[lazyBilly]

I think you gotta pay the original artist. As an old-school analog musician, I had to sweat for literally decades to be able to drop that perfect ten second fill effortlessly. The engineer had to invest thousands of dollars and a similar level of time to record it and make it sound amazing. And if some kid wants to use them, great, that should be allowed, but they gotta pay, because that music didn't just drop out of the sky. And if you want to sample a gigantic hit that everybody knows (which is going to make your derivative work much more marketable), then you're gonna have to pay a lot more, no? If I wanted, let's say, Jay-Z to come in and sing 99 problems on my song, what would that cost me? Probably a lot, and for good reason.

If it's really worth nothing, then all these DJ's could either produce it or record it themselves. But it's not, and they can't. This is a classic economic externality. Writing, performing, and recording really good music costs a lot of money, and sampling is virtually free. Pay obscure artists a reasonable mechanical residual and negotiate with samples of huge hits for huge money.

[saidajigumi]

> I think you gotta pay the original artist.

That's not going to happen either, under the current system.

> Writing, performing, and recording really good music costs a lot of money, and sampling is virtually free.

Here your own argument comes back to bite you. Really good sampling takes just as much blood, sweat, and tears invested as the other skill sets you cite.

> If it's really worth nothing, then all these DJ's could either produce it or record it themselves.

Black or white or ... gray. Copyright duration has been extended well beyond the average human lifespan. With an effective lockout of fair-use, there is no effective recourse for musical collage artists. As TFA cites, this is completely inconsistent with copyright rulings for other art forms. Why should the music industry should get to be the special snowflake here?

> This is a classic economic externality.

You're complaining about a minor weakening of a monopoly which was created by the government at the public's expense! (Cough, externality, cough.) Quoth Wikipedia[1]: "In economics, an externality is a cost or benefit which results from an activity or transaction and which affects an otherwise uninvolved party who did not choose to incur that cost or benefit." To use TFA's example, it's hard to reason that ACDC's revenues suffer because someone samples a few seconds of one of their songs, hit or otherwise. In fact, many cultural icons are greatly reinforced by this kind of use. On the other hand, law and precedent that restricts our ability to work with the cultural artifacts of our own lifetimes flies in the face of the history of the entire history of art and music. How's that for an externality?

As a professional software developer, I can hardly argue against music and audio professionals' ability to make money from their skilled work. But the argument that the pendulum of access and fair use in music has swung too far is compelling, and hardly new to TFA.

[vacri]

Really good sampling takes just as much blood, sweat, and tears invested as the other skill sets you cite.

Oh, it's okay to leech off other people's work without compensating them, because I'm really good!

As for 'fair use', using the signature riff of a song is different from "10% of the prose" of an article. You're talking about the core identifiable part of a song, the hook itself.

In fact, many cultural icons are greatly reinforced by this kind of use.

If it's a fact, can you please cite a couple of examples that have been greatly reinforced by this kind of use? Because that really sounds like a throwaway weasel-word line to me.

[Daishiman]

> If it's a fact, can you please cite a couple of examples that have been greatly reinforced by this kind of use? Because that really sounds like a throwaway weasel-word line to me.

It is well understood in English circles that Shakespear, along with many authors, essentially plagiarized the stories of their plays and and twisted some parts to their own style but leaving the structure intact.

The entire genre of blues is based off slave songs from the American South, and the riffs and basic structure is the same for all the songs.

Rock came from the influence of blues, with a large portion of the most famous songs being straight out stolen from blues songs from the 20s and beggining of the 20th century.

[lazyBilly]

> That's not going to happen either, under the current system.

Well, the dynamics of who will get paid as a result of the legal recording arrangements are well beyond the scope of this conversation, and I don't believe the terms of somebody's recording deal, whatever they might be, negate wholesale expropriation of someone's artistic output. I find the whole "FAT CAT RECORD LABELS ARE PARASITES, STICK IT TO THE MAN!!!" argument to be kind of disingenuous.

> Here your own argument comes back to bite you. Really good sampling takes just as much blood, sweat, and tears invested as the other skill sets you cite.

This is.... categorically not true. I'm sorry. I have no small familiarity with electronic music and sampling, having transitioned over a while back after seeing the writing on the wall in terms of making music the old-school way, and while I would not hesitate to say that it requires skill and, above all, taste, there is little if any comparison to a singular analog musician, let alone an entire ensemble. I realize I'm going to be called old fashioned in this respect, but I've done both, and I can DJ a heck of a lot better than DJ's can sing, play guitar, bass, keys (live keys), and drums. Each instrument takes a lifetime to master, point blank.

You're right, I abused 'externality' a little. Not completely, but it's a little strained.

All I'll say here is what I said before-- for little songs, kick a small mechanical royalty to the rights holders so they can pay their bills. For big gold record songs, if you want to ride the coattails of AC/DC, John Lennon, Elvis Presley, or whoever, pay the toll that they dictate or write your own hook.

To take the 'sampling' debate into another realm, consider taking the likeness of a famous actor and CGIing it into some other, derivative work. This isn't so farfetched, really. Didn't 30 Rock do a bit a couple years back where they tried to CGI Jerry Seinfeld into NBC's flailing lineup?

And according to the ideas proposed in that article, wouldn't that be ANY derivative work, any time? Like some technicolor nightmare of a porno where James Dean bangs Elizabeth Taylor? Do they have a right to say 'no thank you'? Do they have a right to say 'yeah, but it'll cost you'? What about somebody like Tom Waits, who's consistently declined to make his work available in commercials? Can Girl Talk sample him and then put it in a Doritos ad? I think he'd be a little taken aback.

[mynameishere]

Really good sampling takes just as much blood, sweat, and tears invested as the other skill sets you cite

Weird when moral relativism takes hold in technical fields. "Some guy who has mastered copy-and-paste is just as able as actual composers and musicians. Including those they've robbed!"

Right.

[lkrubner]

How much should they pay?

[anigbrowl]

Some percentage of their revenue proportional to the use of the copyrighted material.

I don't mean that as a pat answer: that's the actual formula I'm proposing. Usually laws are written in dollar amounts for infringement which then affect the licensing fee charged. I think that assessing infringement or licensing on a percentage basis is much fairer, and that way artists who sample can do so without worrying about big licensing or legal fees, because they won't be liable until such time as they start seeing profits, at which point some fraction of those are shared with the other 'contributors.' This isn't a perfect system (I can think of many reasons against compulsory licensing, and the idea of price controls for copyright holders is also problematic), but at least it means that there's some linkage between clearance fees and actual economic benefit.

[lazyBilly]

Like I said, a small mechanical royalty for obscure songs where you don't know who owns what, or how to pay them. No copyright trolling.

And for big songs, call it gold-record hits and above, whatever Jay-Z (or equivalent) demands. If you want to sample a big band's big hit, you are arguably getting the better of the arrangement, and they ought to have the right to charge you whatever the market will bear. Or tell you to shove it if they don't like the song they're getting shoved into.