Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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?
"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
It doesn't *need* cleared, espeically in the case of parody and the such. If used seriously it pretty much still falls under copyright. Hell, at the very least the original artist should be given credit.
In written word, it's considered a serious offense if, say a poem, or even a snippet of a poem, is republished as part of a larger work without credit given to the original author. Why should a (recorded) bassline be different than a poem in regards to copyright?
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...
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.
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
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.
$8.95/mo web hosting
" 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
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.........