Playing sampled collages in public spaces raises untested copyright questions

Evidence

There is some mystery about who is behind G.E.S., but the project appears to be a front for genre-hopping dilettante Jan Jelinek, best known for his Loop-finding Jazz Records, which constructed a version of minimal Techno out of minuscule jazz samples; Jelinek has also produced microhouse under the name Farben and Ambient as Gramm. G.E.S.’s idea was to take micro-samples, loop and collage them, play them in public spaces, and record the results. Would the ordinary laws of copyright apply if music was sampled in these conditions? — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 336

Categorization

• QUESTION: The G.E.S. strategy of maximizing sampling by playing loops publicly is a genuinely untested legal territory worth chasing.
• SEED: Article angle: sampling as site-specific performance that sidesteps copyright by making collage ephemeral public sound.
• XREF: connects to: Free culture advocates seek legal room for transformative reuse of cultural material — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 77