Court rules sampling may violate music laws By JOHN GEROME Associated Press
NASHVILLE � A federal appeals court ruling yesterday means that rap artists would have to pay for every musical sample included in their work � even minor, unrecognizable snippets of music. Lower courts had already ruled that artists must pay when they sample another artist's work. But it has been legal to use musical snippets � a note here, a chord there � as long as it wasn't identifiable. The decision by a three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati gets rid of that distinction. The court said federal laws aimed at stopping piracy of recordings applies to digital sampling. ''If you cannot pirate the whole sound recording, can you 'lift' or 'sample' something less than the whole? Our answer to that question is in the negative,'' the court said. ''Get a license or do not sample. We do not see this as stifling creativity in any significant way.'' The case deals with protection of the sound recording, as opposed to the protection of the composition itself. It is one of at least 800 lawsuits filed in Nashville over lifting snippets of music from older recordings for new music. The argument was over the NWA song 100 Miles and Runnin', which samples a three-note guitar riff from Get Off Your A.. and Jam by '70s funk-master George Clinton and Funkadelic. In the two-second sample, the guitar pitch has been lowered, and the copied piece was ''looped'' and extended to 16 beats. The sample appears five times in the new song. The NWA song was included in the 1998 movie I Got the Hook Up, starring Master P and produced by his movie company, No Limit Films. No Limit Films has argued that the sample was not protected by copyright law because it was not ''original'' and because the sample was legally insubstantial. Bridgeport Music and Westbound Records, which claim to own the copyrights for Get Off Your A.. and Jam, appealed the lower court's summary judgment ruling in favor of No Limit Films. http://www.tennessean.com/business/archives/04/08/57135362.shtml?Element_ID= 57135362 -- You are a subscribed member of the infowarrior list. Visit www.infowarrior.org for list information or to unsubscribe. This message may be redistributed freely in its entirety. Any and all copyrights appearing in list messages are maintained by their respective owners.
