The 6th Circuit recently ruled in Bridgeport Music Inc. V. Dimension Films that sampling, the process of using a small piece of another�s musical recording on one�s own recording, is prohibited by copyright law. The court held than any duplication of a sound recording, no matter how minor is an infringement.
Until last week, the rap music industry was largely based on sampling. Many rap songs, are just layers and layers of different samples with a vocalist recording over them. As long as the sample is insignificant, or substantially different from the original recording most courts ignore it under the fair use defense. But no longer — at least not in the 6th Circuit.
The 6th Circuit decision may make rap musicians see the cold hard copyright truth. As the technology world and teenagres have known for years and what rap music has just now realized: copying sound recordings is illegal.
This reminds me of the MP3 copyright issue. MP3’s are smaller, lower quality copies of original sound recordings. One cannot duplicate them without license to do so, and certainly cannot distribute them. Rap music was doing essentially that. A rap artist will take a snippet from an old song, lower the pitch, maybe play it slower, but in reality, it�s still the original that�s been copied. MP3’s are mathematically different songs from the original but courts have found them to be copies nonetheless. I think it�s surprising that courts are just now seeing the reality that sampling, even if the copy is altered from the original, is still a form of stealing copyright protected music.
The real question now is, how will rap musicians cope with the loss of illegally copied music?
My suggestion – learn how to play an instrument or two.
by Brandon Kennedy
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Posted by Douglas Sorocco, September 17, 2004 at 3:27 pm
Permalink: Rap Music Finally Caught Up…
3 Comments
Here’s the funny part about this… once again, the RIAA is litigating themselves into bankrupcy. Right or wrong, sampling has been a huge part of rap since the earliest days. Funkmaster Flash got his start by scratching albums of other artists. Rap is now a multi-billion dollar industry that the RIAA has successfully now put a squash on. The say “Cutting off your nose to spite your face” was apparently written for the RIAA.
hey my name is bill and im big fan of 2pac and snoopdog and i hope that soopdog comes to austrlia to rap and 2pac and snoopdog is one of best rappars in the world
I like the way the sampling in Rap sounds. It’s fun to try to figure out the source. I admit that sometimes it bothers me to hear a song I like being butchered. But on the whole I think sampling needs to stay. If that means that Rappers need to pay royalties, so be it.