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Sampling & Copyright Law
The Act of Borrowing Is Not Infringement
If you copy an entire article from an online publication and save it to a Word file for your reference, is it copyright infringement? No, it isn’t. The mere act of copying something is not inherently infringement. To further clarify this…
Why A Compulsory License for Digital Samples of Sound Recordings Is A Bad Idea
“The Framers of the Constitution were excellent social psychologists.” Their premier foresight was about the balance of power, the establishing of checks and balances, so that democracy could prevail and a monarchy could never take hold.…
The Sample Clearance “Tax” and the Primary Beneficiaries of the Sample Clearance System
The following is an excerpt from 'The Art of Sampling: The Sampling Tradition of Hip Hop/Rap Music and Copyright Law, 3rd Edition' by Amir Said.
When the music industry first took notice of sampling, their burning question had to…
The Function of Fair Use: An Excerpt from the Book The Art of Sampling, 3rd Edition
The following is an excerpt from my forthcoming book The Art of Sampling, 3rd Edition, which I’m currently running a Kickstarter campaign for. If after reading you have learned anything from this article and you would like to learn much…
Kendrick Lamar Sued for Bill Withers Sample
A rapper uses a sample from a song of another artist to create a new song — said rapper places new song on their free mixtape, then gets sued for copyright infringement by the copyright owners of the song that the rapper sampled. We’ve been…