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for years these wannabe musicians (hip-hop DJ's) have been stealing tracks and music from people who actually make music and then going back and paying them after the fact.i hate to be on the side of the RIAA, but this is one time i am.

Yeah, not to mention wannabe musicians like the Beatles ( http://abbeyrd.best.vwh.net/mysweet.htm ), and The Verve ( http://www.superswell.com/samplelaw/horror.html#ve rve ), and Led Zepplin ( http://www.illegal-art.org/audio/historic.html ), who were all punished for stealing music... Rock musicians are nothing but a bunch of talentless thieves!

Are there really that many people, even on Slashdot, that think stealing intellectual property is not wrong?

Stealing intellectual property is when you claim you own a copyright, trademark, or patent that you do not own. Recording studios do it all the time, as do software companies, and you're right that most people on Slashdot think it's wrong.

What you're talking about is infringement, but if you insist on using physical metaphors, it would be more accurate to call it 'trespassing'. Do many people on Slashdot think trespassing on intellectual property is sometimes ok? Sure they do. Trespassing is usually harmless -- I bet you've done it yourself, in real life.

Not only did they The Verve lose a lawsuit against The Stones, but also has successful legal challenges from Andrew Loog Oldham who owns the rights to all Pre 1968 Stones songs...

Worse than that, because the courts has ruled the due to the Sample, The Verve did not own the song, the Stones management then licensed the song to be used in adverts for Nike and Vauxhall...

After all I don't want to sample without giving credit.

Superswell's Sample Law

One of the most notorious examples of sampling irony is the Negativland/Coca-Cola connection. The California-based band Negativland, copyright infringers of the highest reverence, "illegally" sampled a 1966 religious record and calls their version of the song "Michael Jackson". Samplist Fatboy Slim decides to sample Negativland's song, licenses the Negativland version of the religious sample from SST records, and also calls the song "Michael Jackson." After Fatboy's ensuing popularity, creative advertising executives decide to license Fatboy Slim's song for a Coca-Cola television commercial. Result: Coca-Cola unwittingly engages in copyright infringement. Negativland, whose calling is to debase advertising on all levels, find their music selling soft drinks. Fatboy Slim deposits a huge check in his bank account.

Negativland writes: "The track 'Michael Jackson' from this Fatboy Slim CD ['Better Living Through Chemistry' (Astralwerks) 1998] samples from the Negativland track 'Michael Jackson' from our 1987 release 'Escape From Noise' on SST Records.

"Stupidly, Fatboy Slim went to SST Records to get permission to use this sample. SST charged him $1000, which they are keeping all for themselves, of course. Besides the fact that Fatboy could have kept his $1000 and taken the sample from us without permission and we wouldn't have cared, the Negativland sample he used was itself appropriated by us without permission from a religious flexi-disc originally issued in 1966. [In fact, a Negativland member LITERALLY stole this record from the basement of a church in Concord CA.]

The article I sampled this from is here

Here is an interesting site about some of the legal issues regarding sampling.

that case is absolutely ridiculous to me. first of all, the stones song really doesn't sound anything like the verve song. yes, the riff is the same, but the stone's version is played on guitar and at a faster tempo. the other reason is: the verve licensed the sample from the stones beforehand. it was only after the song became a hit that they got sued.

i got the last bit of here. could be bullshit. i don't know.