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

Not the first time

[dr_dank]

According to this article, Lucasfilm sued Dr. Dre for sampling the "THX deep note" on his Chronic 2001 album.

Re:Right back at ya

[M.C. Hampster]

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"

Wow, and you are the only one in the whole world who has ever noticed that too.

Of course, "Linux" is a substring of "Linux is the suXX0rs". So?