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Theft, Transformation, And The Need Of The Immaterial: A Proposal For A Fair Use Digital Sampling Regime, Reuven Ashtar
Theft, Transformation, And The Need Of The Immaterial: A Proposal For A Fair Use Digital Sampling Regime, Reuven Ashtar
Reuven Ashtar
Theft, Transformation, and the Need of the Immaterial:
A Proposal for a Fair Use Digital Sampling Regime
ABSTRACT
At its inception, American copyright law had a clear purpose: to incentivize creativity. To this end, the Framers reluctantly granted monopolies to authors. This paper examines the extent to which their original intention has been forgotten, and their granting of monopolies abused, in contemporary practice. It does so through the examination of a specific case: that of sampling—the process of manipulating pre-existing sound recordings and incorporating them in one’s music. While licensing is an expensive and demanding process, imaginative unlicensed borrowing is …