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

Right back at ya

[Mooset]

Remember kids, musicians don't steal. They SAMPLE!

Re:Right back at ya

[cayenne8]

Well, this is an interesting topic...I've often said I didn't consider much of today's music, especially rap to be very artistic or creative. I mean, if given the equipment where "I" could put together a song with parts sampled from other's works, with only a few new rhymes thrown on top...it could not possibly be ART.

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...

Re:Right back at ya

[H310iSe]

"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.

Re:Right back at ya

[KDan]

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

Re:Right back at ya

[Beautyon]

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.

Re:Right back at ya

[tomaco-junkie]

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.

Re:Right back at ya

[geekoid]

" 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?

Re:Right back at ya

[jellomizer]

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.

Re:Right back at ya

[jedidiah]

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.

Re:Right back at ya

[ianjk]

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?

Re:Right back at ya

[cayenne8]

Hey....gimme an band that plays their own instruments...writes their own songs/music anyday over someone pushing buttons on computers or tape drives in a studio any day of the week....

And they wonder why record sales are down....

Re:Right back at ya

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and "art" is a substring of "fart." What's your point?

Re:Right back at ya

[blincoln]

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.

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 :Wumpscut:.

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.

Re:Right back at ya

[Golias]

Music, at least prior to Gilbert and Sullivan, has a very different history from literature regarding intellectual property.

The Great Composers learned their craft largely by performing and copying each others' work. The entire history of Western music hinges on the theft of prior ideas. Even the scales (as we know them) were initially formed by trying to make sense of what was written about ancient greek intonations.

Mozart and Beethoven "stole" from Haydn all the time, and Haydn began by stealing ideas from Baroque-era composers. Bach stole many of his church melodies from popular tavern songs. Louis Armstrong "stole" just about every riff and motif King Oliver ever came up with.

Nobody has any fucking clue where that "Nuh-NAH-nuh-na-NUH" stop-time riff in Muddy Waters' "Manish Boy" (and George Thouroghgood's "Bad to the Bone", among dozens of others) originally came from, because it, like most of the best riffs of traditional blues, had been stolen by one artist after another since before audio recording even existed. For that matter, listen to Buddy Guy and Junior Wells sing "Man of Many Words", and then listen to Otis Redding's "Hard to Handle"... It's the same damn song, except Otis used horn kicks and Buddy played a guitar solo for the bridge.

"Stealing" a sound, whether by sampling or reading sheet music or replaying it by ear, for your own composition is really no more unethical than an architect putting a feature in his building inspired by something that he liked from a Frank Lloyd Wright structure.

Actually, a better analogy is this: suing somebody for sampling or quoting a previous composition in a new one makes about as much sense as suing Peter Max for painting pictures of the Statue of Liberty.

IMHO, copyright is not a concept that should ever have been applied to music, except perhaps to entire works, with much broader terms of Fair Use to allow other artists to extrapolate.

As for the argument about whether rap is really music... Of course it is, don't be stupid. Almost all of it is really shitty music, but then so is pretty much everything Kenny G plays. Forget about "broad" definitions of music; the most precise definition of music I can give as of 2003 is "the performance art of emotive expression through sound." Does rap fit that criteria? Yes. The fact that some of you don't connect with the expression doesn't invalidate what they are doing. I doubt that most rap fans get much out of listening to Hindemeth or even Stravinsky, and now that they are "last century's music", we are all supposed to finally appreciate it after its time (or so predicted all my pretentious music profs anyway.)

I don't know why I went on such a long tirade on a /. thread that's already 600 comments deep or so. I doubt many people will read it. Something about all this talk about music and copyright kind of triggered a knee-jerk rant, I guess.

Samples

[black mariah]

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.

Re:Samples

[phat_joe23]

It's definitely not that simple. dudev("That's just, like, your opinion, man.");

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.

/joe

Re:Samples

[Telastyn]

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?

Re:Samples

[phat_joe23]

Fair Use IS law.

Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 107 /joe

Re:Samples

[gripdamage]

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.

Re:Samples

[dr.badass]

Er, bad phrasing. I considered it right after I posted, and got a 'Troll' moderation for my troubles.

Fair Use IS law, but it is not a right under law. It is a defence. (Granted, on many levels there's not much difference, but that wasn't my original point.) Quoth your link :


In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include...


Now, I am not a law student, but I think you stand on firmer ground with a parody, protected under your 1st Amendment right to free speech, than you do with calling sampling Fair Use.

Re:Samples

[poot_rootbeer]

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.

And that "something" has a name, and its name is "a derivative work".

Puffy essentially steals all the music from a song and sets different lyrics to it... like Wierd Al.

Not like Weird Al at all. Sean Combs pays licensing fees to the songwriters of the Police, Led Zeppelin, etc. songs that he 'remixes' into his own work.

Al Yankovic is creating works of parody, which he is allowed to do without paying license feea. Still, he (usually? always?) seeks the permission of the artists whose music he parodies, and most enthusiastically give their blessings.

Karma

[friedegg]

Dr. Dre boots users from Napster.

Re:Karma

[javiercero]

LOL, payback is a bitch, ain't it Dr?

So let me get this straight:

Dowloading songs for my own listening is a vicious crime.

Using other people's music to make tons of money w/o ever paying the original musicians is not?

Maybe Dr. Dre is a Republican with such double standards.....

Re:Karma

[sql*kitten]

Maybe Dr. Dre is a Republican with such double standards.....

It's worse than that, he isn't even a real doctor!

Copyright

[Evil Adrian]

Once the copyright expires, you can do what you want with it. Isn't that the way derivative works work?

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. ::takes a happy pill::

OK I'm better now.

Re:Copyright

[gurps_npc]

But copyrights NEVER expire. Oh, they SAY that copyrights expire, but everytime it gets close to their expiration date, Congress pushes through a new law extending it (Has happened several times in the U.S.)

Copyrights originally were supposed to be 20 years. That would mean anything written in the 60's and 70's should be fair game now. But they extended everything.

Re:Copyright

[Zathrus]

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.

Re:Copyright

[Evil Adrian]

I think that when you are taking recorded audio directly from another source, and you are incorporating it into your own work, you should realize that you are stealing.

Like, how retarded ARE you to not figure that out?

It's not YOUR audio, it's someone else's.

DUH.

Re:Copyright

[Zathrus]

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.

Re:Copyright

[pfankus]

Funny how only in capitalist modern societies this musical copyright thing is such an issue. I'm a graduate student in musicology (yes, that means I make less than an IT helpdesk tech), but throughout history most famous musicians and composers made their living ripping off their peers (ever heard of JS Bach, Mozart, Beethoven)

Samples ARE protected by copyright

By the same token, it's funny how a crappy bass line can cost $1.5mil....pay me half that, and I'll actually write a good one....

Re:Copyright

[elmegil]

Whereas if I listen to it, "reverse engineer it", and play it note-perfect myself just to reuse it, I'm not stealing?

Re:Copyright

[Gumshoe]

I think that when you are taking recorded audio directly from another source, and you are incorporating it into your own work, you should realize that you are stealing.

It's not stealing; if anything, it's copyright infringement. Stealing refers to the theft of physical property and it's downright misleading to describe infringement of copyright as theft.

Like, how retarded ARE you to not figure that out?

I don't know to be honest, but the entire executive and legislative branch of the British and American governments are just as retarded as me it seems. I mean, why have copyright laws at all if the theft laws legislate all of this?

The same laws should apply

[Repugnant_Shit]

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.

The answer to the delimma

[Lumpy]

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.

Samples and Ring Tones

[Quarters]

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.

The Human Factor

[Sloppy]

In 1991, Metal Church wrote a very catchy song about their opinion on this. I think I'll reproduce it here, totally without permission. You can then debate how self-referentially hypocritical it is for me to do that.

The Human Factor
by Kurdt Vanderhoof / Mike Howe

I just can't believe my ears, some music out these days
The human factor has diminished, in oh so many ways
Fancy footwork gets top bill and I'll put on such a show
One more MIDI cable and my band is ready to go
One more moneymaker and I'm set for life
Stealing from others will make my future bright

One, make some money
Two, overexpose
Sincerity is felt much more when the human factor shows
When the human factor shows

I just need a sample cause no one says it's wrong
It's so easy to rip-off using someone else's songs
Everybody wants to be a star in modern days
But if I don't have talent then I'll just get by this way
Changing programs faster than I dare to say
Musicians all make mistakes who needs them anyway?

One, make some money
Two, overexpose
Sincerity is felt much more when the human factor shows
When the human factor shows

I just heard a song today I think I'll use a part
Incorporate it my own way and that is just the start
I'll change the lyrics that they wrote to satisfy my needs
I wrote the book. Two easy steps. "How to succeed."
[snip]

Metal Church... ah, what a great band that was.

Not all bad

[Anonymous Coward]

If these rulings mean we don't have to hear "Bittersweet Symphony" ever again, you must admit that this is a benefit.

What's the Licence

[Prowl]

If its a BSD style licence, then there's no problem.

If its GPL, then Dre has just incurred the wrath of RMS...

"Dr Dre vs RMS"

is that the name of the lawsuit or the title of the track?

Irony,

[phaln]

This is irony at its finest, people. So many artists don't want you to get MP3s for free, yet they have no qualms crying out for free samples. Of course, this excludes those groups that don't much mind the MP3 "revolution". Keep on rockin' in the free world, yo. But, for the others, that takes a brass set of cojones.

Sampling Just like microsoft "innovation."

[buckinm]

Should samples be protected by copyright, or should artists/musicians have the right to manipulate the old into the new?

If the song is copyrighted, why should little pieces of the song not be? If you can't come up with your own ideas, get out of the music business.

Illegal Samples

[Scoria]

Upon reading that Dr. Dre was instructed to "pay $1.5 million for an 'illegal sample,'" I was beginning to anticipate something entirely different than a story regarding lawsuits related to intellectual property. :-)

Re:One thing I have never understood

[TrollBridge]

Puffy made deals with the owners of the materials he 'sampled'.

Sure it doesn't say a lot about his... talent (*chuckle*), but at least he did it the legal way.

Rapper scratch ?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

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.

Re:Rapper scratch ?

[Dr. Photo]

Millennium-old copyrights won't exist until 2923.

Sampling has been dead for 10 years

[L-Train8]

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.

Re:Sampling has been dead for 10 years

[miTTio]

For that matter, check out Dj Shadow.

His first album: Entroducing, if i recall correctly was entirely made from samples.

Re:Sampling has been dead for 10 years

[BernardMarx]

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.

Paul's Boutique is good, but Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back is excellent. It is a perfect example of how hip-hop sampling can be an artistic collage of hundreds of different samples, as opposed to the mainstream rap process of "looping", or playing someone else's track (be it guitar, bass, drum or entire song) and rapping over it. Check out PE's site here.

There is also a great issue of Stay Free Magazine (The Copyright Issue) that covers many different angles of art and copyright. It contains a brilliant interview with Public Enemy's Chuck D as well as some good articles on the public domain, Disney and the Sonny Bono Copyright extenstion act. The issue as a whole is essential reading for all those concerned with intellectual property and intellectual freedom, and I highly recommend it.

Re:Sampling has been dead for 10 years

[mvdw]

I take it you haven't heard of the Avalanches, then? Go to your local p2p network, type in "avalanches", and get some of their gear. It is seriously good. Especially look out for "frontier psychiatrist", "since I left you", and some of their longer works like "breezeblock session" and "gimix". Then go out and buy it, if you can get it where you are (because of legal issues...)

Simple answer

[stanmann]

The answer is really very simple. If an artist uses a sample, then they should be obligated to pay royalties. That is how the law is written today. Now, perhaps that should change. But why?
So that people who can't play instruments can "borrow" other artists work
I don't think that is a good plan.

Here is a better plan. Fix copyright back to 70-100 years Max.

OTOH, if two artist independantly develop the same riff, then both are free to use it, However if there is a significant gap between the first and second. The second is and should be obligated to acknowledge influence, or prove that it is not a derivative work...

One example that comes to mind was the first time I heard the new Madonna song... some crap about life in America and yoga and pilates. Anyway I was immediately reminded of Falco's Rock Me Ammadeus.

Re:Ice Ice Baby

[bathmatt]

Personally, I think that anything that Vanilla Ice does should be illegal

"Shut the fuck up and get what's comming to you"

[nagora]

Those were Dr Dre's words to Greg Palast (as reported in "The Best Democracy Moeny Can Buy") when asked about his suing of Napster to pay for infringing on his "intellectual property rights".

I DO hope the Doctor is enjoying his own medicine.

TWW

It was not a sample.

[eples]

From MTV's article:
"Dre testified that before hiring a musician to play a bassline from the Fatback Band's 1980 song "Backstrokin'" for his 2001 track "Let's Get High," he consulted a musicologist who said the riff was commonplace.

He had another musician play some notes - it wasn't a sample from a copyrighted work. Surely there is a difference.

Shouldn't the suit be for $900,000,000,000

[Dave21212]

That's $150,000 per song times 6 million copies for a total of $900,000,000,000 ?

Not 'sampled', 'replayed'

[Bananenrepublik]

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?

Re:Not 'sampled', 'replayed'

[dr.badass]

OK. But there was no sample. It was a replayed bass line.

There are 2 types of copyright here : One, the copyright of the song itself (picture sheet music, lyrics), and the copyright of the recording.

If you have a CD of Mozart's 'Jupiter' Symphony, the copyright of the music has long-since expired (They didn't have Disney back then), but the particular recording you're listening to is copyrighted. In such a case, you couldn't sample the recording without permission, but you could certainly play it yourself. Er...you and your orchestra.

Re:Not 'sampled', 'replayed'

[hondo77]

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?

Ask Vanilla Ice and he will tell you that the answer is "Yes".

Re:Not 'sampled', 'replayed'

[alexo]

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?

Actually, four notes are enough.

Re:Not 'sampled', 'replayed'

[Catiline]

IMO that ruling is absolutely ridiculous.

There are only a limited number of note combinations possible, and of those a smaller set are msuically harmonic ("pleasant to the ear"). *ANY* selection of notes smaller than an entire work will, eventually, be repeated elsewhere and thus defining what constitutes the integral piece of "creativity" naturally limits creativity. Ignoring music theory constraints (eg. change in key, note length, scale harmonics) there are just under 60 million 4-note combinations playable on a 88 key piano. Playing one note per second continouously, one person (machine?) could play a sequence of notes that hit every combination in one year, 320 days.

&ltsarcasm>Anyone up for calculating such a musical "composition", copyrighting it, and going after all later musical artists? </sarcasm>

Re:This will get reversed.

[cayenne8]

But there is a MAJOR difference between playing a riff on an instrument yourself, and actually using a recording of another artist's performance of the riff....

One of them requires actual talent for one thing....

:-)

Sampling vs. Stealing.

[DJTodd242]

Well, I listen to "Industrial" music, where sampling is a major part of the music. Taking a quick sound bite from a movie, or the like is a far cry from building "your" song around a looped bit of music from the Rolling Stones (The Verve), David Bowie (Vanilla Ice) or any band on the planet (P. Diddy).

However, there are cases even withing the small genre of EBM/Industrial where the artists got a little sample happy. KMFDM had to re-release thier album NAIVE due to not clearing a huge sample from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. Actually, Apotheosis got burned for the exact same sample. One case that bugged me was a Toronto band, Malhavoc, having to do the same thing with an album because they sampled Mick Jagger screeching in Sympathy for the Devil.

The question begs asking though, how is that really any different from a band like Velvet Acid Christ who have sampled pretty much every word ever uttered by Brad Pitt.

Dr. Dre, and all of the other artists who "create" based solely around someone elses music are just getting what they deserve. Even in a clear case of parody like the Simpsons, Matt Groening et al. get permission before using a product name. (At least they used to.)

This is a rare case.

[techstar25]

Since the late 80's most rappers and their respective producers normally go out of their way to make sure that all samples are cleared by the copyright holders. In the 80's Biz Markie used some samples and was sued, so since then rappers have been more careful. Of course there are always idiots who try to get away with it, like "Ice Ice Baby", sampling "Under Pressure" In most cases the copyright holders have no problem with rappers using their samples if the money is right. Dr. Dre has been using samples his whole career, so it's strange that he would get caught using a sample without proper permissions.

Live By The Sword

[Bob9113]

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.

Re:Sampling vs. arranging

[L-Train8]

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.

recontextualization is a form of creativity

[The Benjamin]

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.

Karma, yes indeed....

[nicedream]

Dre's protege wears a "Fuck Napster" shirt on MTV

Photo here

Re:Shouldn't this be covered by fair use?

[canajin56]

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

Samples = More Record Sales

[bedouin]

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?

Re:You're being stupid

[Elwood P Dowd]

Dre is against file sharing of music. Not sampling. Are you too dim to see the difference?

Um... Yes?

While I understand that they are two different things, I do not understand what would put them on different legal ground.

How Much of a Sample?

[ausoleil]

If a work is copyrighted, generally the implication is that the whole and all parts therein are, indeed, copyrighted performances.

A musician cannot copyright a note or a chord, for example, the chords D / A / G are used in succession in many songs. "Won't Get Fooled Again" by The Who, "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" by Bachman Turner Overdrive are among them. However, a musician CAN copyright the exact performance of his/her playing those chords. That' to my thinking, is a sample.

Now then, take it further. I can't copyright a word. Forget getting the rights to the word "guitar" just to name one of about 300,000 in the English language. But I can copyright a string of words -- like "MY guitar gently weeps" and then sue the pants off if you stick them in your song. Of course, "My guitar gently weeps" were George Harrison's words, ironically the same guy sued for plagiarism in his song "My Sweet Lord." Go figure.

To add to the confusion, add public domain performances, and public domain literature. Rush uses direct quotes from S.T. Coleridge in their song "Xanadu." They cannot copyright them, they are public domain. But, in the song, there is a point where the words are an original set of lyrics by Neil Peart and you can bet your bottom Canadian dollar that those are as copyrighted as it gets. Moby uses public domain performances to great effect, indeed, generating new songs from antique recordings. They're his and our to harvest.

So, at the end of the day, if Dre used someone else's work without permission and rights clearances, he's guilty and should pay up. If the law is wrong, then work to change it. But if you were the guy he sampled and din't pay, you'd be mighty p/o'd and go get a lawyer.

It's all grey.

It's called COLLAGE, dammit!

[gekkotron]

Seems pretty cut-and-dried, but both the **AA and most comments here just don't f*cking get it.
An artist working with paper can legally take a picture out of a magazine, photocopy the Mona Lisa, whatever, and add it to their own art. No laws are broken, and the artist ends up with a new piece of art uniquely their own, but added to by the inclusion of other imagery.
For those who say anybody can do that/I could be a star by using other peoples' music/waahhh/(standard /. Bitch'N'Moan(tm), I say, quit trolling. That argument's been around for years about many things, but those who say that, about collage, music, whatever, never do what they say they could. Do you really think you could put music together the way an accomplished DJ act such as FatBoy Slim does? Can you do collage to the caliber of Braque?
It's the same thing!

"Every musician is a magpie and a thief. "

[aphor]

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.

They should give credit, not money

[geekoid]

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.

A Recent Phenomena...

[Jerrry]

It's a good thing laws like this didn't exist in the past, or half of the classical music repertoire wouldn't exist. Classical composers based much of their music in whole or in part on previous works by other composers.

What is Jazz?

[ruzel]

Jazz as an artform made itself from sampling -- only to them it is called quoting. You play a few notes from somebody else's tune, or the main melody only to mess with it -- and that's the objective! -- to take someone else's idea and create something new with it. In art and writing, this is called allusion. In science it is called citing and in code it's called open source. I put all of these items in scare quotes because when it comes down to it, they are all borrowing and none of them are piracy.

Whoever it is that thinks ideas just spring from the firmament wholly formed and uninfluenced is in dire need of a reality check or at least a trip to Disney World to play a round of spot-the-original-idea. Art springs from human life and human life is made up of a lot of art. To continue to enforce these draconian laws in the name of money will be at the cost of art and culture.

Considering how many people watch "The Bachelor" and "Fear Factor" though, maybe my point is moot. The memepool is getting damn shallow.
____________________

Plagiarizing Music...I'm divided

[Anonymous Custard]

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.

Re:Plagiarizing Music...I'm divided

[rmjiv]

... 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

The original song is Forget-Me-Nots by Patrice Rushen. According to this site, Weird Al has also done a version of it.

Re:Plagiarizing Music...I'm divided

[EZCheese]

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?

Same reason any song makes millions: because a lot of people liked it enough to shell out their hard-earned cash for it. Financial success has nothing whatever to do with artistic merit or hard work (I'm not saying they're directly opposed to each either - they just have nothing to do with one another). Will Smith took a great piece and said "this is interesting, but what if I tried this" and lots of people dug it.

Composers have been borrowing liberally from one another for a very, very long time (check out all those cantus firmus masses from the Renaissance). And as much as we may not like it, sometimes the "general public" (for lack of a better term) gets more excited about the derivative piece than the original.

Ever heard of Anton Diabelli? Probably not, but he once wrote a little waltz theme that no one today would probably care much about except that Beethoven wrote a set of variations on the tune that is now widely considered to be one of the greatest examples of the theme and variations genre. From a purely artistic point of view, I think borrowing is a good thing - it lets idea small ideas grow into big ones. In the modern age of copyrighting, there are legal issues to be worked out, but the creative impulse goes back a long way and, I think, should be allowed to continue.

Re:Shouldn't this be covered by fair use?

[cpt kangarooski]

No it's not. Commercial impact is a factor, but not probative. Check out the 2 Live Crew case where the Supreme Court found it fair use to make a parody of the song Pretty Woman and sell it commercially. It is also a fun read.

Samples are good!

[auralogic]

I say intelligent artists should copyright they're samples! Firstly, artists don't earn alot of money, associations such as the PRF (Performing Rights Society) can help track down a groups commision on radio plays and live shows etc. Secondly, It might sound crazy that a split-second sample (possible just a kick drum beat) could be worth 1.5M USD but it might have just made the track and credit should be given. If an artists (such as Dr.Dre) wants to use a great sounding sample then he can bloody well go an ask the author of the sample if he can use it and I'm sure that for a modest amount of money (artists aren't usually that greedy!) they can use the sample. Dr.Dre, knew he was using someone else's sample, and he's a real dumbass for not checking it out first. I'm happy for the bloke that's 1.5M USD richer for creating that sample..it could happen to you. INTELLIGENT ARTISTS COPYRIGHT THEY'RE SAMPLES!

A big problem here..

[crashx99]

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.

Don't make sampling illegal, promote creativity

[Kedanoth]

My basic stance in the subject is: Don't make sampling illegal, but discourage it in favor of more creative efforts from the artist.

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.

how soon will software look like this

[asscroft]

Dre used a common place bass riff, that was first developed by the stones. It's an element used as part of the song. It accomplishes a certain amount of rhythm and timing, and also gives a harmony to the melody. He might have dropped it a key or so to go with the other elements of the song. And he got sued for using it.

What if whoever the hell created the stack or the queue or the binary search tree or even the array copyrighted those data structures. We'd be screwed, having to pay licenses and get permission before we did anything.

Seems to me at some point your bass riff is common knowledge and public domain. This is a perfect example of why copyrights are too long. I just hope we can keep copyrights and patents out of software design until they either get reduced to a reasonable time limit.

What a great way to stifle creativity and future development: Patent and Copyright everything for ever so that nothing can ever be improved, tweaked, modified, extended, adapted or used in a manner other than originally intended by the original owner. Dark Ages, here we come!

If they had IP back when they invented addition, we never would have been allowed to do muliplication. Hell, I bet the patent holder for counting would have sued the inventors of both mulitplication and adding.

blah blah, this is a boring ass post isnt' it. hmm, delete or submit????

Take a look at this hypothesis...

[LeoDV]

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 /.?

ha ha

[CakerX]

can this be the same Dr. Dre shutting down napster in Y2K over copywright viloations. Well, good dr, if your gonna use other people's music, PLEASE DON'T BITCH WHEN OTHERS USE YOURS

Not. Re:Sampling has been dead for 10 years

[WolfWithoutAClause]

The problem with the Verve was that they copied the Stones' song completely, slowing down the tempo a bit.

Um. No. The Verve recording took only 4 notes from the stones song, and none of the lyrics!

If you listen to it, there's 4 notes that start at the beginning and they continue to loop underneath for the entire song. That's the 4 notes that they stole. Actually they didn't steal, they told the Stones that they wanted to use those notes they said ok, and the Stones more or less reneged on the deal when they found out that they'd looped it right down the whole track; and more importantly because they could, demanded full rights (legally it's a derived work as soon as you copy a single note, more or less).

The Verve probably could have held out for atleast partial credit, but the Stones played hardball and apparently knew that the Verve couldn't release their album without the Stones permission for the track, so the Stones had them by the balls.

Its not the only case against Dre

[chillmost]

and Co. That one hit this past summer from Truth Hurts...Addictive. Dre helped produce it along with DJ Quik. The song has heavy Indian Influences. He's being sued by some lawyer on behalf of the composer of the original version in India. I've heard the original. They totally ripped it off. It is basically the same song with Truth Hurts vocals dubbed over. This is a multi-million seller in India. Somehow they though they would get away with it. More info here.... http://www.musiclw.com/events.html

Re:Is Dre a bad-ass

[Glonoinha]

I confess, I am either Snoop Dogg or a white person making fun of rappers.

My post was totally honest though (the first part anyways.) I guess we are going to find out of Dre is still 'Death Row Records' material or if he is going to play by the rules. Those hard core Compton gangster rappers are some bad mofo's, Tupak and Biggie didn't cost anybody $1.5M and both saw their last breath when someone pulled up next to their car at a stoplight and proceeded to ventilate it with a machine gun. Because of some 'perceived disrespect.' $1.5M will buy a LOT of 'perceived disrespect.'