This fair use week I’m sharing some of the many blog posts about fair use that have appeared here on The Taper (many of which are from previous years’ fair use weeks!). Today I’d like to turn to a post about a topic that many music fans point to as the thing that turned them into copyright nerds: fair use and sampling in hip hop. Back in 2020, I was invited (along with my friend Rob Tyler in the University Counsel’s office) to visit professor A.D. Carson’s class on Composing Mixtapes and talk to the students about the law of sampling in hip hop. To prepare, I did a little research on some of the latest court cases, which seemed to show that the law could be coming around to a more friendly position on sampling. What I found was interesting, if a little less encouraging than I’d hoped. Read more at the original post here:

Is Sampling Finally Being Recognized as Fair Use? Kinda.

Since then, I’ve done a little more research and if I had to recommend one good read for anyone casually interested in this topic, it would actually be a chapter from a graphic novel. Specifically, the incredible book Theft! A History of Music, published by the Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain. The entire book is worth your time, but the chapter on sampling is extremely well-done - it’s both funny and informative, opinionated and balanced, technically accurate and approachable.

clip from Theft! A History of Music, by Jennifer Jenkins and Jamie Boyle, CC-BY-NC-SA.

If you want to go a little deeper, check out Kembrew McLeod and Peter DiCola’s book Creative License: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling.