Sample Piracy Pt.I

Since its birth, sampling of other musical sources has been a foundational bedrock of EDM. Sampling is the process of taking a portion (however large or small) of music and using it, sometimes in a substantially re-edited format, in a new composition. Indeed whole songs and even whole albums have based their success on the practice of sampling. Endtroducing..... (Mo'Wax Records, 1996), the debut album from DJ Shadow, is credited as being one of the first albums made completely from other sources; amongst the, jazz and hip-hop, television shows and interviews, as well as old, obscure funk and R&B records. Remixes too have been a key staple of the musical genre and have continued to fuel the music's expansion since its earliest and biggest influences in hip-hop and dub.

However, the sampling of music has often led to strong legal contention. Many times, when it comes to remixing and sampling, artists do not seek the permission of the original artist. In many cases this has led to the original artist claiming copyright infringement and taking legal action against the sampling artist. What exactly constitutes copyright infringement is relatively ambiguous. However Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Film, 410 F.3d 792 (6th Cir. 2005), (Full text from FindLaw) a recent court case  has helped define what constitutes as a violation of copyright law. This led to another landmark case Metall auf Metall (Kraftwerk, et al. v. Moses Pelham, et al.), Decision of the German Federal Supreme Court no. I ZR 112/06 (Full text translation from SSRN) which quoted the earlier case and said that the quantity of music sampled is irrelevant in deciding whether a copyright infringement has occurred.

But what should constitute copyright infringement? There are thousands of amateur remixes being circulated on websites like YouTube and many more in circulation amongst touring DJs. Should action be taken against these countless re-interpratations? I should like to think of music in artistic terms and not the commercially lucrative way that large corporations and miserly artists use it for. Surely culture and within it, music, should be used as a way of human expression, exploration and progression; not a tool of financial gain. Or maybe this is simply naïve idealisation and not proper business thinking.