Who Will Be The First To Sue Girl Talk Over Music Samples?
A few weeks back when we mentioned that the musical act Girl Talk was releasing a new album using the pay what you want model, one element we didn’t dwell on was the fact that Girl Talk’s genre might be best described as “mash up music.” That is, Greg Gillis, the guy who is Girl Talk, takes samples from tons of songs and mixes them together to create something totally new. While there may be some who disagree, listening to Girl Talk, I find it difficult to believe that Gillis is any less of a musician than the musicians he samples — he’s just playing a different kind of instrument. But there’s a big question — whether or not Girl Talk’s albums are legal or are they basically massive copyright infringement cases. If Gillis were to actually go around licensing all the snippets he samples, such an album would be impossible to make — showing (yet again) how copyright would act as disincentive for creation rather than incentive. So far Gillis hasn’t actually been sued, though that seems
