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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?"
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The problem with the Verve was that they copied the Stones' song completely, slowing down the tempo a bit. Dr. Dre copied a short riff from a song by the Fatback Band. Experts at the trial said that the riff in question is common in a lot of music, and not unique to the Fatback Band song.
In neither case was the music actually sampled, that is, a bit of the original recording used in the new music. While that technique was commonplace in the 80's in rap music, it occurs a lot less frequently today. After some litigation, most notably Gilbert O'Sullivan's lawsuit against Biz Markie, ended unlicensed sampling, most artists started to re-record bits of songs to mix into their raps. The amount of music re-recorded is not enough to infringe on the copyright of the original music, and since it isn't an actual sample of the original recording, it doesen't infringe on that copyright either.
As for the issue of whether sampling should be legal, I say yes. Check out the Beastie Boys album Paul's Boutique to hear sampling as an art form at it's peak.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
So any sample is a derivative work?
How short is a sample? What if I recreate the notes on my own instead of actually using a sample? Is that still covered by copyright?
In actuality there have been court rulings on all of the above - and the answer is 4 notes, doesn't matter, and yes. Which leads to something like an absurdly small number of harmonies available (~96k? I don't recall, but it's silly) before everything is copyrighted. Odds are, if you write a song now, you've violated someone else's copyright.
Perhaps the real question is whether or not the sample is a substantive portion of the song -- if so then it's probably a derivative work. Otherwise it's not. What the hell is a substantive portion? It's just like the legal definition of pornography - I'll know it when I hear it. There are shades of grey, not everything is black and white, and not everything should be, otherwise you paint yourself into silly little corners and do more harm than good.
Remember, just because the answers are out there - be it on Google, in the court system, or public opinion - doesn't mean that they're the right ones. Ask any minority group (not just blacks) in the Southeastern US prior to 1960.
It's definitely not that simple. dudev("That's just, like, your opinion, man.");
/joe
According to the Fair Use doctrine, I can sample your music withour permission. For instance, I could make a parody or social criticism using your music.
And even if your sample is recognizable, it is still possible, artistically, to use it in a completely new way.
"I love phat_joe."
Actually originally fourteen years with an extention to twenty eight if you filed for it.
Filing for copyright extentions is actually a fairly reasonable thing - as long as there is an upper limit. That way if you want to preserve your copyright you have to keep paying (presumably more) to keep the work out of the public domain. In theory it would ensure that only works of substantive value to the copyright holder kept their copyright while the vast majority of works fell into the public domain.
Yeah, you can make an argument that it only really helps corporations, but if an individual author feels that the work has value either in current form or in derivative form (say, a movie or game about a book) then they could continue renewing copyright. Toss in some rules about different cost structures for individual vs corporate filings, a penalty for assignation of copyright from personal to corporate status, etc. and you might just start getting things back on the right track.
Consider this: It's been standard practice in jazz soloing for just about ever to cleverly quote melodies of other tunes.
Or how about this: Both Beethoven in the Diabelli Variations and Bach in the Goldberg Variations devote a variation to quoting a tune written by another.
But if we going to focus simply on commerce, than let's consider this case: Dido release an album. No one cares. Then Eminem uses a sample from her album in his song "Stan" which is a huge hit. Suddenly people are interested in Dido. The song the sample came from is all over MTV. Now I ask: should Eminem have paid to clear the sample, or should Dido have paid for all the free exposure?
Recontextualizing as a creative act has been around for ever. Using old ideas to make new ideas is at the very heart of creativity.
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.
Well thank God someone's solved that problem. Now why don't you take on world hunger or the environment.
Trouble with your reductionalist BS is that you can take sounds from other tracks and arrange them in a sufficently creative way to create a new original work. Take Negativland's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" : it contains a recognizable sample from U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" but is obviously an original work which is critical of the record industry establishment. While I recognize the sample, I can't find the ideas represented in the original work of U2, nor do I recognize the overall song structure. Something has obviously been created.
IMHO this is not what Puffy does for instance; Puffy essentially steals all the music from a song and sets different lyrics to it... like Wierd Al.
Copyright has been totally perverted and sampling is a casualty as much as anything else.