Da Sampling: Authorship and Fair Use in Daft Punk's "Da Funk" (Blog Post #5)

Our hot topic right now is sampling and fair use as it relates to the idea of sampling. Who really owns the content? Is it right for an artist to sample another artist's work and call it their own? It's widely up to debate. To provide some substance to this theoretical debate, I took a look at an example of sampling myself, and picked a track that has a lot of nostalgic value for me.

Daft Punk are a duo of two amazing musicians, nay, pioneers, responsible for some of the finest electronic music of the 90's and 2000's. "Da Funk" is one of their most popular early hits from the album "Homework." What many may not know, however, is that this song actually contains two samples from other songs in the liquid beats and synths. Daft Punk use a drum hit from Barry White's "I'm Gonna Love You Just a Little More Baby" early on in the song, and utilize a drum groove from Vaughan Mason and Crew's "Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll" throughout the tune. This usage of other artists' tunes raises a few important questions about copyright and ownership for us. Is it really right for Daft Punk to consider this song their own, even though they took samples from two other artists? The answer, in my opinion, is yes. I think one of the most important things we need to consider in a debate on musical sampling is how big of a sample is being used, as well as the way that the sample is being utilized. If Daft Punk had been making a funk song, and simply ripped the drum track out of "Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll," that may have been a concern, as they're just blatantly stealing a full part of the song, but that's not the case here. Instead, Daft Punk use very small bits from these tracks to add some spice to their beats. Unless a website like whosampled actually pointed out the usage of these tracks, it is doubtful you would ever make the correlation between Da Funk and either of those tunes.

Would these gents steal anything?

So that takes us to a question of fair use. Under fair use, copyrighted material can be used for satirical or educational purposes legally. Does this fall under that blanket? Not really. This kind of use is neither satirical nor educational. Another problem for Daft Punk is that, unlike in the case of Chander and Sunder's Mary Sues, these two gentlemen are selling this material and profiting from it, which definitely violates the ideas of a fair use agreement.

However, I hold to the idea that these two are not crooks, they aren't stealing these tunes. Not only are the samples short and used in a way that make something truly original, it engages the ideas of the Remix Manifesto presented in the REMix movie we saw. One of the key points was the idea of the past having too much control over the future. While Da Funk came out in 1995, the two songs it sampled are from the 1970s. While copyright is important for protecting the intellectual property of content creators, we really have to think about how far we ought to go to protect these properties. By 1995, the property of the songs sampled in Da Funk are no longer relevant, the artists practically non-existent, so why is there a question of whether or not Daft Punk have the right to use the small samples they did?

Ownership and Domain: The Travels of the Hawaiian "Uli-Uli" Rattle (Official Post 4)

As we discussed in class, Museums are essentially thieves of content, taking artifacts and objects from the world and heralding them as their own discovery and property. In class we proved this observation by tracking the path of the Native American chief club that was effectively stolen by a researcher hundreds of years ago. To further prove this point, I've tracked the path of another artifact in a museum collection, specifically from the National Museum of Natural History.

This is the "Uli-Uli" Rattle:

 This gourd rattle is an instrument native to Hawaii, used in traditional music, as well as ritualistic dances. These rattles are often adorned with feathers, as seen in the picture here for decorative purposes, though the rattle itself is simply made from a gourd.







The Museum of Natural History has one such rattle on display in its Hawaiian artifact collection, but where did it come from? Did a Hawaiian native give the rattle to the museum as a gift? Unlikely.

In fact, the NMNH lists the collector of this particular rattle as Nathaniel Bright Emerson. Seen to the left, Emerson was a physician and published author of Hawaiian mythology, one of his greatest works being the translation of David Malo's work on Hawaiian folklore. He was born in Hawaii himself, though he could scarcely be considered a "native."

In addition to Emerson, the NMNH lists the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition as the donor from which the rattle was given to the museum. The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, was, in fact, a world fair held in Seattle, WA in 1909. Countries from all over the world gathered to present their collections and informational prowess on the campus of the University of Washington.


Given this information, I would surmise that the rattle was presented at the Exposition by Emerson, taken from his homeland of Hawaii, and remained the property of the Exposition after Emerson's death in 1915, where it eventually passed into the hands of the NMNH.

This journey raises some interesting questions about the ideas of ownership, though. As a part of the NMNH collection, the rattle now technically "belongs" to the museum, and before that, it was the property of Nathaniel Emerson. But the rattle was made by neither party, and has little to do with the culture and tradition of either of them. The rattle is a Hawaiian instrument, made and used by Hawaiians, and merely taken from them. Though it is not a particularly rare object, as the true "creators" of the object, are the Hawaiian natives not the true "owners" of the rattle?

This dilemma is much the same as our discussion of privacy policies in the digital world, oddly enough. As we discussed, websites like facebook, twitter, imgur, etc, technically have ownership of any photographs you might post to their site, regardless of the fact that you've authored them. Even though you are the creator, once the photo leaves the safety of your personal space, you effectively give up the rights to your creation to the internet.