[Rumori] US appeals court: all samples must be paid for

[stAllio! the original wanksta]

i looked up "unenforceable" in the dictionary and found this article:

http://reviewappeal.midsouthnews.com/news.ez?viewStory=25087

Court rules music 'sampling' may violate anti-piracy law

By JOHN GEROME / Associated Press Writer

NASHVILLE — A federal appeals court ruling Tuesday means 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 artists' 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."

But some observers question whether the court's opinion is too
restrictive, especially for rap and hip-hop artists who often rhyme
over samples of music taken from older recordings.

"It seems a little extreme to me," said James Van Hook, dean of Belmont
University's Mike Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business. "I
would worry that if the identity issue is too small then you begin to
restrict the creative process.

"When something is identifiable, that is the key — whether it's
identifiable enough that it has some sense of identity to enough
people," he said.

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 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.

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 Ass and Jam," appealed the lower court's
summary judgment ruling in favor of No Limit Films.

While the lower court said that the riff in Clinton's song was entitled
to copyright protection, it said that, based on analyses, the sampling
"did not rise to the level of legally cognizable appropriation."

"After listening to the copied segment, the sample, and both songs, the
district court found that no reasonable juror, even one familiar with
the works of George Clinton, would recognize the source of the sample
without having been told of its source," the appeals court said in its
opinion.

On Oct. 11, 2002, the lower court ruled in favor of No Limit Films on
the issue of copyright ownership.

The appeals court disagreed, saying there was merit to Westbound's
arguments that no copyright violation analyses should be used when "the
defendant had not disputed that it digitally sampled a copyrighted
sound recording."

The case has now been remanded to the lower court.

Richard Busch, attorney for Westbound Records and Bridgeport Music,
said only that he was pleased with the ruling "as it applies to
Westbound." Robert Sullivan, attorney for No Limit Films, did not
return a phone call to his office.

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