I’m not the most attentive law student that ever skipped a class, but I’ve learned a few interesting things in my Australian copyright law course in the first four weeks. I’ve learnt that you can’t copy music onto a mixtape or your iPod, nor can you claim copyright over music you’ve improvised and someone else has bootlegged. In short, the Australian legal system does not lose sleep over cramping the style of most music lovers.
An essential element to obtaining copyright protection over artistic work in Australia is originality. I won’t go into the specifics of this requirement—partly to keep you legal laymen interested and partly because I haven’t done the readings for that part of the course—but suffice to say that courts require some level of originality before they’ll grant copyright in a work of art, music, or literature. For a system based on precedent—essentially cribbing from someone else’s hard work—it seems a bit rich that Australian judges have ruled that the creator of a work rearranging others’ work into a different form fails to meet the necessary level of originality.
On that basis, Faux Pas is nigh-on screwed. Being an artist who arranges samples into his music, the Australian legal system would hang him out to dry. It could be open season on his work. Whilst I wouldn’t encourage you to go steal his ideas, it’d nonetheless be worth your while to check this guy out.
His legal birth certificate would say Tim Shiel is originally from Melbourne, but Joe Law might characterise his EP Faux Feels as belonging to any one of the 56 artists he sampled. Music such as “Barry” was pieced together from thousands of samples, creating dynamic textures and strong beats. With its regal opening of flute and piano, “Barry” starts off as a warm hug, before shifting into pulsing African rhythms. Horns and strings play majestic lines in what could be called Faux Pas’s “Good Vibrations.” Australian courts might say that it is his “My Sweet Lord.”
It would seem that Australian electronic artists are condemned to a life of second-class legal status. I hope not. When you hear music such as “Crud Convenience” (a club track that would actually make me dance) and “Angles” (whose dynamics put all soft-loud rock bands to shame), you know that artists such as Faux Pas are engaged in the creative process, even though they may not have strummed every chord nor sung each note. It is most definitely worth protecting.
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