June 9, 2006

Music 'Sampling': Is It Theft or Art?

By RICHARD BYRNE

Joanna Demers, assistant professor of music history and literature, University of Southern California

Is the creative appropriation of previously recorded music theft? Or is that act, better known as "sampling," an art form? Over the last 30 years, intellectual-property law has shifted radically toward the music industry's view that sampling is stealing. Yet much of what is most innovative in today's music — from hip-hop to

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