Dr. Dre to pay $1.5 mil for "Illegal Sample"

jwlidtnet writes "According to MTV, Dr. Dre has lost a lawsuit filed over a presumably-uncleared sample on his last album (Dre still hopes to appeal). This is certainly not the first time that something like this has happened: in the mid-nineties, British band The Verve were forced to pay all royalties from their song Bittersweet Symphony (*and* alter song credits) after Allen Klein--who owns the rights to the 1960's Stones catalogue--discovered that the song used a sample from an orchestral recording of "The Last Time." Thing is, though, that many groups believe that such lawsuits shouldn't occur except in the most blatant circumstances; among these groups, Musicians Against the Copyrighting of Samples and the group Negativland are perhaps the most outspoken. Should samples be protected by copyright, or should artists/musicians have the right to manipulate the old into the new?"

Comments

Re:Right back at ya

[cayenne8]

Well, as I said on another reply on here...there is a difference between playing something your self......and playing a recording of someone else's original playing.

As for hip hop...well, I have a hard time saying the phrase rap music...I think the terms are mutually exclusive.

Splicing together a bunch of samples of old music, with a bit of a drum machine loop and muttering some rhymes on top of it, is hardly art or music in my opinion. Remember when artists used to actually sing much less play their own instruments?

Re:Samples

[RobotRunAmok]

Unless you reject the greedy assumption that art must be controlled and deciminated legally by whoever owns it and realize it should belong to the public for the good of society

I'll be happy to, once my mortgage bank and grocery store reject all their greedy assumptions and agree to house and feed me and my family for the good of society.

Until then, pay up, parasite...

Re:Why didn't they just recreate?

[Jack Comics]

Because recreating the sounds requires something resembling musical talent. And hip-hop "artists" and rappers, at least for the most part, just don't have that.

Re:Karma

[bofkentucky]

ummm, where's the double standard on the right...the left appears to be the one making the big bucks off this war (Diane Fienstein's D-CA hubby got the real Iraq rebuilding contract, halibutron's is pocket change to this contract). The left is the one hanging Bill Bennet while defending Clinton, it the left who forgot Clinton made his own carrier visit in '93 and the D-Day staged photo-ops in '94

Re:It was not a sample.

[death to hanzosan]

Are you truly so incompetent that you cannot perform a simple Internet search? Do people this incompetent actually exist? It's shocking to me, I am sorry. Here you are:

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=musicolog ist

Re:Right back at ya

[Misch]

Whether it's art or not is better left for others to debate, but I note that the string "rap" is a substring of "crap"

Re:Right back at ya

[platipusrc]

well, rap actually isn't music according to the regular definitions of music (from dictionary.com):

music ( P ) Pronunciation Key (myzk)

n.

1. The art of arranging sounds in time so as to produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre.

2. Vocal or instrumental sounds possessing a degree of melody, harmony, or rhythm.

Since rap is only rhythm and percussion, it doesn't contain all of the qualities necessary for music! :)