Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Problems with Crystal Castles, Via Chris Limitbreak

From 8bitpeoples.com


CREATIVE COMMONS AND CHIP MUSIC THEFT



It's recently come to light that Crystal Castles, a Toronto-based band, has been heavily sampling music from several chip music artists without obtaining permission or crediting them. Lo-bat's tracks Bibibi and Tizzy, from his 8bitpeoples release Game Boy, are just two instances of this.

As you may have noticed, we release all our music under a
Creative Commons BY-NC-ND License here at 8bitpeoples. What this means is that you're free to share it however you like, with whomever you like. All we ask in return is that you credit it appropriately, do not use it for any commercial purposes, and obtain permission before creating any derivative works (such as remixing it or using it as the soundtrack for a video). Crystal Castles has violated every term of this license in their use of Lo-Bat's music. Furthermore, they have committed copyright infringement by sampling other artists such as Covox, whose drums from his song Sunday appear in no less than four Crystal Castles songs.

For more information on Crystal Castles questionable musical approach, the rising trend of chip music plagiarism, and the Creative Commons take a look at these articles:

Create Digital Music: Chiptune Music Theft Continues

CHIPFLIP: Plagiarism

Gameboy Genius: Crystal Castles and Chip Music Copyright Infringements

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Pitchfork has already defended Crystal Castles. They said the tracks are unused demos from 2004. They are simply demos that were made 4 years before CC made their debut album in 2008. The tracks were never used for anything and were never shared with anyone because CC deemed them "awful" and "too poor for release".

Why wouldn any artist obtain permission to use samples in songs they do not want anyone to hear. This makes no sense.