As Crystal Castles ride the wave of success generated by their debut full-length, allegations of copyright infringement are bearing down on the Toronto-based duo.
Late last week, a post via the chiptune-related file-sharing community, 8-bit collective, alerted users to the striking similarity between the Crystal Castles track "Insecticon and "My Little Droid Needs a Hand by artist Lo-Bat. Several of the collectives members went on to allege the duo have engaged in musical plagiarism, as well as an abuse of the Creative Commons license, by taking, using and rearranging Lo-Bats song without the artists permission and then passing it off as their own.
Since the initial 8-bit collective post, more allegations have also arisen from chiptune artists those like Crystal Castles who write music in real time via a computer or video-game console sound chip claiming Crystal Castles song "Love and Caring unfairly rips off the beat from Covoxs track "Sunday.
And while at first the accusations may come off like a bunch of hot air and some old fashioned critical backlash, the chiptune community is very serious in its claims against Crystal Castles. So far, 17 pages on the 8-bit collectives forum have been dedicated to the alleged plagiarism and several other websites have followed suit, launching their own investigations into the supposed plagiarism. The blog Gameboy Genius has even gone so far as to put Covoxs "Sunday under spectral analysis to prove that Crystal Castles are indeed lifting beats from Covox.
Now, if the 8-bit scenes claims prove to be true, perhaps Crystal Castles have got into this mess by misunderstanding the rules behind Creative Commons licensing. Both the Lo-Bat and Covox songs in question fall under the Creative Commons territory, but under the licensing rules, artists using Creative Commons works must specifically give attribution to the original source material, not use the works for commercial purposes and ensure that the derivative work be released under the same license.
On Crystal Castles end of things, they have barely met any of these Creative Commons requirements. So far, the only action taken by the band to right the situation has been to change one of their MySpace pages posting "Insecticon to now read, "CC vs. Lo-Bat, instead of giving full credit for the song to themselves.
And this is not the first time Crystal Castles has found themselves in hot water because of alleged copyright infringement. The group recently used graphic artist Trevor Browns. image of Madonna with a black eye on their posters, T-shirts and record releases without his permission. As of yet, Brown, who is currently reveling in this Creative Commons fiasco on his blog has received zero financial retribution from Crystal Castles or their label, Last Gang Records.
To read more on Crystal Castles alleged Creative Commons abuses and musical plagiarism, noted chiptune musician Marc Nostromo provides a detailed explanation at the Create Digital Music website.. And to find out more about Trevor Browns Crystal Castles struggles, visit Baby Art Blog.
Late last week, a post via the chiptune-related file-sharing community, 8-bit collective, alerted users to the striking similarity between the Crystal Castles track "Insecticon and "My Little Droid Needs a Hand by artist Lo-Bat. Several of the collectives members went on to allege the duo have engaged in musical plagiarism, as well as an abuse of the Creative Commons license, by taking, using and rearranging Lo-Bats song without the artists permission and then passing it off as their own.
Since the initial 8-bit collective post, more allegations have also arisen from chiptune artists those like Crystal Castles who write music in real time via a computer or video-game console sound chip claiming Crystal Castles song "Love and Caring unfairly rips off the beat from Covoxs track "Sunday.
And while at first the accusations may come off like a bunch of hot air and some old fashioned critical backlash, the chiptune community is very serious in its claims against Crystal Castles. So far, 17 pages on the 8-bit collectives forum have been dedicated to the alleged plagiarism and several other websites have followed suit, launching their own investigations into the supposed plagiarism. The blog Gameboy Genius has even gone so far as to put Covoxs "Sunday under spectral analysis to prove that Crystal Castles are indeed lifting beats from Covox.
Now, if the 8-bit scenes claims prove to be true, perhaps Crystal Castles have got into this mess by misunderstanding the rules behind Creative Commons licensing. Both the Lo-Bat and Covox songs in question fall under the Creative Commons territory, but under the licensing rules, artists using Creative Commons works must specifically give attribution to the original source material, not use the works for commercial purposes and ensure that the derivative work be released under the same license.
On Crystal Castles end of things, they have barely met any of these Creative Commons requirements. So far, the only action taken by the band to right the situation has been to change one of their MySpace pages posting "Insecticon to now read, "CC vs. Lo-Bat, instead of giving full credit for the song to themselves.
And this is not the first time Crystal Castles has found themselves in hot water because of alleged copyright infringement. The group recently used graphic artist Trevor Browns. image of Madonna with a black eye on their posters, T-shirts and record releases without his permission. As of yet, Brown, who is currently reveling in this Creative Commons fiasco on his blog has received zero financial retribution from Crystal Castles or their label, Last Gang Records.
To read more on Crystal Castles alleged Creative Commons abuses and musical plagiarism, noted chiptune musician Marc Nostromo provides a detailed explanation at the Create Digital Music website.. And to find out more about Trevor Browns Crystal Castles struggles, visit Baby Art Blog.
