Always consider what effect the future will have on your work

The UK human rights organization Reprieve has this week begun a campaign to stop the use of music in torture. The Zero dB project (zero decibels = silence) aims to stop torture music by encouraging widespread condemnation of the practice and by calling on governments and the UN to uphold and enforce the Convention Against Torture and other relevant treaties. Zero dB is backed by the Musicians Union which is calling on British musicians to voice their outrage against the use of music for torture. [more...]

Technically, there could be a fair use argument for use of music in this context. Misappropriations are essentially appropriations or parodies, which are covered under the copyright law. Musicians often use irony as social commentary, either in the lyric, or in the sound of the music. The passage of time has a way of making the message less clear to the average listener, and in this case 'the average listener' used the music for something the composers never anticipated: the aftermath of 9/11. Certainly the government should be paying performance royalties, but of course that would only be blood money.

[12/14/2024: This was the case with the Trump campaign using songs. Of course it’s both fair use and fair game, but you still have to play fair. Always consider what effect the future will have on your work. Karma is blind to the ways in which it is created].