Negativland is an American experimental music band that originated in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1970s.

Negativland started in Concord, California,[7] in 1979 around the core founding members of Hosler and Richard Lyons (who were in high school at the time).

Following the somewhat unexpected success of the album, Negativland faced the prospect of being prompted to tour, which they had an inept budget for; to prevent this, they made the decision to craft a hoax press release that claimed that Negativland were prevented from touring by law enforcement, citing "Federal Authority Dick Jordan", because the song "Christianity Is Stupid" from Escape from Noise had supposedly inspired the then widely covered case of 16-year-old mass murderer David Brom killing his family.

The song "The Letter U And The Numeral 2" features a musical backing to an extended profane rant from well-known disc jockey Casey Kasem, lapsing out of his more polished and professional tone during a frustrating rehearsal that had gone out to many stations as raw feed and was taped by several engineers, who had been passing it around for a number of years.

U2's label Island Records quickly sued Negativland, stating that placing the word "U2" on the cover violated trademark law, as did the song itself.

Island Records also contended that the single was an attempt to deliberately confuse U2 fans, awaiting the impending release of Achtung Baby, into purchasing what they believed was a new U2 album called Negativland.

Publicists from U2 had contacted him regarding the possibility of interviewing Dave "The Edge" Evans, hoping to promote U2's impending multimillion-dollar Zoo TV Tour, which featured found sounds and live sampling from mass media outlets (things for which Negativland had been known for some time).

Joyce and Hosler, fresh from Island's lawsuit, peppered the Edge with questions regarding his ideas about the use of sampling in their new tour, and the legality of using copyrighted material without permission.

[13] The book ends with a large appendix of essays about fair use and copyright by Negativland and others, telling the story with newspaper clippings, court papers, faxes, press releases and other documents arranged in chronological order.

Negativland were the main subjects of Craig Baldwin's documentary Sonic Outlaws, detailing the use of culture jamming to subvert the messages of more traditional media outlets.

In 1999 Negativland collaborated with UK anarchist band Chumbawamba to produce the EP The ABCs of Anarchism, which is largely based around the writings of Alexander Berkman, cut-up versions of Chumbawamba's hit song "Tubthumping", the theme tune to the children's program Teletubbies and the Sex Pistols' "Anarchy in the UK".

[14][15] Former member Don Joyce long hosted a weekly radio show called Over the Edge most Thursdays at midnight on KPFA.

In September 2005, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the band, Negativland curated an art exhibit in Manhattan's Gigantic Artspace gallery, formerly located at 59 Franklin Street.

[23] Vice writer Peter Holslin wrote in 2014, "These days, what Negativland does is pretty much di rigueur [sic] in Internet meme culture—collage, mashups, reappropriation, recontextualization.