Timbaland responds to stealing accusations
After presenting the very convincing evidence that Timbaland stole from a chiptune producer, he responds on a radio show. This line explains it all:
“It’s from a video game, idiot”
So, Timbaland, which video game is that? Would you like to help us realize we’re wrong? Oh, you probably can’t. And he says it’s sampling, even though he took the entire melody and didn’t do much to make it his own. Forget attribution, he couldn’t even make it different himself. WHACK!
Heh. Someone should make a videogame with that song as the soundtrack. I’m thinking something like “Whack-a-Timbaland.”
Haha didn’t mean it like that.
Timbaland is seriously fucking nuts right now.
This response was insane, he basically admits that he stole the joint… but that it wasn’t technically “stealing” because he just sampled it as opposed to opening it up on his Commodore 64 and copying the notes from the guy in Finland.
“… I’m an American..”
In fact sampling the track is probably considered to by the most severe type of musical plagarism. Dude should have just shut up on the radio, he dug a much deeper hole for himself. Lets recap:
a. he admits he copped the melody.
b. he claims it’s okay because he sampled it as opposed to transposing the melody by looking on Janne’s computer.
c. he claims the track he sampled wasn’t copyright protected and was therefor open for public use (insinuating that it was even the soundtrack to a videogame [note; even video game producers are protected by copyright laws, EVEN if they are Finnish video game soundtracks]
Do I think he believes any of this? I believe he has convinced himself to believe this, but he isn’t stupid. The evidence shows that he probably opened the original file to grab his sample, which means the he has to have at least a slight idea of this music scene and Janne’s work, but also would mean that he knows the work never appeared in any videogames and was a modern piece of micro music.