They are only looking for 30 second submissions.downhillbattle wrote:Hey Everyone,
We are very proud to announce a new project to respond to and protest and last week's major court ruling on sampling. It's called "3 Notes and Runnin'". There are a lot of important music, law, and music industry issues entailed. I'll let the site explain:
http://www.downhillbattle.org/3notes/
Please help us spread the word-- and maybe the musicians out there will want to send something in....
Our press release for this project is below.
It's been a very busy week at Downhill Battle (yesterday's savebetamax.org call-in day was a huge success). You'll probably be hearing from us again soon.
Nicholas Reville
downhillbattle.org
508-963-7832
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Music Project Protests Appeals Court Decision on Sampling
SEPTEMBER 15, 2004 - Last week the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that any sampled music must have authorization even if a reasonable person could not recognize the origin of the clip. In protest of this ruling, which reversed a lower court decision and severely limits sampling rights, musician Michael Bell-Smith and music activism organization Downhill Battle will launch "3 Notes and Runnin''.
The project can be found at: http://downhillbattle.org/3notes
3 Notes and Runnin' is an online music compilation that will directly disobey--and point out the error in--the Appeals court ruling that even unrecognizable samples are illegal. The compilation will consist of songs made entirely from the 1.5 second Parliament Funkadelic sample that was at issue in the court ruling.
Several respected sample-based musicians have committed to making pieces for the contest, and an open call for submissions was announced today, along with an initial song made by Michael Bell-Smith, a musician and visual artist whose other work can be found at http://burncopy.com/cc
"The songs submitted are all going to sound different; every musician knows you can use any sample in infinitely different ways," said Bell-Smith, "At a certain point, the result is new and entirely different from the source material."
"Some musicians argue for restricting sampling on the basis that the 'personality' of their creation should not be used in ways they don't control," said Downhill Battle's Holmes Wilson, "We think that's capricious, but it has a certain logic. This court ruling, on the other hand, goes way beyond that: even unrecognizable samples that don't carry an ounce of the original musicians' personality are treated like property to be bought and sold."
"The sole purpose of copyright in the U.S. Constitution is to stimulate more creative works," says Downhill Battle's Nicholas Reville, "These judges' bean-counting logic that treats each sound wave as if it were private property has nothing to do with our founding fathers' intentions."
"The current copyright regime has virtually eliminated sampling from mainstream hip-hop," said Nicholas Reville, co-founder of Downhill Battle. "It is simply impossible for producers today to use samples the way they did in the eighties."
Michael Bell-Smith is a Brooklyn, NY based musician and visual artist. He's the frontman for the Brooklyn band "Professor Murder" and runs Burncopy Records.
Downhill Battle is a music activism organization working to support sampling rights, independent musicians, and to end the major label monopoly of the music industry. In February 2004 the group staged the "Grey Tuesday" protests, a online action for copyright reform that drew 100,000 participants.
Any who are interested check the link below.
3notes
some of us still love ya mate 
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