Court says any sampling may violate copyright law
Court says any sampling may violate copyright law
source: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2004-09-08-sampling-ruling_x.htm
A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that rap artists should pay for every musical sample included in their work — even minor, unrecognizable snippets of music.
Exactly how “minor” or “unrecognizable” must a snippet be? Three notes in a different pitch? Don't laugh--that's the crux of the case:
The case centers on the NWA song 100 Miles and Runnin, which samples a three-note guitar riff from Get Off Your Ass 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.
What's next? Music publishers of instructional materials laying claim to C#? Royalties for “Hello, world“?
This isn't as off-topic as it might first appear. Copyright law is pretty much copyright law. Given SCO's lawsuits as to who owns UNIX/LINUX, better be careful with that “suitcase” of code. There are only so many commands in a language, and the compiler determines how a lot of them go together.