de=da=duh=D'OH/ bloooooze and thievery

[Carl Edlund Anderson]

At 19.15 -0400 99-10-07, DASLUD at AOL.COM wrote:
>In a message dated 10/7/99 5:10:00 PM, cea20 at CUS.CAM.AC.UK writes:
>
><<
>I emphasize that I'm not discussing whether Zeppelin did with the blues
>songs they ripped off was legally or morally correct, I'm simply suggesting
>that it was probably pretty similar to the sorts of things pre-recording
>blues performers did all the time. I think it's an interesting example of
>how our society's views have changed.
>=========
>no! it's not any kinda matter of societal evolution! why are you giving these
>guys the least benefit of the doubt?!
>pre-recording era blues performers woulda been happy to add to their
>repitoire at any opportunity, no doubt. but zeppelin stole. and profited from
>it. jeez carl, you insult those guys by the comparison. why didnt every last
>one of zeppelin's peers do the same? because zeppelin were the most audacious
>about it. and=they=knew=it.
>this was not any sort of gesture with the anthropological analogues over time
>that you're saying it is. zeppelin stole other people's songs and took credit
>for them.
>there are =absolutely= anthropological analogues shot through this topic, but
>in this case, zeppelin stole.

I think you do not understand my point (which, to some extent, demonstrates
how the great the change in our views has been--it's difficult for us to
even conceive of a different state of affairs). I am explicitly *not*
judging Zeppelin *nor* defending what they did, which was a clear violation
of modern copyright law.  *Nor* am I saying they did not steal the songs.
What I am doing is making the observation  that stealing of that sort was
once very much the norm and not viewed negatively. A medieval author would
cheerfully plagarize other authors in constructing his own work--it was the
common practice. A performer of music in a traditionally-oriented society
would cheerfully take elements of other songs he heard and recast them to
varying extents in his own performances.

We label this plagarism and stealing because we are very concerned with
intellectual property rights. This was not always true. If Zeppelin and
Willie Dixon and been inhabitants of, say, a backwoods farming village in
3rd century Gaul and Zeppelin had ripped off and rearranged Dixon's stuff
in the same way as they did in the 20th century (and then gone on to make
it big playing for the Roman governor), then no one would have given a
damn, there would have been none of our concept of wrong-doing. It was a
way musicians (and writers) commonly worked at that time (and in many, many
others).

In our current society, stealing people's songs is bad. I'm just noting
that's not always the case (and indeed has historically probably been less
often the case). It's an observation, not a judgement.

Cheers,
Carl

--
Carl Edlund Anderson
mailto:cea20 at cus.cam.ac.uk
http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~carl/