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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?"
If the sample is recognisable as a major part of another song, it should have to be cleared for use by the artist. Simple as that.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
Once the copyright expires, you can do what you want with it. Isn't that the way derivative works work?
::takes a happy pill::
Samples ARE protected by copyright. In this case it doesn't fall into parody or critique, so why are you asking one of the silliest questions I've ever read in my life?
Google yields answers in abundance, you don't need to ask slashdot readers for every silly little thing.
OK I'm better now.
evil adrian
If I'm going to get in trouble because I legally encode CDs into Ogg/MP3, then why shouldn't an artist get in trouble for actually profiting off someone else's work? I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but the law should apply to everyone.
Vote for global prefs bug
Should samples be protected by copyright, or should artists/musicians have the right to manipulate the old into the new?"
I say let their own crap bite them in the ass like this.
It's only proof that the copyright laws have been perverted to the point that they cause more problems than the apparent protection they give.
too bad, Dr. dre.... being bit by your own is the only way to get you to wake up.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If artists get huffy and litigous when someone composes a ring-tone of a section of one of their songs then they shouldn't be suprised when they get busted for doing essentially the same thing. Samples are derivative works and are part of the copyrighted original work. Stealing isn't legal if you don't take everything.
When rappers scratch, they move the LP back and forth. So, what happens during the backward stroke, when the record is played backward ? does Minder Music pay Dr. Dre ? if the record is scratch slowly, does Dr. Dre pays Minder Music slowly, by installments ?
Seriously though, this music copyright business is seriously messed up. I wonder if African tribes and australian Aboriginas realize they're sitting on a gold mine, that they should start collecting on their millenia-old drum "samples" copyrights.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
However, given that, the Stones, whose song was sampled in this suit...were some of the biggest thieves in their day...by their own admission. Keith admits to 'lifting' riffs here and there all along the way. But, the big difference was, as I see it, they took the music from the past, mostly the blues, as building blocks for new creations of music. Music that was created and played by them...NOT a sample of someone else's music.
To me, a remake, is a new interpretation of an older song...and there have been many good ones over the years, but, stealing someone elses drumbeat they played...or any other instrument...well, that's not being creative, that's just re-packaging someone elsess work and calling it your own.
I think one of the problems with today's music, is that somewhere along the line...the taking from the music of the previous generation and building upon it for new sounds was lost. It is one thing to 'hear' the influences of past artists like the Stones or Zeppelin in a new groups sounds...it is quite another to hear Robert/Mick's actual vocal performances...or Page/Richard's riffs they played just being repackaged, reformatted and regurgitated and having it called art/music.
I don't see any creativity in this...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
OK. But there was no sample. It was a replayed bass line. Now, if they had made up a bassline of their own, and someone found a song which played the same six notes, could they sue as well?
BTW do you mean a major part of the sampling song or of the sampled song? Eg, if you sample some half-second odd noise which has no place in the original recording, and build a song around it, should you have to pay?
One of them requires actual talent for one thing....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Should samples be protected by copyright, or should artists/musicians have the right to manipulate the old into the new?
You're goddamm skippy they should be. If they want music to enter the public domain, let them fight the psychotic duration of copyright.
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Taking a recorded track and using it in your own recording in a studio is called sampling. I call it theft.
I understand the sentiment, but I disagree. When you put your music or your story or your ideas out there for people to enjoy, people take them and make them a part of their lives. Your work becomes more than your work, it becomes what people take from it and what people add to it. That's our culture. To fence this culture off from everyone, to refuse to let people build on your ideas, is wrong and unnatural.
If someone takes a few notes of your song and weaves it into new music, I don't see how that is stealing from you. What have you lost? The idea of sampling as theft is worse than that of copying as theft. If the new song is radically different than the sampled song, then the sampled artist hasn't even lost a theoretical sale.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
"I don't see any creativity in this..."
Then you haven't listened. Hip-hop was the successor to jazz and rock as a new, vital, interesting music form. Once. Listen to the first Tribe Called Quest album (for one). Just because people make sounds from a clarinet or guitar instead of from a tape doesn't matter, what matters is the end product is different from the original in a significant way. You are making arbitrary judgements - why is replaying a lick you heard someone else play on a guitar different from reprocessing sounds recorded elsewhere into new sounds? They're not stealing, they're building, and that's the heart of creativity, building on the works of others.
closed minded is as closed minded does
You can have quotes from a book when you review it, and you can sell that review, for money, to a magazine or newspaper.
Fair use has many parts. One of these is the right to copy a work that you own for personal use. Another is the right to make a parody, which can be sold commercially. Another is the right to quote for the purpose of review, or for use in a paper, report, or publication. (With proper citation)
Sampling is none of those things, and thus it is not protected. Well, I suppose in some cases, it could be used as a parody, but not in THIS case.
IANAL
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
This is a quote from a song by Stetsaonic, around '88 or '89, I don't remember:
'Tell the truth, James Brown was old / Until Eric B. and Rakim Made 'I Know You Got Soul."
And sure enough, I bought the James Brown box set a couple years later. Any interest I had in Jazz music started from hearing different producers sample the Blue Note library, and from then on I just started buying records by artists that had been sampled, hoping to find something interesting.
The point is, a lot of these musicians who are being sampled have been washed up for years (case in point, Gilbert O'Sullivan who sued Biz Markie for sampling "Alone Again (Naturally)".) Yet, after Biz sampled that record I went and found the 45 to hear it. If it weren't for Dre sampling that record nobody in the US would've heard it to begin with. Do you think the whole resurgence of P-Funk amongst white teenagers/college students would've happened if it weren't for Dre sampling so many Funkedelic and Parliament tracks?
You're being a bit unfair by saying that rap can't be art. It can be art in the same sense as any poetry is art. We can dispute all day long about whether it is music, but art, it most definitely is (some of it anyway).
Daniel
Carpe Diem
MTV did a "Rockumentary" years ago about The Who, wherein Pete Townshend, the guitar legend did utter "Every musician is a magpie and a thief." and then explained that music and "hooks" or riffs are like expressions in a language. You can come up with something completely original, only to hear a song on the radio later and think "Oh, that's where that came from!" It's impossible NOT to use "samples" of other people's creativity. There's a finite number of chord changes on a guitar, for example. Most of them sound bad. There are few sweet ones left. Rythm is the only degree of freedom left, and it still leaves a finite set.
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
If I sample a 3 second piece of music, there should be no royalties to be paid. The attitude that there should be is destroying rap music. Making it very difficult for new artists to make it in that business. The creativity of rap in the 80s was outstanding and blooming. Then the lawsuits started and new artisit we're stifled.
This suit in particular should have been laughed out of court. It was just 6 bass notes. The artist just blended these note to create something new.
Copyright is supposed to be a balance, a lmied time balance at that. For any community to grow, it is imperitve that there is no strangle hold on who controls art.
Sure, if I try to release someelse complete work as my own, thats wrong, or if I change a song and say it was an originall thats wrong. but taking a sample it not wrong, its neccessary for the growth of a community.
try to remeber, this case involves a repper, but it is bigger then rap music, so try not to let your personal taste for the particular genre taint how you react.
Personally, I don't judge music by genre, I only judge whether or not I like a piece of music on the singkle piece of music.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Hip-hop was
Past tense; so what is Hip-Hop now?
And on topic, we will never again see a legal release like "Paul's Boutique" because it costs too much to clear the samples. But there only needs to be one.
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Well whenever you sample something, it's polite to ask the owner of the music whether it's ok to do so. Without proper references or approval, you'd be plagiarizing their work.
Some bands, like "The Avalanches" have done same really skillful, clever, and artistic sampling to make some great, thoughtful songs.
Other bands have simply taken some riff from another popular song, and used that riff's catchyness to make their own crappy song sound catchy.
Now, I'd be pretty pissed off if I spent 25 years mastering the guitar in order to write and perform some amazing riff and used it to make a really popular song, only to have some other musician at his computer take a "sample" of the best part of the riff and use it in his own song. That riff, whenever you hear it, will remind you of my hit song; and I may not want to be associated with the crappy song that the other musician wrote. Essentially, one artist tries to steal another artist's glory.
For example, one thing that made U2 so popular is Bono's distinctive voice. He worked long and hard to be able to find a sound that people would want to listen to. So why should another artist be able to take a "sample" of him singing a famous line, paste it into his own song, and then sell it ???
Especially when an artist samples a riff from another genre, then uses it in a song which appeals to a market that wouldn't know it was a sample. You know Will Smith's song, "Men in Black"? The whole thing is a remake and rewording of an older song (someone pleeeease help me identify it). All he did was put on a drumbeat and put in some new words. So why does he earn millions for it?
There's nothing so amazing about taking a drum track and using Windows Sound Recorder to mix in the best parts of someone else's song. But, as long as you have the other artist's approval, there's no problem with it.
Personally I'm not a fan of "Come with me", Puff Daddy+Jimmy Page's remake of Led Zepplin's song "Cashmere", but at least it had the original Artist's approval.
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To me sampling is akin to photocopying a page from Shakespeare and maybe add some blue triangles around it then calling it your own. It can be argued it is art but I still consider the original person who did it to be the primary artist. The person who does the copying should get little if any credit.
" I'll agree with you that the vast majority of rappers aren't very good. "
can you think of any artform where that statement is not true?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Well the broadest definition of Music is controlled sounds. So Rap is still considered music. But in my opinion comparing music from the past. Rock, Blues, Jazz, Classical (modern, romantic, classical, romantic, baroque, ...) As well as comparing music forms from non western European cultures African, Asian, Native American. They all seem to be more musical then Rap is in my book.
But is Rap Music: Yes
Is it Art: Yes
Is it Good: No
The reason why I dont think Rap is good is not because of it a mixture of old music in a loop. I have seen this done far more musically. But the music seems to be strictly anger based music. (the words may have a positive message) but the combination of the rhythm and mono-tonic notation of the singer, Just gives a feeling of anger to the listener. And its excessive use of repetition give a primal nature to the music that doesn't encourage mental stimulation or relaxation, it just stresses the brain. Rap doesn't produce any positive benefit and there is little diversity within its own type of music.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The GPL, for instance, is a copyright license explicitely granting permission to use and modify the copyrighted work. The absence of such an agreement implies that this work is not up for grabs.
Just because you think its artistic does not make these actions legal. Spraypainting on public property isn't legal either. Now whether the city will prosecute is a different matter. That's the city's decision to make. But the tagger shouldn't assume that since they've made a beautiful mural they will have any sort of protection from the law.
And there's plenty of reason for an artist not to let another artist use their work. Suppose an artist which uses their music to distribute the message of white power wants to use a sound sample from an artist who preaches equality. Shouldn't that artist have the option to tell this white-power advocate that they don't want their work going to a cause they wish to fight?
You, sir, are making arbitrary judgements. So where's the protection for the original work of art on which that new work is based?
"I don't see any creativity in this..."
Then you haven't listened. Hip-hop was the successor to jazz and rock as a new, vital, interesting music form. Once. Listen to the first Tribe Called Quest album (for one). Just because people make sounds from a clarinet or guitar instead of from a tape doesn't matter, what matters is the end product is different from the original in a significant way. You are making arbitrary judgements - why is replaying a lick you heard someone else play on a guitar different from reprocessing sounds recorded elsewhere into new sounds? They're not stealing, they're building, and that's the heart of creativity, building on the works of others.
I agree with this. It becomes a matter of musical taste at the end. I've had endless discussions with rock-only people who disapprove hip-hop music. There are distinct differences between Hip-hop and most genres of music.
If you ever seen a session or freestyle, in it's rawest form, you'll see it becomes poetry on the fly. Music is the medium that the poetry carries on and to attract a broader audience it uses, 'samples' of popular beats. A true fan or enthusiast will enjoy it by it's lyrical finese not by the beats it borrows.
That's why some of the greatest hip-hop artists make their own beats and create their own lyrics. Dr. Dre's current business is to create beats and sell them to artists; the 10% of the whole music label pie.
I know posting this in slashdot becomes a matter of, "well the musicians 'borrowed' why can't we?". But if you start talking about a genre that you don't respect or understand, it becomes an ignorant bout. (like not reading the article)
is that most of the /. community doesn't like Hip Hop and therefore thinks that it's bad immediately, notwithstanding Eminem though, he's ok! For reasons, that would take too long to explain, but nonetheless, I believe that's why a lot of /.'ers use the argument that 90% of the music on the radio is crap ecause, "unforunately" Hip Hop is in every music genre now. Look at the sucess of Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, Incubus, Rehab, etc.. why? because the sound is "fresh" (albeit stolen), and it's a little too hip hoppy for the guys who like.. umm, Phish... And if you really want to know about music, check out every American music genre, look who innovated and created everyone of them, and see when they became popular, and for what reason they became popular with the "mainstream"... that's it.. and sampling is good, because there's a lot of crap out there that could use a good home on someone elses tracks.
However, the "interpreter" should be free to make their work. This issue highlights the entire POINT of copyright. Copyrights are meant to encourage people to create so that eventually others can base new work off of those results. It may be a derivative, a remake, or even a simple collage.
However, the whole idea should be to EMPOWER precisely this sort of use for older art. Based on that, this lawsuit is an obscenity that demonstrates the problem with the current copyright scheme.
Code is meant to eventually be free. Want is irrelevant.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It should really be up to the record labels to basically try and promote some effort in the artist to create an unique experience in their songs, by just not accepting every Tom, Dick and Harry who show up with a tape made with snippets of 30 songs with a "whoop" in the middle by said "performers".
Of course, this will never happen, since record labels only look out for the interests of Numero Uno, themselves.
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
playing 3 chords, a simple drum beat and singing about love is hardly music also?
And they wonder why record sales are down....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Yeah, and "art" is a substring of "fart." What's your point?
I always thought that if I was a musician, all my music would be GPL: you could get tabs, scores, MP3s, in short the music and everything that went into it online, since it's going to be there anyway.
/.?
But I also thought that since it would be GPL, any person sampling my music would have to make it GPL, right? So if an artist who samples one of my songs just uses normal copyright, I should sue him till he makes it GPL? The idea being that people wil want to sample *his* song and make it GPL, and so forth.
Of course, the implications of this are immense (how could GPL apply to music, etc. etc.), but it's just something I thought of and I feel it should be brought here. Hell, maybe an Ask
we will never again see a legal release like "Paul's Boutique" because it costs too much to clear the samples. But there only needs to be one.
:Wumpscut:.
It's not just "Paul's Boutique." It's the entire Skinny Puppy and Front Line Assembly catalogues. It's Plunderphonics, Negativland, Mentallo and the Fixer, and
Half of the albums I love would never have been released in the current climate regarding samples. Ironically, their use in that music is what prompted me to find and buy a bunch of the sources - which I would never have heard of otherwise.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman