Yes, you read it right. We downloaded for free ‘Grindstone’ by punk trio Hearse Pileup and shamelessly reuploaded it on our SoundCloud account. Why? Well, we were encouraged by Hearse Pileup’s frontman Matt Gaffen to do exactly that. At Public Pressure, we are big on DIY subversive agendas, but this time we were beaten. So, go ahead, download ‘Grindstone’, do whatever you want with it, and read what Matt Gaffen has to say about copyright.
Fuck copyright
Although it was designed to protect creators, copyright has been used for years to allow wealthy license holders to abuse and suppress other creators. Sometimes the license holder isn’t even associated with the original creator because it was bought from them. Passing similarities are used as grounds to sue artists. Remixes and reuse of creative works are suppressed using copyright law, even though copyright itself allows discretional use of copyrighted work for parody or educational purposes. This situation is only worsened by the fact that copyright lasts for the lifetime of the creator, plus an additional 70 years after.
There are no original ideas
The problem is that artists and creators draw inspiration from the world around them. The reason art and music have the power to communicate so effectively is that it can draw on our shared experiences. Be that in terms of language, genre, reference or style. A fundamental aspect of creation is taking a broad range of inspiration and reusing those concepts in new and exciting ways. But when rights holders guard their hoard of copyrighted material so viciously, it can stifle creators.
Creative Commons
All of our music is released under a creative commons by attribution share-alike license. Creative Commons is a fairer, more permissive form of rights protection. It explicitly allows reuse and remixing of the work it covers under certain conditions. By attribution, Share-alike is one example – to use our music, whatever you create from it must credit us, and must be released under the same license. Our music is also available for free (though we encourage you to pay us something!)
So we do encourage you to steal this album, use it in something you’ve created! You can even make money off it. We don’t care!
Grindstone by Hearse Pileup re-uploaded on Public Pressure SoundCloud account:
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Find out more about copyrights and culture
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