Digital Sampling: Lessons From Rap Music
By Catherine Sansum Kirkman
Many copyright-infringement cases arising in the digital environment do not involve brand-new legal questions. Instead, they require courts to reinterpret established bodies of copyright law in light of new technologies and applications. On the most basic level, the Copyright Act provides that anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of a copyright owner is an infringer, absent a valid legal defense.
For digital producers who wonder to what extent other people's creative works can be used, reused, manipulated, distorted, and changed online, the case law surrounding unauthorized sound sampling in the music industry is a good place to start. Digital sampling involves the making of a verbatim excerpt, or "sample," of an existing sound recording using equipment capable of digitally storing the sampled musical performance. These cases involve one party taking identifiable songs and recordings owned by other parties.
Collaging
A number of multimedia sampling examples have been chronicled in the new-media context. Sometimes, samples of one work are merged with samples of other works in a technique called "collaging." For example, Wired magazine in 1995 told the story of a recording artist named John Oswald. Oswald's CD, Plunderphonics, used recordings of Michael Jackson, Dolly Parton, Count Basie, James Brown, and Public Enemy without permission, and changed their speed or otherwise modified the original recordings.
