Hacker News Reader

Comment by wikiburner | Hacker News Reader

For non-commercial use, can an artist sample without legal threat?

For example, if an artist is just posting 80s style tracks with dozens of uncleared samples on their website free for their fans to download, doesn't fair use allow for it?

View on HN

In practice, people do whatever they want and then just apologise later if they get in trouble.

Eg: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151547332313143&se...

which is apologising for: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnigNbYVQJE

(This was a massive tune last summer, getting loads of radio airplay and all over the clubs. Hence the apology. Really, by these standards he should apologise to Mr Fingers as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xmz3SVuHPhs)

Fair use isn't mutually exclusive with commercial use in the US though in practice there doesn't seem to be much scope for overlap.

Also free-gratis isn't co-terminous with non-commercial as - for example - giving away a competing product is a commercial activity. Also moral rights can arguably be harmed by sampling ... and then you've got parody exceptions ... it's nuance all the way down.

I believe so, but not 100% sure. There are a lot of artists nowadays releasing sample-heavy music for free, and then making their money by touring and playing it live.

This depends on the jurisdiction also. The concept of ‘Fair use’ does not exist in European copyright law, which makes any sampling without permission a potential copyright infringement.

The test for infringement in Europe requires that a "substantial" part be copied however.

Such samples [as in the OP video] IMO aren't substantial but I think the contrary point can be argued well as "if it's not substantial why copy it / it must be substantial to warrant reuse (with or without modification)"?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com