Young Guru - Piracy and Invention lyrics

Thank you everybody for allowing me to be here. I want to talk on a topic you've probably never thought of before, and that's basically how hip-hop can help save the world. We're moving into a time now where our society is seeing that intellectual property is becoming the most important value that we have. We moved from agriculture to manufacturing, and now, intellectual property is at the top. So, us in the music business, and especially us in hip-hop, have had to deal with this question, and through a study of hip-hop, we may be able to give some answers to some of the puzzling questions that exist today. One of the things, I guess, that is the biggest problem for intellectual property are pirates and thieves. How do we protect our music, our magazines, our books, things that can easily be sent all over the world, at the touch of a bu*ton without our knowledge and without us getting paid for it? So, how do we deal with that? And I think a study of piracy or a study of hip-hop culture, being that hip-hop is solely based off piracy. When we first started, we were in the South Bronx and we did not have money to buy instruments, to go to music lessons. So we still wanted to play music and create music so there were DJs that would take specific parts of records and play them out to the public. These people, in turn, liked that music and they kept coming back to these parties. These people became extremely famous, one of them being the godfather of hip-hop, Kool Herc. Here's a guy that came from Jamaica that was in the, what we call the dub or toasts tradition in Jamaica where guys would make music, take that one track, and give it to a lot of different people. So, him coming from Jamaica, he would play a sound system in the South Bronx. This influenced other people. So we start to see that other people, by stealing his idea, or borrowing or, as we say, "remixing" his idea, started to gain notoriety. One of them being Afrika Bambaataa. Now, what he invented was that he would take these specific parts and play them, and extend maybe thirty seconds of a record for about two to three minutes. Another young gentleman that was underneath of him saw how important this was culture, and created what we now call the "mixer," or should I say the fader on the mixer, so that these records could be extended back and forth. But here comes the problem: when these gentlemen decided to make records and to sell these records, they were actually using other people's property. So, how do they pay these people, how would these people be included in whatever it is they're doing? So, when we study hip-hop, we're actually studying the history of piracy. So, if we go back and study all piracy, we see that most things that are created in the world are a remix of something else, i.e. [sic], the United States. When the United States went through a revolution and separated from England, we were stealing and using un-patented material from England to the point that England made a word for that, and they called it "janky," which eventually became known as "Yankee." But what we see is that throughout history, every single form of society has in some way been effected by piracy or pirates. When Edison first created the phonograph, musicians were extremely mad, saying that this guy was stealing their revenue. Edison then went on to create motion picture and, funny enough, he asked for a patent. So a lot of the people creating motion picture in New York City ran west. One of them was a guy named William. So they existed there for years without any type of patents, freely making movies. William's last name also happens to be Disney. So it was a case in point where we see a lot of piracy finding holes in society, and inventing things that people need or wanted. If we look even further, we'll look at how hip-hop music comes up and, in 1991, we have a sampling case by an artist named Biz Markie. Now what happened was this was the first time that someone actually legally took action against someone using pieces of their recorded material. Biz Markie's album was stripped from the shelves and he then had to go back and clear all the samples. This creates sample clearance inside of hip-hop music. What we then began to see is that pirates, or should I say piracy, pushes culture and makes us adapt and change. So now, we're getting to a point where intellectual property was the thing that we were worried about, but in 2005, there was the creation of the RepRap, which could then create physical things. So what do we do now when manufacturing is effected, and kids can now download the new Nike as much as they download music? If we study hip-hop and study how we've adapted and taken certain forms and changed them into something new, we start to question whether or not the new creation is as much dedicated to the original creation as the user makes it. So if I have, let's say, a James Brown drum break, where I just take the drum break and blatantly just sing over top of it then yes, I think James Brown should get paid. But what happens when I take specific notes or specific hits off of that album and make something new? Am I taking from James Brown or am I just remixing what he did? When we look at society and look at the way that we've changed and where we're going, it's easy to see how someone could consider that stealing. But we've seen in the past how piracy and how remixing has greatened our society. We would not have television, we wouldn't have movies, we wouldn't have cable service, we wouldn't have radio if it wasn't for piracy. So the question begs, where do we draw the line? Or how does someone create something out of someone else's material but properly pay them for it? It makes us think, what is intellectual property? Or what do we really own? Because now, no matter how you try to stop it, a kid is going to always download something. We've--us in the music business--I think took the wrong approach when we tried to stop piracy instead of understanding what the piracy did for us. There's plenty of venues that musicians can't get their music out, but now with the internet, and with people having websites, we can showcase anything as far as we want to. So where do we stop, where do we draw the line? Now that our laws have tried to catch up, it's a little difficult for us-- because yes, I can take something from someone else and change it, but how much of that belongs to that person? All of that has to be negotiated. So as we study hip-hop and as we look at it as a culture, we start to find that certain things were invented because of it. We now have a multi-million dollar, or should I say billion dollar industry based off of this piracy. And not only does it effect music, it effects movies, it effects advertising--all things of that nature. So as we look at it, as one thing is taken away, another thing comes in and grows. We can apply this to everything that has to do with piracy--or should I say technology--in the way that that has affected us. If we look at magazines, if we look at newspapers--all of these things that used to come to us in physical form, but were actually intellectual property, are now on the internet for free. So we see how this affects our society and it makes us understand completely what it is when we say "intellectual property" that we're talking about. Are we talking about the physical paper or are we talking about the ideas or the words on the paper? And then how do we value those ideas? How do we monetize those ideas? This is something that hip-hop culture can explain to you and help you understand it in a greater context. So for me, I would say that hip-hop invented the remix. And as we study and try to deal with piracy and downloading, take a look at hip-hop and see how that's benefited from the actual act of piracy. But just remember that everything has started from this, and there's nothing new under the sun. Thank you.