Law Commons^™

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 …