hand, if you just take the text and print your own books, you have violated copyright even if you never read the book at all and have no inkling of the ideas expressed. Again: it's not about owning ideas.

⬐ thristian

On the other hand, if you read a patent and take in its ideas, and then act on them (say, by applying those ideas yourself), you may well have violated the patent.

"Intellectual property" is more than just copyright.

⬐ nkassis

From wikipedia's page on patents: "The term patent usually refers to an exclusive right granted to anyone who invents any new, useful, and non-obvious process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, and claims that right in a formal patent application"

From what I underestand, the ideas themselves aren't patentable under this definition but the process or the invention that implements the idea is. (The idea of rolling on something isn't patentable but the shape of the wheel that makes that idea work would) In that sense software patents bend the rules.

⬐ seabee

> Can anybody tell me where the harm in underprotecting "intellectual property" comes from?

I will speculate that, without any protection, there will be significantly less investment in intellectual property, and any projects will be smaller. People have to eat, if you make a business of content creation you get to spend more time doing it than if it's just people working in their spare time.

Either that, or rely on rich patrons to fund the arts. But you would never have Hollywood with just their help. This is both a bad and a good thing, for reasons easily imagined.

⬐ wtracy

If removing legal protections for intellectual property would put Michael Bay and Uwe Boll out of work, I think it would be worthwhile.

(Epic downmod in 3.. 2.. )

⬐ cturner

You're framing the issue by saying that creation of IP happens for the reason of selling it later on. This is circular (IP wouldn't exist - it is a direct product of prootection), but I'll assume you meant that there'd be less investment in ideas in an environment without IP.

I disagree with your framing and conclusion. People work with ideas for the purpose of solving problems or satisfying interest that they have, not just directly commercialising the results. I write software in order that my business can operate in its environment. Mendelssohn was inspired to write the Scottish symphony. Free software authors have a commercial interest for their work because it increases their chances of getting good work, and the same applies for music teachers who compose and record, and literature professors who write, and scientists who publish.

Creating an ecoosystem that is oriented around direct commercialisation through the mechanism of IP cannibalises the innovation of people who solve problems and satisfying interest because of the extra weight of restrictions it places upon them. Many of the tunes in Handel's _Israel in Egypt_ were directly ripped from other work he had access to. That oratorio could not have been created in the current IP atmosphere.

Further, ideas benefit from network effects in a liberal idea space. Copyright hampers the exchange.

You equate IP with being all protection - this is misleading. IP is just one form of protection, one that is government backed. Consider Steam - a mechanism that furthers commercialisation of ideas without leveraging IP. The growth of models where businesses take responsibility for their own commercial model is stunted by the government protectionism offered in the form of easy copyright. This further fuels arguments like the one you've made. We look around us and see copyright everywhere tied up in ideas, and fail to appreciate the opportunity cost of the situation.

Without copyright you wouldn't have Hollywood, but you would have something else.

⬐ pavel_lishin

The obvious argument is that it lowers the incentive for people to create truly new ideas. If you can't patent or copyright something, why would you sink a significant amount of time, money, or effort into it? Especially for big projects - operating systems, etc.

⬐ Homunculiheaded

The problem is the same as over control: in the end large corporations would have essentially absolute control over creative content.

Let's say you're a musician in your free time and you wrote a pretty catchy song that you post to your web-site. A coke marketing guy hears it and thinks it would make a great song for an advert. They use the song and it's tremendously successful, people love it and coke has made millions because of it. People refer to it as "that coke song" (your name is in the fine print since in our imaginary world there is still some vague regulation on attribution, in a world with no ip laws at all Coke could claim authorship). In the end, despite it being your work, you receive neither money nor fame from it.

Anyone who has done any sort of creative work knows that larger corporations aren't typically the best at producing it, a world without ip laws would ultimately mean that this issue could simply be overcome through easy exploitation.

⬐ rwmj

That's great, although I think you also need to describe how that is materially different from what we have now.

⬐ thepumpkin1979

This is an interesting video, but how does this has anything to do with Startups, Technology, Development, UX or Tech Business... This is the why I think HN is becoming another Reddit. It's a shame...

⬐ jmtame

"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

⬐ icarus_drowning

Interesting link. Certainly related to the rise of alternative copyright models, which are certainly related to technology and startups. Obviously relevant and valid HN link.

⬐ thepumpkin1979

Starting minute 11:00 and specifically 14:30 the narrator actually starts talking about Copyright and the video becomes interesting... so yes, this is actually about Copyright and licensing.

⬐ tiles

The end of the video discusses how a "society free to build upon the past" is able to create new forms of expression from old ideas. As opposed to articles condemning software patents and IP trolls, this video explores the benefits of unencumbered reuse of earlier work.

⬐ michael_dorfman

I see that you've just passed your one-year anniversary here, so I guess you are now officially entitled to complain that HN is turning into Reddit, but I think that this video is actually an exploration of an interesting hack.

⬐ sixtofour

Copyright.

⬐ danilocampos

Anyone who works in technology is going to have to deal with intellectual property, as well as the laws/attitudes around the same.

Moreover, music is an essential component of culture, which means comprehension of music, or at least its recombinant nature, may improve your chances of creating a consumer product people love.

edit: And come on, you've been around long enough to have read the FAQ:

"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

(my emphasis)

This passes by any measure. Being well-rounded is a good idea. I love seeing content like this way more than the insipid, obvious, naval-gazing, circlejerking blog nonsense that often passes for worthwhile reading just because the author mentions "funding" or "startups" or anything else in vogue n times before the post finishes.

⬐ sixtofour

The author's own site (including the video), Nate Harrison:

http://nkhstudio.com/

I like the production value, but I think it's past time we put 'Amen Brother' out to pasture. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac

⬐ simplify

I disagree. I believe its discovery and wide use turns it into a respectable genre. Its use shouldn't be looked down upon any more than the use of the blues progression.

For anyone who doesn't get the Amen Break reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac