Entertainment, Arts, and Sports Law Commons^™

The purpose of this Article is to contribute to the volume of legal scholarship that focuses on popular music lyrics and their effects on children. This interdisciplinary cross-section of law and culture has been analyzed by legal scholars, philosophers, and psychologists throughout history. This Article specifically focuses on the recent public uproar over the increasingly violent and lewd content of death metal and gangsta -rap music and its alleged negative influence on children. Many legal scholars have written about how legal and political efforts throughout history to regulate contemporary genres of popular music in the name of the protection of …

In sharp contrast with the majority of legal scholarship on the subject matter, this article asserts that, since the emergence of digital sampling technology in the 1970’s, courts and legal scholars alike have failed to fully appreciate the true nature and consequences of allowing legally unchecked digital sampling—that is, until the Sixth Circuit decision in Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films, holding that defendants’ unlicensed sampling of three notes of a copyrighted sound recording constituted a per se infringement. This decision marked the first time a court hearing a sampling case truly discerned the subtle but existent differences between sampling …