Law Commons^™

Are The Courts Singing A Different Tune When It Comes To Music?: What Ever Happened To Fair Use In Music Sampling Cases?, Michael B. Landau

Faculty Publications By Year

As "fair use" has become more common as a defense to copyright infringement, often successfully, it has not gained any ground in cases involving music sampling. In the years since Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc.,we have seen the introduction of "transformative use" to fair use analysis. "Transformative use" has led to the holdings that thumbnail reproductions of photographs, parodies of novels, parodies of advertisements, changed artworks, the inclusion of legal briefs in searchable databases, the inclusion of music in film, and the mass digitization of millions of books are all "fair use." Almost every day we read of another …