Bad news for music fans: Girl Talk is illegal[1], according to language put forward by the Sixth Circuit. This language applies to all “mash-up” artists and “sample artists” that use clips from other artist’s songs without permission. According to a 2008 New York Times, “Girl Talk’s music is a lawsuit waiting to happen.” Yet, to this date, not even one of the hundreds of artists sampled by Girl Talk has brought a lawsuit against him. Meanwhile, Girl Talk is paid handsomely to tour all around the world and even has his own day named after him in Pittsburgh.
Girl Talk takes different elements from many diverse styles and decades of music—for example, a Rolling Stones guitar riff, an 80’s electronic drum beat, and an early 2000’s rap verse—and mashes them all into his own modern symphony. A four-minute Girl Talk track may have over thirty different artists on it. Girl Talk has released six albums, all of which you can download for free off of http://illegal-art.net/girltalk/. As one site put it “Girl Talk’s album Feed the Animals, which uses over 300 samples, would have never been made if he felt the need to do it legally.” Requiring that mash-up acquire licenses for all of his sound clips would eliminate mash-ups as a style of music.
This all begs the question—is Girl Talk legally obligated to pay for licensing fees for all of the artists he samples? Or morally obligated? The answer may be different for each of these questions, according to some legal scholars. Some agree that the law, as it currently stands, bans mash-ups, but advocate for an alternative system of licensing for sampling due to the harshness of the Bridgeport decision. Girl Talk himself has always cited Fair Use as a protection for his art, which is a four-factored test which comes from the 1976 Copyright Act. Weighing in on this idea, law professor Peter Friedman states, “I would advise that client not to sue Girl Talk; [Girl Talk]’s argument that he has transformed the copyrighted materials sufficiently that his work constitutes non-infringing fair use is just too good.” Forbes notes that “it is telling that no artist that has been sampled by Girl Talk has ever complained.”
Having seen “Girl Talk” live, my sincere hope is that he is allowed to continue to produce music and that sampling and DJ-ing are allowed to continue as musical styles. Given that all mash-up artists currently operate in a “legal purgatory,” it would be helpful if current laws were updated so that these artists could continue to produce music without the persistent fear of an industry-ending lawsuit.
[1] According to the case of Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films, 410 F.3d 792, 801 (6th Cir. 2005), the rule could not be any clearer: “Get a license or do not sample.”