Are the Courts Singing a Different Tune When It Comes to Music?: What Ever Happened to Fair Use in Music Sampling Cases?

As fair use has become more common as a defense to copyright infringement, often successfully, it has not gained any ground in cases involving music sampling. In the years since Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc.,we have seen the introduction of transformative use to fair use analysis. Transformative use has led to the holdings that thumbnail reproductions of photographs, parodies of novels, parodies of advertisements, changed artworks, the inclusion of legal briefs in searchable databases, the inclusion of music in film, and the mass digitization of millions of books are all fair use. Almost every day we read of another example that would have been copyright infringement pre-Campbell, that is fair use post-Campbell. Everything is fair game, except for music sampling. Why is there such hostility toward music sampling, a practice that if the courts followed their fair use doctrine, would be allowable as a fair use? This article looks at the difference between sampling a sound recording, a musical composition, and/or both. It also looks at expanding the compulsory license provision to allow for sampling

Transformativeness in the Age of Mass Digitization

(Excerpt) This Note examines and ultimately argues against the expansion of transformativeness in verbatim-copying cases, given the implications it will have as more copyrighted works are digitized. Part I discusses the background and objectives of the Copyright Act, the fair use exception, and the rise of the transformativeness subfactor. Part II provides a summary of some predigitization fair use cases to establish some basic principles about how courts have ruled on transformativeness. Part III examines relevant cases recently decided on the question of transformativeness in the context of mass digitization. Part IV critiques the ways courts have arrived at their holdings, specifically in overemphasizing societal benefits as a measure of transformativeness and overstating the facts of certain cases to find a transformative purpose or character where one may not exist. This section will also offer a more appropriate analysis that courts should follow in determining whether certain cases of verbatim-copying and digitization are transformative. Finally, it will discuss some possible licensing options to abate the judicial expansion of transformativeness

Collaborative Academic Library Digital Collections Post- Cambridge University Press, HathiTrust and Google Decisions on Fair Use

Academic libraries face numerous stressors as they seek to meet the needs of their users through technological advances while adhering to copyright laws. This paper seeks to explore one specific proposal to balance these interests, the impact of recent decisions on its viability, and the copyright challenges that remain after these decisions

Benson Snippets: Digitized Copies of Books from Latin American Collection Appear Online

Latin American Studie

Advertising Icons: Preserving the Cultural Record of Brand Ambassadors

The authors discuss the background and implementation of the Brandcenter Advertising Icons image collection, available at https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/brandcenter_icons

The American Assembly: Art, Technology, and Intellectual Property

Examines intellectual property issues as the arts sector joins other sectors in the race to deal with an increasingly information-driven economy

Content, Purpose, or Both?

Most debates about the proper meaning of “transformativeness” in fair use are really about a larger shift towards more robust fair use. Part I of this short Article explores the copyright-restrictionist turn towards defending fair use, whereas in the past critics of copyright’s broad scope were more likely to argue that fair use was too fragile to protect free speech and creativity in the digital age. Part II looks at some of the major cases supporting that rhetorical and political shift. Although it hasn’t broken decisively with the past, current case law makes more salient the freedoms many types of uses and users have to proceed without copyright owners’ authorization. Part III discusses some of the strongest critics of liberal fair use interpretations, especially their arguments that transformative “purpose” is an illegitimate category. Part IV looks towards the future, suggesting that broad understandings of transformativeness are here to stay