ACM: Ubiquity - A Conversation with Andrew Hargadon
"The more we move into a digital world and the more easily our work becomes digitized and traceable, the more easily the origins on our influence become traceable. The Beatles borrowed from Elvis and everybody else. When they borrowed, it was OK because they were playing in clubs in Germany and nobody could track their music. When a hip-hop artist samples music off of CDs and puts together a song on his Apple, it becomes possible to say, 'Wait a minute, you stole that melody from here and you stole this part from there.' The creative process is the same, but now with technologically we can tease out the influences and say, 'This riff is owned by somebody else.' All of a sudden, on an erroneous assumption, the law is meddling in the creative process."

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