Appeals Court Reaffirms Its Tone-Deaf Approach to Music Sampling

Two Notes??!!??

So lets see there are twelve tones in a western diatonic scale (please no atonal shit right now), fourteen keys, three major modes and four minor modes. Two fucking notes? That means most of the music out there is on the list.

(June 3, 2005) - Ignoring the critical balance between creativity and property rights that is essential to a healthy copyright system, a 3-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit today reaffimed the maverick position that it first announced last year -- that the well-accepted "de minimis" rule in copyright law does not apply to sound recordings. Under the court's latest ruling in Bridgeport Music v. Dimenson Films, even two notes sampled from a sound recording is automatically copyright infringement. (The court acknowledged that taking one note probably would not amount to infringement, since copyright law defines a sound recording as "the fixation of a series of musical, spoken, or other sounds.")

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