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I have a friend who is a musician who's work you can hear here http://soundcloud.com/apz-1

He had released those files titled "free beats"

Here is a rough translation of the conversation which I had with him today.

Me: "Perhaps you could upload your beats to jamendo.com or at least give them some kind of licence like creative commons http://creativecommons.org/choose/

I'm happy that you release these beats for free, but unfortunately legal questions must be resolved."

My friend: "It doesn't matter"

Me: "The licence is really important. When you say it's free, that doesn't mean anything. I don't know if it's free to listen to, or free to download, or free to mix and publish."

My friend: "You're alloud to, I marked it as being able to be downloaded.

Don't worry about it.

If I didn't want you to download it I wouldn't put it on SoundCloud."

Me: "But what if a person who you didn't know wanted to use your beats? According to the law, that person must determine the licence. "Free" isn't sufficient, you must write cc-by or cc-pd. cc-by means the person can use your beat if he writes your name in the credits, and cc-pd means they don't have to write your name in the credits."

My friend: "It doesn't matter, at least it doesn't matter to me. Perhaps they will do with the files as the please. I don't give a damn about licneces, laws, and similar BS. "

Me: "That doesn't work Even though you don't give a damn, doesn't mean that 'they' don't."

My friend: "So be it"

Me: "When you don't write that it's public domain or creative commons, by law your work cannot be used "

My friend: "But really, who watches/worries about/ that in the Czech Republic? If I put it as free to download, without respect for any law everyone who wants will download it. Really, don't worry about it "

Me: "Why don't you want to deal with it?"

My friend: "Boring "

Me: "It's enough to write 'public domain' in the place of 'free' and it's solved."

My friend: "Fine, I'll change it."

And thus you find the two words, "public domain", in the description of each file.

What do you guys think of this conversation...

http://soundcloud.com/apz-1/apz-113

Unless he has permission from the person/record-company who has the publishing rights to the soul track he has remixed he definitely can’t legally label his remix as “public domain”, in fact he can’t legally “publish” his remix via the internet without permission from the record company.

My friend: "... I don't give a damn about licneces, laws, and similar BS."

The record company who owns the reproduction rights to the track he has remixed may not share your friend's views, and could potentially "sue his ass".

( I think this is the original being covered by the female group in apz-113 ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYQoN4WhG3w afro-tastic :¬)

I think this is one of the reasons I want him to learn about the system

I didn't realize remixing was illegal. I'm a bit confused though. There are some well known artists that do it and licence their art freely. Girltalk comes to mind. http://illegal-art.net/girltalk/

timthelion wrote:
I didn't realize remixing was illegal. I'm a bit confused though. There are some well known artists that do it and licence their art freely.

You are leaving ourself open to being sued for copyright infringement if you don't have the necessary permissions to use a sample from someone else's record ...

http://encrypted.google.com/search?q=sample+sued

Even if you don't charge for your remix (i.e. free) it's still illegal to publish a remix without permission from the person / company who has the publishing rights to the original track.

I hope you realize that American copyright law is not equal to international copyright law. America is not the king of the universe. This conversation certainly proves my friends point about not giving a damn about all that BS...

timthelion wrote:
I hope you realize that American copyright law is not equal to international copyright law.

I hope your "friend" realizes Czech Republic is on this list ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_international_copyright_agreements

Succinctly - "If its not your work; you cannot use it claiming it to be your own"

DJ's are a classic, they 'mix' other peoples work and claim its 'their' work and try to sell it?

All they have done is mix tunes together? Any fool can do that!