At the New York Public Library on Thursday, Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy and "Elvis of copyright law" Lawrence Lessig got together over Powerpoint slides to discuss the future of intellectual property.
Stereogum doesn't go to libraries, so here's Artforum's review:
Tweedy was laconic, if sweet, humbly explaining the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot episode, his legal settlement with the owners of the cult found-sound collection The Conet Project: Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations, from which he sampled the broadcasts that gave the album its title, and his view that current copyright laws incorrectly presume that music is created in a vacuum, free from influence or borrowing. He displayed a bit more zing when he noted that the musicians who complain about file-sharing tend to be super-rich stars "who should never be paid again." "Music makes connections," he said. "To draw boundaries within it is fascism."
You can read more about the event (and Wilco's past adventures in digital music), at NY Times but Lessig prefers you don't.
