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Free Sampling Killed by Court of Appeals
Published: Sep. 9, 2004
By Mike Darrah
On Tuesday, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati turned the playing field for digital sampling completely upside-down. The court ruled quite simply that any and all samples used must paid for, even if they sound completely different from their original. Previously, if a digital sample wasn't identifiable from it's original it was perfectly legal.
The court stated that the recent federal laws aimed at stopping piracy of recordings applied directly to digital sampling also, slapping any and all artists who use samples in their works in the face with the very laws some of them fought for.
With the new rules and current state of the industry (greed), many speculate that if this ruling existed before many classic hip-hop albums such as Paul's Boutique from the Beastie Boys would quite simply be too difficult to get proper licensing for to release.
What does this mean for the future of digitally produced music built upon sampling? One thing is for sure, under the current ruling, artistic innovation has been smothered by greed. There is one clear winner in this ruling, copyright lawyer's, as it also opens the floodgates for massive future litigation on any and all works using digital sampling.
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Sourced from Winamp.com
I really can't believe that it's a fucking joke, ok it's not really right to copy copywrite material but it's now an offence to create ur own music by smapling, thank God I live in the UK and these laws don't apply to me.... yet 
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