Digital Sampling, rap music and the law in cultural production

  In this article, Christopher Abramson argues that Congress should create statutory property rights for musicians whose work is sampled or reused by other recording artists. He examines the technological changes and business arrangements. For the professional musician music is both a means to earn a living and an art form. It takes hours of practice to master. The article goes on to say that rap and hip hop music that is in many ways based on the opportunities presented by sampling Technology. This isn't fair for the original recording artist who have spent many hours developing songs. In the end, copyright law is property law, and its based on notions of originality and creativity. It is necessary to address why sampling technology is  highlighting some of the formalities in the foundational objectives of jurisprudence. Rap and hip hop music highlight how different cultural forms and traditions are based on different perspectives of originality and creativity. Copyright is enabling of certain forms of discourse while prohibiting others in the ideological balance of  'free exprssion' and revenues. Therefore, copyright now becomes an issue for debate of so called free expression. Now, let's look at some of the definitions of copyright within legal discourse. These are original quotes from this article. Here is one. Under the 1976 Copyright Act, only those sounds which were 'fixed' on or before 15 February 1972 are protected (17 USC,s.102(a)) and protection subsists only on 'original works of authorship'. Hence, in order for a sample to be copyrightable, it must be original.