legality of samples

[Seppl]

Hi,
could someone tell me in how far it is legal or illegal to take samples/slices from commercial music recordings?
thx

[Saga Musix]

this is a rather complicated question, i'm going to report what i know...

as far as i know, "quoting" (sample that lasts only a few seconds) should be allowed, i'm not sure about long passages. from what i know, this is allowed as long as you don't gain any money, but i'm not really sure, although i did this several times.

[KrazyKatz]

Good question. It would be nice to know from a legal standpoint where the difference between sampling and timbalanding, err I mean stealing, err I mean.. well.. plagarizing stands. As far as I know as long as the sampled cut has no clearly identifiable themes in it, you can use it. However truth be told I really dont know for sure.

[Sam_Zen]

This is quite a fuzzy area. First of all created by the industry and especially the authorities cashing the royalties.
Because they have been running behind the facts. And to make rules, they only consulted legal and financial experts, not technicians.

From the moment the first digital delay came along, sampling a few msec of sound in a memory, played back with some delay,
it was quite a simple prediction, that, because memories grow in size, once you could be able to make a sample of 3 minutes.
Another complication is the law difference per country. So x seconds free sampling here, y seconds somewhere else.

I have used samples from commercial sources, so registered at the royalty orgs, quite frequently.
Personally, I don't care about legal fuzz, If I use, I thinks it's civilized behaviour to mention the source.

Another aspect is Krazykatz' "clearly identifiable themes", or - when is a sample recognizable as the original.
Sure, if I repeat a 2 minute sample of a beatle-song, it can be recognized. But what if I modulate that sample with a 4KHz square wave ? Or play it 16 times as fast ? Also fuzzy borders in this.

And if you want to be absolutely sure to operate legally, just pay the royalty org some money and you get automatic permission to use it, like a band playing a cover of someone else.

[LPChip]

I think that as long as you can't clearly recognise the origin, or its too common, you can use it. Note that its easier with instrumental type of sounds than with voice, as voice cannot be altered much without getting an unrecognisable part, because the speeches are usually as famous as the sound texture itself.

Where it comes from beats, it really depends on the source, because some people just buy samplecd's and you could buy the same samplecd, where others create their own beats. Copying those own beats is illegal, while copying those samplecd's are not, if you have that samplecd. Also sampling from an instrument is legal, so if you can proof that you've sampled it from an instrument, you're fine.

But I guess the most important thing you should ask yourself is this:

Are you actually going to go commercial with this song? Or is it part of a learning process? If you're just experimenting, don't care where it comes from. As long as you're not making money with it, and its not popular enough the original artist will never know. As soon as you get a bit good with music, you should start consider sampling your own samples from sources you have available to you. That can include free VSTi's but also real instruments that you can hire at a music store. And you always have those samplecd's you can buy and seperate samples you can download, but for the downloading of samples, its good to look out for their policy. Most sites only allow using for personal use only, so if you want to go commercial with those samples, you can't.

[Sam_Zen]

LP is right. If you are going commercial with registered material, it becomes quite tricky. But :
It maybe different in countries qua value, but there exists some time-limit as a max where free sampling is allowed, ~ 8 secs.

Beside experimenting, there is another category, where full copying is allowed : for educational purposes.
To be sure, one always can search for the relevant laws of the home country. These are publicly available.

Dutch readers can find the relevant articles of that law here.

[älskling]

I think you're better of googling around for some source that seems credible than reading the guesses and hunches here. No offense to anyone ivolved. ;-)

Also, to add my own beliefs (instead of hard facts), I'm pretty darn sure there's no "4 bars" or "8 seconds" rule. It's also pretty likely that no one will care unless there's money in it for them.

[KrazyKatz]

no one will care unless there's money in it for them.

I'd care  

[Novus]

Whether or not you make any money is irrelevant.

The length of the sample is irrelevant.

In LEGAL terms, the answer is, get the permission of the rights-holder before doing ANY sampling. Failing to do so leaves you open to a lawsuit.

In PRACTICAL terms...

- If it's not used for commercial use, they probably won't bother suing you. They still can, though.

- The shorter the clip is, the harder it is for the rights-holder to even notice, let alone care. But if they can prove somehow that the 0.25-second clip of sound used as a sample in your song came from their song (by waveform-matching or something), they can sue you. They probably won't bother, but they still can.

Do not listen to ANYONE who tells you that it's okay if it's not for commercial use, or that it's okay as long as it's less than X seconds. There is NO LEGAL BASIS for either of those claims WHATSOEVER. Using any clip of sound without permission, no matter the length, no matter the purpose, puts you at risk for a lawsuit. It's up to you do decide how much risk is acceptable.

[KrazyKatz]

The man has spoken.

However I understand that people do sample commercially and it is legal without even having to give credit nor permission as long as it falls within the legal guidelines. The question is what are those guidelines???

[älskling]

people do sample commercially and it is legal without even having to give credit nor permission

who does that?

[Novus]

However I understand that people do sample commercially and it is legal without even having to give credit nor permission as long as it falls within the legal guidelines. The question is what are those guidelines???

At the risk of sounding like a broken record... the legal guideline is, get the permission of the rights-holder.

Yeah, there are tons of cases of people sampling commercially without getting permission or giving credit, and in every case that artist is vulnerable to a lawsuit.

So why don't they get sued?

Because sometimes it's just not worth it to file a lawsuit. The sample may only be a minor element in a song. The sample may actually generate extra publicity for the sampled artist. Maybe the two artists have mutual respect for each other, or maybe the sampled artist just couldn't care less. Not to mention if Label A sues Label B, it could cause Label B to sue Label A over sampling that went the other way in retaliation.

But in every case, the artist who does the sampling is relying on the goodwill of the other artist and their label. If that goodwill breaks down, the legalese starts to fly. Look up what happened to The Rolling Stones versus The Verve some time to see what can happen; it basically destroyed an up-and-coming band before they could really cash in on their one and only hit song. And The Verve at least had a major label and a team of lawyers backing them up to soften the blow. You don't.

Again, it just comes down to how much of a risk you're willing to take. Only you can decide that for yourself, but I just want to make sure that anyone who samples from commercial artists understands that risk is there. And the amount of misinformation out there on this topic is astounding.

[Seppl]

hm... ok.
So I better do not post the song for which reason I started this thread on the internet.  :cry:
It uses more or less exclusively samples taken from Hearbie Hancock's "hang up your hang ups" and sometimes you'll recognize the original.
Well, I don't want to earn any money with it but to distinguish myself a little, but following Novus that apparently doesn't matter.

[älskling]

Look up what happened to The Rolling Stones versus The Verve some time to see what can happen; it basically destroyed an up-and-coming band before they could really cash in on their one and only hit song.

Funny thing is that if they had re-recorded the sample they might have been able to keep the money. In fact that's a pretty common way of "clearing" a sample as it's not the original recording and just leaves the original composers left to clear with.

Also (there's always an also), I wouldn't call them a one hit wonder. They're still touring and lucky man, the drugs don't work and sonnet were fairly big hits on their own.

Another risk besides being sued is being "discovered". It's never wrong to have a big hit even if you have to give the money away to the Rolling Stones.

[Sam_Zen]

For years I've seen discussions about this popping up once in a while on forums.
Usually it ends up in quite a confusing state. This is caused by the fact, that two different area's play a role in this.

The artists themselves, and the orgs that handle the royalties, like the BUMA in NL, the GEMA in DE, or the RIAA in US.
Most of the artists of the big labels register as member of these orgs, to get the royalty money of the use of their work.
So as a composer, using a sample of someone, you have to deal with these two different parties.

With the artist, it can be done on a personal level, of getting permission 'if mentioned as source' for example.
But with the 'federal' organizations, it's another story :

If the artist is registered at the org., there's a contract saying that the artist himself is no longer the 'right-holder'.
This right for giving permission, to use the work in some way publicly, is transferred to that organization.

I'm pretty darn sure there's no "4 bars" or "8 seconds" rule.

You're right, there's no global rule about this. But it happened in the 70/80's that the royalty-orgs decided, that it was allowed to copy, not sure, 4-6 bars of a song, then something else should be written. This was, because different combinations of guitar chords started to run out of possibilities, so all kinds of silly procedures started, like George Harrison vs George Harrison on behalf of such org.

I would like to point to an article from my archive written by the singer Janis Ian : The Internet Debacle

Another, more theoretical aspect, and to me more interesting :
In 'normal' pop-music it's quite common to perform a song from another author. It's called a 'cover'.
In the electronic area this is something seldom happening.
Nobody 'performs' a tracker module of someone else.

While at the same time it's electronically possible to sample others work, and use it as an instrument.
Because working with electronics offer the dimension, that any sound around can be considered as 'raw' material for something new.
I can make a work of 3 minutes and then stretch the left channel into a mono wav-file of 2 secs, to be used as a sample.
In a new composition.

New technologies need new definitions. Is using 2 bars of a rhythm section a 'cover' ? No. Maybe a 'pattern-cover'.
As long as tech aspects are not involved in the definitions, it will be a vague discussion about when something is a plain copy, or something else. Whether it is still 'recognizable' or not. If we should compare file-bytes.
To avoid all these marginal complications, I just want to practice my own civilization in this, and if I think it's necessary to make personal contact with another author, I will do so. If I get no answer, I consider it as 'go ahead'.

@ Seppl
I like Herbie Hancock. So send me the file (if it's not too big), and I will consider taking the risk of publishing it on my server. If it's a mp3, I will convert it to ogg first, because that's my policy.