DR GONZO [clip]: Well, as your attorney, I advise you to buy a motorcycle. DR GONZO [clip]: As your attorney, I advise you to drive over to Tropicana. DR GONZO [clip]: As your attorney, I advise you to take a hit out of the little brown bottle in my shaving kit. DR GONZO [clip]: As your attorney, I advise you to drive at top speed. It'll be a damn miracle if we can get there before you turn into a wild animal. [MUSIC PLAYING]
You are listening to WREK Atlanta, and this is Bat Country. No, this is Lost in the Stacks, the research library rock and roll radio show. I'm Charlie Bennett in the studio with everybody, Fred, Marlee, Alex, Cody, and the guest to be named later are all in here. Each week on Lost in the Stacks, we pick a theme and then use it to create a mix of music and library talk. Whichever you tune in for, we hope you dig it.
And our show today is called Intellectual Property Digest.
Took a minute to get that out, huh?
And that's digest in the sense of compilation or short summary. We're going to touch on a few current legal issues in the intellectual property, or IP, that are relevant to librarians, archivists, and other information professionals. And as librarians or archivists or other information professionals, we do happen to know a thing or two about intellectual property. But today we probably will need to bring in a bona fide expert.
And lucky for us, there is an IP lawyer right here in Atlanta who also happens to be a friend of the show.
So we're lawyering up.
That was hard for you.
Yeah, I can't-- I might as well say scholarly lawyer and then just leave the--
Rural juror.
Philip Burrus, who you hear about every week, is an attorney who provides us with IP legal counsel, as well as some new object each week, which you hear in the credits. And as our attorney, he is dropping in today to advise us, I hope to drive at top speed. Yeah, there you go. Well, OK, maybe not. But he'll talk about copyright and patents and all of that stuff.
And to give you a little hint of our upcoming topics, our songs today are about photographs, tattoos, and copies, perhaps illegal, perhaps not. We're going to learn a lot today with Philip's help. So let's start with a song about a person named Philip expanding the minds of his friends. CHARLIE BENNETT: You dug deep, Fred. This is "Down on Philip's Escalator" by the Amboy Dukes right here on Lost in the Stacks.
[THE AMBOY DUKES, "DOWN ON PHILIP'S ESCALATOR"]
(SINGING) Reality is wrong "Down on Phillips Escalator" by the Amboy Dukes. And our show today is called Intellectual Property Digest with returning guest Philip Burrus of the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group in Atlanta, Georgia. Philip, welcome back.
Thank you so much for having me here. It's always such a joy. I love you guys. I love being here, and I can't thank you enough for having me once again. CHARLIE BENNETT: You're so nice to say-- do you have any idea how many times you've been on the show? PHILIP BURRUS: This might be five?
Oh, it's got to be more than that.
Six or seven? I don't know. I've lost track.
I think we've probably got you to call in at one point.
I was going to say, apparently the hate mail hasn't been too bad because I keep coming back.
Well, we got you on today, and we couldn't pick just a single topic. We're going to do a whole, as we said, intellectual property digest. And so let's just dive in on a few interesting legal topics in intellectual property today. And let's relate the first topic to that first song. So that was the Amboy Dukes, featuring a very young Ted Nugent on guitar. And there's been some IP news lately about that kind of involved Ted Nugent a little bit.
[LAUGHTER]
That's right. There's a case, and I was going to come in and say, little known guitarist, Ted Nugent-- perhaps you've heard of him-- and you had a song queued up called Philpot versus the Independent Journal Review. And it caught my attention because it had Ted Nugent in there. So that made me think of Charlie because I know he's a super fan.
Yeah. Thank you, Phil.
And it also had a Creative Commons license issue in there. That made me think of you all because that's been a topic of many a show.
Right.
And it had facts that could go either way depending on who you're rooting for. And so it piqued my interest.
OK.
When you say facts that could go either way, what does that mean exactly to you?
When you hear the fact pattern, if you're predicting the outcome and you haven't read either the district court decision, which went one way, or the Fourth Circuit decision that went another way, you could see some logic in each of those decisions. So based on the facts, it could go either way.
That's how you dig into all these cases, right?
That's when they're fun. That's why copyright is so cool. You get to talk about what is art. And like minds can differ when it comes to what is art, as happened in the recent Warhol case at the Supreme Court.
So someone took a picture of-- I'm going to editorialize a little here-- obnoxious carbuncle Tim Nugent-- Ted Nugent--
[LAUGHTER]
Ted Nugent. Yeah, I'm going to call him Tim. Yeah. And put a Creative Commons license on it, which you mentioned. We've talked about that on the show. That's like giving permission to others to use your work as long as you attribute it. So what happened with this picture?
That's it. A fella named Larry Philpot, who's a very famous rock and roll guitar photographer and charges $3,500 at times for a session, took a picture of Ted Nugent and uploaded it to Wikimedia with a Creative Commons license. Said anyone could use it for free as long as you gave Larry credit. Well, the Independent Journal Review decided to publish a list of 15 reasons your dad may be a conservative. And number five was because he hearts the Nuge.
The Nuge.
And they included a picture. They included Larry's picture. And they did not include any accreditation. They included a link to Ted Nugent's Wikipedia page, which through another link would take you to Wikimedia and did have the accreditation. And they published this list. Well, Larry didn't like that, and he sued. So it came out in court that they actually made between $2 and $3 in advertising revenue on--
They didn't get rich off of this misuse or whatever.
I don't know what your OnlyFans page does, but in a month, $3 for me is pretty darn good.
We should back off actual number amounts and just talk about things.
It wasn't a lot. It wasn't a lot that they made. But he sued. And so it went to the district court, and he lost because both parties went for summary judgment. The Independent Journal Review for summary judgment that it was fair use, Larry that it was not fair use. There was also an issue of whether he had a valid registration. He appealed to the Fourth Circuit, and the Fourth Circuit came to a different conclusion that we can talk about.
Well, yeah, so what was the conclusion?
So the Fourth Circuit said it was not fair use, and they went through the typical four-factor analysis. And the four-factor analysis in fair use is the nature and purpose of the use, whoever is using the work, the nature of the work, the amount copied, and the effect on the market. And on every factor Larry lost at the district court level. And on every factor-- well, Larry lost on the first two. So the district court never got to 3 and 4. On every factor at the Fourth Circuit, he won.
And so it was remanded as commercial, not fair use, and effectively an infringement.
How often does that happen?
That happens more than you would think.
Or want.
And it depends on the court. So at the Supreme Court level, it happens a lot out of the Ninth Circuit. And in the district court level with patent, trademark, and copyright cases, it happens more than you think, to the point where candidly I've heard some judges say, it doesn't matter what I decide on a patent case. I'll be reversed one way or the other.
Wow.
But the law is changing. And one of the things that changed in this Philpot case is when it went up on appeal to the Fourth Circuit. The Supreme Court handed down a decision in the Andy Warhol case against Lynn Goldsmith, the Warhol Foundation. And that guided the decision on whether the work was transformative and whether it was fair use in the first factor. So the district court did not analyze that Warhol case. The Fourth Circuit did.
And using the new guidance on what is a new use, a transformative use, they said that the use of Ted Nugent was not. And here's why. Because Larry Philpot had taken the picture to identify Ted Nugent. It was a picture of Ted Nugent, and he wanted to identify Ted Nugent. And the list that the district court thought, well, hey, you're transforming this because you're putting it into a political/social context, it was still used to identify the Nuge.
And so when they said he hearts the Nuge, it identified who the Nuge was. And because that use was effectively the same and because Larry Philpot made money licensing things for that purpose, they said it's not a transformative use. And because the Independent Journal Review is a commercial entity, who makes money off of advertising, and they actually did make money off of advertising, it was a commercial use and yeah.
CHARLIE BENNETT: I feel like this takes us a step closer to being OK with how we use songs on this show because we're definitely not using them for entertainment, right? Not the original use. We're trying to explain a concept in a different way. I see that argument, especially with the first song, right, because it was not for entertainment value. It was to introduce me and Ted. And so yeah, I see the argument.
You're getting the hang-- you've got a second career as an IP attorney there, Charlie.
I've been hanging out with you, man.
Real quick, we're coming to the end of this segment. But Creative Commons is something that a lot of librarians think about. And I wonder if the jury thought about Creative Commons-- wait, was this when a jury or this-- PHILIP BURRUS: Never got to a jury. So did the judge consider Creative Commons, the nonattribution factor as being relevant to how the judge ruled?
The district court judge focused more on transformative use and said it was transformative. And if it's transformative, the more transformative it is under Campbell versus Acuff-Rose, which is the Pretty Woman case, the less you have to look at the other factors, is a suggestion from that holding from the Supreme Court. Since he decided it was transformative, he figured he didn't need to get so much into the other factors. The Fourth Circuit looked at it very differently.
They said he granted you a license, and you violated the license. And the Creative Commons language he inserted was that license is terminated as soon as you violate it. So there were two very different perspectives on what happened there.
This is Lost in the Stacks. We'll be back with another topic in our Intellectual Property Digest after a music set. And you can file this set under KF2994.L43.
[NOLA YORK, "PHOTOGRAPHS"]
(SINGING) Photographs [RINGO STARR, "PHOTOGRAPH"] Ev'ry time I see your face It reminds me of the places we used to go FRED RASCOE "Photograph" by Ringo Starr. And before that "Photographs" by Nola York. Those are songs about the value of photographs.
[GUITAR MUSIC]
This is Lost in the Stacks, and today's show is called Intellectual Property Digest. We're looking at a few interesting legal issues in the copyright world with Philip Burrus, IP attorney here in Atlanta. So Philip, I think the next topic that we wanted to discuss in our digest is about tattoos.
Tattoos, indeed. It's a case called Sedlik versus Von Drachenberg, or Von D. CHARLIE BENNETT: Sounds very serious. It involved a tattoo artist named Kat Von D. And she's on LA Ink on TLC and very famous tattoo artist. And it involved a picture of Miles Davis. And it caught my interest because I was actually an OP at WREK the moment I heard the news that Miles Davis died. And at the old studio there was a picture of Miles Davis above the door.
And so I played a Miles Davis tune right then when I heard that news.
Wow.
So I've always been a Miles fan, and the more I learn about music, the more I'm a fan of Miles. But anyway, involved a picture of Miles Davis shushing the crowd. He had his finger up to his lips telling everybody to be quiet and listen to the music. And it was taken by a guy named Jeffrey Sedlik. And Kat Von D decided to give it to her friend Blake Farmer as a tattoo, as a gift. And so she made a very public experience out of this tattoo.
She had Sedlik's photo and traced it and took pictures of that and posted those pictures all over the internet. As she was doing the tattoo, she had Sedlik's picture on the wall, checking it out, copying it. So she traced it right on top and then used it and then showed pictures of the picture and the tattoo when they were finished.
We should understand Kat Von D as a brand. She's sort of running her own identity--
Empire.
Yeah.
Tattoo empire.
Yeah.
But she's doing tattoos one at a time, but she is running her own, call it, your social media brand for her personality, not necessarily her tattoo art. Anyway, Sedlik got mad and sued, sued for $150,000 in statutory damages. And statutory damages, if you register a copyright within three months of publication or before infringement, you can get what's called statutory damages, which are usually $750,000 to $30,000. But for willful infringement, which he claimed this was, $150,000.
So he went for the jugular and sued her.
And just her, not the dude with the tattoo?
Just her, not the poor guy with the tattoo. He was very proud of the tattoo. And this was a trial in the Central District of California, which incidentally is the same district that Led Zeppelin Taurus case was in. Incidentally, turned on the same kind of issues. And incidentally, had the same kind of arguments made at trial, which is one side saying, look, they're just alike. Taurus, they sound just alike. And the other side's saying, look, at the same exhibit, they're nothing alike.
FRED RASCOE I got to believe that happens all the time, someone brings in a photograph, probably copyrighted and often registered, and says, hey, tattoo artist, put this on me. And it just goes on. I have to believe that that happens all the time. Has to happen all the time. And you hear tons of stories about tattoo artists who own the copyright of the ink they put on people. So big stars have to blur them out because they don't have rights to the tattoos on their body.
This is looking at it the other way, and Kat Von D made the argument that, hey, all tattoo is just fan art. And we're just making fan art because she took pictures of herself tracing a photo. And so arguably-- she clearly had access to the Sedlik photo. And arguably, she made a copy. So there were a lot of arguments in the trial about fair use. But to have copyright infringement, you have to have access to the copyrighted work. There has to be a valid copyright, and you have to have access.
And there has to be a substantial similarity between the copy and the work. So one of the questions before the jury was whether there was a substantial similarity between the tattoo and the picture.
So this went to a jury.
Went to a jury, and it was similar with the Zeppelin case. It's like, does "Taurus" sound like "Stairway to Heaven?" Well, when the jury looked at them, the jury said, despite all the fair use arguments, no substantial similarity. So they didn't even have to address fair use. Why? Well, Kat Von D had to adjust the lighting of the tattoo to make it present well on the skin. She blurred the edges to make it run into the arm. She changed definitions and lines and altered everything.
And under California law, under the Ninth Circuit, for substantial similarity, there's an intrinsic test and an extrinsic test. The extrinsic test is supposed to be an objective comparison of the creative features of the work and whatever is accused of being fringed. The intrinsic one is a subjective view by an observer of whether the tattoos have-- or tattoos-- the copyrighted work and the infringing work have the same overall like and feel.
And to infringe, to have substantial similarity, you have to pass both tests. And the jury found that didn't pass either. CHARLIE BENNETT: In cases like this, I know you weren't in the room at the time, but is there a lawyer basically trying to define substantial infringement, trying to define the word substantial for the jury so that they can then put their spin on it? So that will generally-- since it's a matter-- that will generally come down in a jury instruction.
That'll be an instruction from the judge. But from the notes I read of the trial here, there were lawyers that stood up and said, look, here's the tattoo, and here's the picture. They look just alike. Another lawyer came up and said, look, here's the tattoo and the picture. They don't look anything alike. You have to find substantial similarity, and I don't think they look alike. And so it's funny when two people argue both sides.
And then it goes to a jury, and you don't have a lot of insight into the jury process. We had more detail from the Fourth Circuit because they'll analyze everything. But the jury came back and said, no substantial similarity, no infringement.
Are you able to have a personal opinion about this separate from--
Sure.
--as a lawyer? So do you think they're the same, or are they're--
So I looked at them both. We talked a little earlier on air about Devo and their Chi Chi Rodriguez picture. It looks a lot like Chi Chi. This looks a lot like the picture. If I were just sitting there as a lawyer and somebody came in and they just took my thing, and she's on TV copying it, I'd take that case. And I would make that argument. If Kat Von D walked in, I could take that case and make that argument too. And I've said it on the show. I've said it on the show so many times.
Fair use is such a great thing because it's a right that you're given by Congress. But you don't know if it's fair use until a judge tells you so, and that's what's so problematic because I don't know what the parties spent on this trial. But I could see it going either way, and it went to the jury, in Kat Von D's way. And who knows what that cost to figure that out. And there may be an appeal.
This is a case where it's actually worse to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.
That's the thing about copyright. It can be so innocent. You'd be like, oh, I'm just using this picture. And somebody might tell you to take it down. Somebody might sue you for $150,000. And so it's just--
[LAUGHTER]
We talked on another show about the "Barbie" book. But to do that and say, this is fair use and I'm out there, it's cool, and it's brave, and I admire it. But there's risk associated with that. And maybe it's the lawyer in me that's risk averse. Sometimes you-- you don't want to give somebody enough rope to come and beat you with it.
For everybody in the studio right now, just in general, do you feel like the tattoo of a photograph is infringement? Just how do you feel about it?
It's a gut feel.
I think it depends on how good the tattoo is.
Oh.
She said it depends.
It depends.
That's the lawyer answer.
She's been paying attention to Philip too. What about you, Fred?
I'm very risk averse too on the radio, I think.
[LAUGHTER]
I definitely think that the fan art argument resonates with me. That rings true.
Yeah, I think I'm with Fred. I think the fan art-- if it's different enough, I mean-- but even it being on someone's body changes it. I just think, yeah.
Yeah. Everyone just looked at me. I have fallen into a much more useless place in this thought. If you say it's illegal, then the whole industry falls apart. So we can't be doing that. But also, what is that? That's not a legal argument, not even a moral argument.
It was an argument made. There were arguments made about the tattoo market.
You are listening to Lost in the Stacks, and we'll talk more about how we're all slowly turning into IP lawyers on the left side of the hour.
[GUITAR MUSIC]
[ACCORDION MUSIC]
Hi, I'm Mandy, the accordion playing "Data Librarian," and you are listening to Lost in the Stacks on WREK Atlanta.
Today's show is called Intellectual Property Digest, where we're taking a shallow dive--
There you go.
--into some of the prominent current legal issues in the IP world. Of course, one of the big issues of the year is the fact that the original Mickey Mouse cartoon Steamboat Willie is now in the public domain. Not every iteration of Mickey listeners, just that one cartoon. The modern cartoons are still very much copyrighted and very much trademarked. Not get into that, but--
And you will be going to the pokey.
Yeah, we're not diving into that specific issue today, but maybe we'll touch on Mickey Mouse a little bit. Philip, I want to ask you real quick before we take this next music break, what impact does the Kat Von D decision have on my ability to get a tattoo of Mickey Mouse?
You say Mickey Mouse very generally. Steamboat Willie, put that on your arm, that's a derivative work, I think you're clear because-- so Disney got wise of this, and they filed some trademark rights in Steamboat Willie. But it's highly unlikely somebody can say that Disney was the source of your tattoo. So I think tattooing Steamboat Willie on your arm probably free and clear because that's a derivative work from a public domain work.
But a Mickey Mouse cartoon that came out last year?
Not so much. That's still protected by copyright and trademark, and the Mouse is trademarked a ton of different ways. So you have to be careful.
Just to be clear, that was only hypothetical. I'm not going to get a tattoo of Mickey Mouse or anything, ever. CHARLIE BENNETT: Fred, you can say that because we're on the radio and no one can see you. File this set. It's true though. File this set under GT2345.B83.
[BLUE OYSTER CULT, "TATTOO VAMPIRE"]
That was "Tattoo Vampire" by Blue Oyster Cult. And before that, "Tattoo" by Tommy Keene. Songs about ownership of, what else? Tattoos.
[GUITAR MUSIC]
This is Lost in the Stacks, and today's show is called Intellectual Property Digest. And our guest is Philip Burrus of the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group here in Atlanta. So we've done photographs. We've done tattoos. And I should say, I love the Blue Oyster Cult, and I do not like Ted Nugent. I just want to go on record right now with that. OK, we even talked about Mickey Mouse. What's next in the digest?
AI? Copyright? Patent? CHARLIE BENNETT: Of course, Fred. Were you in cahoots with Philip?
No one's tired of AI yet, right?
Nobody's tired.
Generative AI.
[LAUGHTER]
What about AI really socks it to you as an IP lawyer?
I don't know if it socks it to anybody, but the first two stories are a little more interesting. The news of the day is that the Copyright Office and the Patent Office have both issued guidance for when a person can be an inventor or an author on a patented invention or a copyrighted work. And the last time I was here, I think, is when we talked about Stephen Thaler, and he had two inventions that were generated. And he wanted AI to be the inventor.
That went to the Federal Circuit, and he petitioned for certiorari to the Supreme Court. And they turned it down. And the Federal Circuit said no. And he also had some artworks, painting and some other works. At the Copyright Office he wanted AI to be the inventor, and AI said no, the Copyright Office said no. CHARLIE BENNETT: You might have just spun some of our audience's heads around. So let's go back and say that again a little simpler.
Yeah, so there's a fellow named Stephen Thaler, big fan of AI, who wanted to prove to the world that AI could be an inventor or an author. And so he had AI invent some things, and they escape me at the moment. One was a tool, and one was something else. And then he had AI generate a painting. And I want to say it was a story. I know there was a painting. Anyway, he applied for copyrights for the works generated that were creative works of authorship. He applied for patents for the inventions.
His AI machine was called DABUS, and that was like disassembling something everything under the sun. DABUS invented and wrote these things. Copyright Office said no copyright because it wasn't by a person. The creative work wasn't by a person. And the Patent Office said no invention because the invention wasn't by a person.
Did that relate to the primate that took the picture?
The primate taking a picture is in the same class of that's--
Yeah, I can't remember.
It starts with an N. Anyway, it's similar in the fact that a human, under current US law-- and the law could change. But under current US law, a human has to be the author of a work for a copyright registration. And a human has to conceive the invention claimed in a patent to be an inventor.
That's what I find wild about this because the phrase, the guy wanted to prove that AI could be an inventor, could prove that AI was a creator. And it wasn't that. He was trying to make that true. He was trying to declare that concept.
And to be clear, that's my editorialized perception of what was going on because he filed these patents all over the world and copyright applications all over the world. And it looked to me like he was trying to make a point. And he appealed them all the way up to the Supreme Court, which didn't take this patent case, and lost in the US. So anyway, the Patent Office and the Copyright Office has now come out with some guidance-- these are not rules. It's just guidance at the moment-- for when--
It's like the framework.
It's like the framework. And it tends to be a lot of examples. And they're common sense at the moment. But until Congress acts or rules are passed, the best that you can do is guidance from the offices on what can be patented or copyrighted.
So in other words, when we welcome our new robot overlords this will probably cause Congress to act, right?
Maybe so. Maybe so. Maybe something will motivate action from our Congress.
Have you had to deal directly with any AI stuff?
I have. So just recently, I'm in this organization called the Charles A. Pannell Intellectual Property Inn of Court in Atlanta. And it's a lawyer organization. And we did a little presentation on generating AI, rights of publicity, post-mortem rights of publicity. And so I was trying to create some music videos using AI. And I would try to generate certain images of like jungle creatures playing instruments on a stage with fireworks. And AI just didn't seem to want to cooperate.
I'd get some in the mountains with a guitar climbing a mountain.
It was giving you what you needed, not what you wanted.
Yes, you know. Yeah, something like that.
There's the other side of the intellectual property. We're talking about can AI be the author officially in a legal sense?
Yeah.
But there's the part of it where AI has to base what whatever it creates on something and something that probably is copyrighted. It's got to be trained. And so what rights do folks have that create, either like authors that their works were used to train an AI or images of jungle creatures?
It's kind of like can a microwave be a cook?
Therein comes the guidance because the question is, how much input or control do I input as a person to generate something? And what level do I become the author or the inventor? And they give a bunch of examples. But the Copyright Office is clear because AI cannot be an author or an inventor, an author on a copyright registration or inventor. That's pretty settled now in the US. Question is, when a person can using AI.
And the Copyright Office, you can generate a lot of prompts, hundreds and hundreds of prompts. Copyright Office says no. If the creative elements of the work were generated by the AI, regardless of your prompts, Copyright Office says you're not an author. If you take something out of AI and you manipulate it thereafter to create a different work, maybe. That's an example. Or if I take a whole bunch of AI works, like I did in my video, and I organize them a certain way, that's a compilation.
I may have rights as an author of the compilation. But if I'm telling AI to do something and AI is doing the work, generally speaking, that's not enough to get me on a registration. Same way-- and I'll give you a patent example too, but-- CHARLIE BENNETT: And because AI can't be the author, so something that's made by AI with simple prompt has no author, has no-- PHILIP BURRUS: May have no owner.
No owner.
Just generate-- it's out there in the public for use. And as a matter of fact, if you try some of these, like I did, I spent a lot of time trying free AI tools to generate music and images. Everything there is clear in the agreement that's just public. So I didn't have enough time or free points to generate enough images. So there was just tons of free stuff I could download because it's all-- it doesn't have an owner.
And sometimes, when we perceive whether this is right or wrong, when a human does it, we perceive different than when a machine does it, the stealing of or repurposing of other people's work.
Under the construct of current US law, yes. Will it always be that way? I don't know. But right now, there's definitely a bias for people.
This is Lost in the Stacks, and our guest today was Philip Burrus of the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group in Atlanta and a longtime friend and supporter of our show. Thank you so much, Philip, for joining us.
Thanks again for having me. I had a blast.
File this set under Q335.S544.
[THE DOOPEES, "DOOPEE TIME"]
[GIBBERISH]
[SUNO AI, "STOLEN FROM MY OWN DEVICE"]
(SINGING) Oh, stolen, stolen from my own device. You're stolen, stolen from my own device.
That was "Stolen From My Own Device," by Redacted. And before that "Doopee Time" by the Doopees. Those were songs that were created by stealing.
[GUITAR MUSIC]
OK, Fred, before we wrap up the show--
Yeah.
I need clarification. Some stuff is way too ambiguous in what just happened. Is the band actually called Redacted?
Oh, the music that we just-- yeah, it's not actually a band. I just-- I just-- I was embarrassed. It's Suno AI.
You did it.
The lyrics and music and the singing, it was all artificial intelligence. CHARLIE BENNETT: And you're the one who told that artificial intelligence to do it? Yeah, I went on to the site, and I said, this is the title of the song, and this is what I want the song to be about. And it generated some lyrics and had somebody sing it. I also told it what genre to play, and it kind of--
I am rocked to my core because I kind of liked it.
[LAUGHTER]
I was listening to it out of the corner of my ear, and it was kind of cute. I'm like, oh, that's kind of catchy. It's like Casiotones for the very alone, or whatever. But no, you-- oh.
It's all-- CHARLIE BENNETT: I have to leave. It's all artificial. Yeah, but the song that I played before that, "Doopee Time," a human did that, but a human compiled actual music from other existing sources called plunderphonics. It's sometimes called plunderphonics. You take existing songs and create a new song. He added his own touch. That was a Yann Tomita, Japanese artist. But yeah, so I Dream of Jeannie and I Love Lucy.
CHARLIE BENNETT: This episode is just a starter kit for the summer of AI and copyright shows, right? This is just-- we got to do every sentence in this show. We have to do-- It's going to be generated by AI. You will not hear a human voice all summer.
[LAUGHTER]
The look that you're giving me right now, Charlie.
I can feel it coming out of my face.
We get the summer off.
Alex just said we can get the summer off if we do that. And that does sound pretty good. Things have been a little difficult recently.
Well, Philip, do you want to throw one last thing in before we roll those credits?
I was going to say with the music there, all of these fair use cases, they all cite Campbell v. Acuff-Rose. And that was a transformative work on a song when 2 Live Crew took Roy Orbison's tune and put new lyrics to it. So depending on how different your lyrics were, maybe your work's transformative, Fred.
So to celebrate the beginning of that era, why don't you roll those credits.
All right, we'll roll some machine-type credits.
[SYNTHPOP PLAYING]
Lost in the Stacks is a collaboration between WREK Atlanta and the Georgia Tech Library, written and produced by Alex McGee, Charlie Bennett, Fred Rascoe, and Marlee Givens.
Legal counsel and his own bad self were provided by the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group in Atlanta, Georgia.
And special thanks to Philip for being on the show and sticking with us for over 14 years now. CHARLIE BENNETT: Oh, my goodness. And thanks, as always, to each and every one of you for listening.
Our web page is library.gatech.e du/lostinthestacks, where you'll find our most recent episode, a link to our podcast feed, and a web form if you want to get in touch with us.
Next week is, yeesh, another rerun. And it's just because things are really hectic around here. But I guess also maybe some of us want to go listen to the Cowboy Carter album like on repeat.
OK, OK.
Yeah.
A little editorializing there.
There's a lot of that going around today.
[LAUGHTER]
I'm feeling punchy.
It's time for our last song today, and this last track, when we originally played it on a show back in 2018, Philip liked it so much that he requested that we play it again on a show that we did about music back in 2019. Since then, we haven't played it. So it seems like it's about time, right? Yeah?
You confuse me all the time, Fred.
Well, this is a song we haven't played since 2019. But this is "Si Si, Je Suis un Rockstar" by Bill Wyman, right here on Lost in the Stacks. CHARLIE BENNETT: Philip is celebrating. Have a great weekend, everybody.
[BILL WYMAN, "SI SI, JE SUIS UN ROCKSTAR"]
[MUSIC PLAYING]