Mark Hosler spends a lot of time with lawyers. No, that doesn't mean he's
rich; in fact, the truth is just the opposite. As a member of the social
commentary-rich prankster collage band Negativland, he's been part of a scheme
to falsely implicate its own music in a mass slaying, pranking the media all
the way up to
Rolling Stone. Soon after, the band found itself in a
collosal legal battle against Island Records after issuing a single entitled
"U2." That ditty, which scored the band a handy 15 minutes of notoriety,
utilized the melody of the Irish superstars' song "I Still Haven't Found What
I'm Looking For" along with outtakes of American Top 40 host Casey Kasem
throwing an expletive-laden hissy fit (see the book
The Letter U and the
Numeral 2 or the film
Sonic Outlaws for full details on the battle
Negativland fought against U2's publishers, U2's label, and eventually
Negativland's own label). In the wake of these litigations, which cost the band
a fortune in both money and time as well as the rights to some of their own
material, Hosler has only increased his efforts as a crusader for the freedom
of artists to sample and manipulate existing works for their own creative use.
Basically, he says, Negativland has taken a page from Advertising 101 and
turned the corporations' term "positioning" against them. In the advertising
world, the term refers to succeeding financially by finding a target group for
your product that is not already being serviced. After the Negativland/U2 war
had gotten the band into the spotlight, he says that they "decided to exploit
that opportunity as responsibly as we could" as they realized that "there [was]
no one taking the position of advocating the ability of artists to collage" and
creatively plunder existing works. Hosler will be hosting a dialog entitled
Changing Copyright in which he will perform a song, show the
never-before-seen video for "U2" and lecture on "intellectual properties, who
owns your intellectual properties, and why we think they're wrong." Hosler
holds no illusions that everyone in attendance will be in full agreement with
his beliefs, and expects the discussion afterwards to be quite entertaining.
He's also quick to point out that while he comes from an audio background, the
issues discussed in
Changing Copyright apply to all media.
Hosler also will be taking part in the Global Pillage panel (along with
Survival Research Labs' Mark Pauline) where, among other things, he is expected
to discuss the upcoming Dispeppsi album, in which Negativland expects to
find itself once again embroiled in legal action, this time with the
multinational corporation behind the band's "favorite soft drink."
