US court gives protection to snippets of music

This follows a decision of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati that rap artists should pay for every musical sample included in their work – even minor, unrecognisable snippets of music, reports Wired News. Lower courts had already ruled that artists must pay when they sample another artists\' work. But it has been legal to use musical snippets – a note here, a chord there – as long as it wasn\'t identifiable. The Federal Appeals Court said, however, laws aimed at stopping piracy of recordings also applied to digital sampling. ‘If you cannot pirate the whole sound recording, can you \'lift\' or \'sample\' something less than the whole? Our answer to that question is in the negative,’ the court said. ‘Get a licence or do not sample. We do not see this as stifling creativity in any significant way.’ Full report in Wired News