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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 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.
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
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