Re: sampling rights

[Kim Flint <kflint@chromatic.com>]

At 06:57 PM 2/4/98 -0500, Caleb Deupree wrote:
>At 04:41 PM 2/4/98 est, Edward_Chang@mail.amsinc.com wrote:
>
>>  Oswald samples probably
>>  around 200 songs on his Plunderphonics record and I'm wondering if he
>>  might've done anything more than just putting it out.
>
>Since you picked a particularly outrageous example, Oswald was not just
>sued, he was forced to destroy both all remaining copies of his first CD
>*and* the master tapes.  The only reason they didn't try to round up all
>the ones that had already gone out was because some rich (i.e., with deep
>pockets) or otherwise influential library absolutely refused to give up
>their copy.

I tend to believe that most sampling falls under the "fair use" portions of
typical copyright laws. Similar to quoting another article or collage art.
Proving it, though, is incredibly difficult, and apparently there isn't a
lot of case background to develop those areas of the law. One exception is 
2
Live Crew's successful fair use defense against Roy Orbison, for their
sampling of "Pretty Woman." They had the money to do it, though. Typically
the sampling party doesn't have anywhere near the legal budget of the one
being sampled. (as was poor negativland's situation when U2 and Casey Casem
were obliterating them for their parody of "I still haven't found what I'm
looking for," which had some hysterical samples of Casem radio outtakes.) 
So
rather than battle it out in court, the practice of seeking permission and
paying licensing fees has developed.

Many people who use lots of samples blatently ignore this, however. It's
part of the culture of some scenes to take the samples without permission.
This is now so common that most seem to get away with it. The risk is up to
you I guess.

kim
________________________________________________________
Kim Flint                      408-752-9284
Mpact System Engineering       kflint@chromatic.com
Chromatic Research             http://www.chromatic.com