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NPR Morning Edition Transcript This is Morning Edition, I'm Bob Edwards. Many CD Manufacturing Plants are taking special precautions to avoid pressing pirated music. Scared by a couple of large lawsuits from the record industry, they're turning away any recording they believe may be entirely stolen or contain unauthorized samples of other music. The Music Industry says this added vigilance is needed because digital technology is making it easier for people to sell bootleg recordings, but some musicians say the restrictions are too broad and will hurt legitimate artists who want to use samples in political or satirical work. NPR's Madeline Brand reports: The group Negativland exists by purloining the work of others and turning it into their own songs. They use hundreds of samples in their albums from familiar rock licks to advertising jingles to snatches of TV conversations or the patter of talk show hosts. Several years ago the group U2 sued Negativland when it released an album making fun of U2. Negativland then came out with a record called DISPEPSI, which took on the beverage giant. ((( Negativland excerpt from DISPEPSI ))) ((( 15 seconds ))) MH: "Negativland's approach is that we're not gonna be a passive consumer of all this information that we keep getting shoved into our brains." Mark Hosler is one of the band members. MH: "We're gonna take the pop songs and the advertisements and the talk radio and the television and all the flotsam and jetsam of our, you know, electronic media culture that we all live in and we want to make art out of it. It's what in the visual arts is called collage and we think it's a totally legitimate thing to do, and we don't have to ask permission and we don't have to pay to do it because we're not ripping anyone off." But, when Hosler and his group went to press their latest CD last month the manufacturer wanted to know if they HAD ripped anyone off and demanded PROOF that Negativland had received permission to use the various samples in their songs. Hosler said, 'No the group never asks for permission', because he says their work is parody and thus protected under the copyright law's Fair Use provision. Never the less the CD plant and three others have refused to press Negativland's new album. Hosler blames the Recording Industry Association of America. The RIAA is an umbrella group for the large record labels and has recently sued a couple of CD manufacturers for millions of dollars for pressing pirated recordings, and in June the RIAA issued a new set of guidelines for CD plants that instructs them to turn away ANY recording or part of a recording they believe to be stolen. Frank Crieghton is with the associations Anti-Piracy Unit. FC: "The written business practices are suggested, uh, this is practices that we circulate make no mention of samples whatsoever. Our biggest problem lies in the wholesale counterfeiting and pirating of, you know, uh, mass released, uh, uh, compact discs, umm, or pirate compilations, umm, and it's not in the sampling arena." But the guidelines are vague enough that CD manufacturers like Rusty Capers of Cinram interpret them to include samples. RC: "If we're unsure, we err on the side of conservatism and we will not do the order until we're satisfied that the necessary ownership or licensing has been documented." MB: "and can it be for something as seemingly minor as, you know a couple of guitar riffs that sound familiar?" RC: "Absolutely" Caper says Cinram has had to hire more workers to listen to master tapes and weed out pirated music at an added cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. He and others say piracy is a growing problem because of the popularity of hip-hop and electronica music and the ease with which people can duplicate using digital technology and the internet. Under the copyright law, CD plants can be sued even if they don't know what they're pressing is stolen. But a lawyer who is advising Negativland, Alan Korn says, these issues of liability should be argued in a public venue, the courts, and that CD plants should not be thrust in the position of defining copyright law. AC: "2 Live Crew had to go all the way to the Supreme Court to get vindication for their use of the Roy Orbision song, 'Pretty Woman', without getting permission from the copyright owner because what they were doing was a parody and engaging in Fair Use of copyright material. The point there was they got a chance to prove what they were doing in court whereas the RIAA actions here I think prevents the matter from ever getting to court because no CD manufacturer would risk printing something that may or may not be found to be a Fair Use that a court could rule on, one way or the other. It really is a form of censorship." So far Negativland has not gone to the courts. It's waging a PR campaign urging fans to pressure the Recording Industry Association of America to amend it's guidelines. Yesterday the RIAA issued a clarification, the Recording Industry Association says it's guidelines were intended to address piracy, that some samples may constitute Fair Use while others constitute Copyright Infringement and that ultimately it's up to the CD plants to make that distinction. Madeline Brand, NPR News, Washington. ((( Negativland excerpt from DISPEPSI ))) ((( 15 seconds ))) 
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