The amen break is the sample of an original recording, thus the copyright law apply on this, the law is pretty clear in every countries, no matter how long is the thing you sample, it is covered by copyright.
It’s not legal, period. The winstons never released their track in the public domain, that fact that they aren’t taking legal action to claim their royalties doesn’t equal to releasing their track in the public domain.
And for someone who said “isn’t the creator dead so who cares”, in nearly every country, you have to wait at least 50 years, but usually 80 years after the death of the creator to have his piece in the public domain.
I’d love it to happen, just to see the amount of tears it would produce.
So of course, no one ever did, and prolly never will, but it still doesn’t make it legal.
No… rules don’t have to be followed even if there’s someone there who cares
I doubt it… most sample cd’s, library records and similar stuff requires you to say where you got it, to give credit. Is it free? Yes. But you still have to credit those who made it. So i doubt you can remove a hi-hat hit on a drum loop and legally call it yours, even if you got it off a royalty free sample cd.
HAHA, its total bullshit and you know that. So you say no matter how long is the thing? Maybe you will sue somebody claming that he used a millisecond of your track???
Yes, in a sense it does equal to just that. And remeber, sampling and using amen break started way earlier than any copyright law was there to address it. So it WAS legal, and if something is already used in many places and is already in “public domain” and winstons didnt start any copyright wars after some laws where put in place, then it equals to being in public domain.
And even now there is no law that says you can not use any part of anything in your composition. How can you even determine or prove in court that i used a kick and snare for exmple from your track, effected the shit out of it, layered it with bunch of other sounds and put that sound in my track??
IMO sampling should be totally OK and ethical if you use it in a way that creates something totally new, in different context, using bits from something old. For example as it was with amen break. A sample from 30 years old funk track was used to create totally new music styles and contexts, who the fuck suffers from that?? But yeah, i dont exclude the possibility that people like you will totally fuck up copyright laws in the future and tie down the hands of artists and creative people, so they cant do anything cause every bit of life is copyrighted by somebody.
I remember reading a thread about the studio engineer of the amen session. He told the interviewer that he could locate the original drum takes and give the full drum track to him so that people could start using different parts of the drums. Dunno if this project ever got to an end.
About the case then, I also believe there is no one left to claim the copyright, with the 50 year limit or not. I’ve also heard rumors, that someone in the commercial advert scene had bought/gotten himself the rights to this certain loop and added it to the tv commercial sound libraries, making it semi-public domain.
But yes, it’s all pretty messy and unclear whether there might be a time when someone comes out and tells all amenists to pay him royalties and whatnot. But seriously, there has to be some part in the law texts around the world that could never have expected this kinda amounts of sampling of one single drum break.
Using amen is “free” at least here in Finland, the finnish composers’ copyright society Teosto doesn’t give a rats ass about the amen break anymore.
I’m pretty confident that nobody in the world would have the guts to start collecting money from all the people who used the amen break commercially. It’s just impossible, too widely spread and too widely accepted. No matter what the law says. Witness the power of the majority yall!
yes, a judge… if you didnt know then its already like that right now. If a case is taken to the court then judge decides did that use of a sample constitute copyright infringement or not.
I didn’t read this thread since I’m tired and lazy, but feel there are much worse things to worry about in this world then copyright on some overused samples. Fuck the establishment anyway.
I was discussing your opinion, that’s what I quoted. Creativity is not a dogma inherited by law,
nor is it a standard everybody agrees upon. So if IN YOUR OPINION you say that sampling is
okay as long as it is done in a creative way, I challange your bold statement of creativity.
If by creativity you DO mean some judge and example case in the US, I fear for your creativity.
In my opinion, if an artist cannot see the difference between sampling and stealing, he’s not an artist.
The real world’s like this: you can sample all you want but stick your head above the corn and they’ll cut it off.
Oh, and I’m not here to provide ‘smart comments’.
If you can’t restrain yourself from telling others what they are, please just don’t post.
That last line was totally obsolete and just stupid.
It’s always nice to have different opinions, even if they’re completely false.
Just to remind you, it’s not a discuss about what I think is right or not, it’s a thread to know if the law permits it or not, and the actual law says it’s illegal.
And if you want to be uber specific, yes, in Germany (where taktik lives if I’m not mistaken) you can sue someone if he sampled a single waveform of your song, or even half of a waveform, that’s what the law says. So stop saying “it’s legal”, because you’re wrong, it’s a fact, period, then you can discuss if it’s morally right or not, I don’t give a fuck, it’s not what I was discussing in the first place.
So keep your opinion about me fucking up copyright law and “tieing down artists hands” (i laughed on this one) when you can’t even understand the subject of a thread.
I don’t point at your stupid leftist opinion, so don’t point at mine when you don’t even know what I think about this matter.
By the way, you’re wrong too about copyright law history, and your Beastie Boys example is a totally different matter, because, as you probably did read, “The Beastie Boys properly obtained a license to use the sound recording but did not clear the use of the song (the composition on which the recording is based including any music and lyrics).”.
Oh, and I’m sure out there, you can find one or two case, of blatantly sampled thing, who won in court, it still won’t change the law, they won because of some breach, and because of good lawyers.
I dare you to sample some MTV music, get it signed and played widely, and we’ll see if your law knowledge will hold in court. Just for the fun.
There’s usually a difference between what I, we, you, someone else, think is ok to do and what the law says. Sure the law differs slightly from country to country, but it is more or less the same (I am by no means an expert tho).
So yeah, The Beasties f’ed up, failed to clear a song and had to go to court for it. They caught a break because a judge made some vague, subjective decision about what the “heart” of a jazz tune is… good for them, but I think it could easily have swung the other way. There’s so many albums that have been delayed, retracted or changed due to sample clearance I wouldnt even know where to start… it happens all the time and mostly out of court.
I mean sure you can sample a snare off an old funk track and tweak it beyond recognition and be all clear, but that in itself doesnt necessarily make it legal in the eyes of the law… they’ll just never find out, which isnt the same thing. Same as sampling one guitar hit, probably not legal, but they cant touch you because it would be impossible to pinpoint it’s origin, or know if you played it yourself or not.
And as for Amen, Apache, Funky Drummer, Hihache and a whole heap of others, they’ve been so widely used for such a long time that I doubt anyone cares, public domain or not.
With that said, I’d just like to say that I personally don’t give a flying about what the law says when it comes to me making my music, or someone else making their music… I have probably broken some law or another on a more or less daily basis since i was a teen… and that’s not including me making sample based music for 15 odd years. It is on the other hand good to know what could happen if you f-up or get caught out and not close your eyes to it. If you go in with your eyes open you’re less likely, imo, to get surprised when you get caught with your hand in the cookie jar.
Just my two cents and I’ll keep sampling like a madman no matter what anyone says
The same logic goes for opposite too… you can always find some cases where prosecutor won the case because of some breach etc. Thats what prosecutors and defense attorneys do, thats their job.
And if in germany you can sue somebody for sampling half of a waveform then i feel sorry for germans. It would be interesting and funny to see such a trial though, as i really doubt one exist in reality (or you can back yourself up with an example?). And i dont think you need some “good lawyers” to win the case. That means, even if some really obscure law exist that you can interpret in that way and sue for sampling half of waveform, then nobody in reality does it couse no sane judge will make a decision to find it guilty.
I really dont understand whats your point is… You asked (quite sarcastically i might add) who will decide if some particular sampling violates copyright law or not. And i answered (quite sacrastically) that of course judge will decide (or jury). Thats the way it is in court system and has always been. Prosecutors and defence lawyers make their arguments and judge (or jury) will make a verdict. There is always different ways to interpret some law and not everything is black and white you know. Thats why we have a court system, right.
It depends on how the court system work in the country, and as far as I know, Germany hasn’t a common law system, kinda like France, so case law can’t be made by regular courts. And even in common law system like the US, nearly all the cases have proven one thing : in the vast majority of the cases, illegal samplers lose.
And here we aren’t debating the very specific sampling of a waveform, we’re debating about the amen break, a seconds long sample of an original record, and except if you’re living on the moon, copyright law apply on this everywhere on earth no matter how much it bothers you, thus making it illegal .
No there is not, look, I will stop posting because it’s useless, you obviously don’t want to understand that even if no one is taking legal action for something illegal, it’s still illegal.
I’d like to see the same debate about rape. “But you know dude, she didn’t say no either!”.
And you know what’s worse? It’s that I know that even in such debates there will always be at least someone to hold this point, and we could do that in many other obvious debatse, like age of consent, stealing, murder, etc… But there’s always some sophist running around who will argue for something they know is false just for the sake of it, and in our actual subject, you’re being one.
A question was asked, you answered wrong, I answered the truth, the end.
My point simply has nothing to do with court. It has to do with the meaning of creativity and
that it actually has not just one meaning and thus, in the context you placed it in, became meaningless
so I asked you what creativity meant to you in the context you placed it in. Literally even.
As a matter of fact, it was MY point that the world is not black and white (or in this specific case:
creative and not-creative), while your post suggested it WAS.
The sarcasm you invented yourself. I wasn’t even cynical. I hope it was just a misunderstanding.
Dont you think you went a little overboard with comparing rape and murder with using amen break in your track? I wount even bother to start explaining differences between the two
Anyway, the question was asked, is it legal that Renoise team ships amen and apache break with renoise. So if it is so wrong an illegal, maybe you will sue Renoise team??? will you??? if not then STFU and enjoy being raped!
EDIT! This is the last thing i say in this thread, i have no time to argue this argument. The point is that topic starter asked is it legal to use amen break. He wants to know, can you do it without being prosecuted or not, and the thig is: you CAN. Yes i agree that if you take some 5-6 seconds sample from some modern tune today and use it quite straightforwardly in your track, then there is a big chance that you will get sued your ass off. (i dont agree on that waveform sampling though, i will never belive that somebody gets sued for using some waveform or that even copyrighting waveform is possible at all). But amen is de facto in public domain, like it or not. You can safely say that if you use it in your track then you will NOT get sued for it. That makes it defacto legal, cause there is so many precedents of doing that (and precedents have powerfull influences in court btw). Why is amen break defacto legal and in public domain? well, primarly because artists started to sample it way before any laws regarding sampling were in place and before music got so commercialised money making machine. And there is no point in starting harassing people for using it now… the train is long gone and copyright holders have accepted it.
And if you want to keep up the analogy with rape then you can NOT safely assume that you wount get sued for doing it, but with using amen break you can. That makes it defacto legal and that is what topic starter wanted to know.
