The Amen break - The world's most important 6-sec drum loop
If you have been around on the internets for a while, chances are you're already familiar with this video explaining the importance of the Amen break and the restrictions put on cultural output after extending copyright law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
Why do i bring any of this up? What is significant about the Amen break? I'm talking about it here because i think it's story is a good example, illustrating the rise and subsequent problematic of digital sampling in relation to todays increasingly stringent copyright- and trademark laws.
To trace the history of the Amen break is to trace the history of a brief period of time, when it seemed digital tools offered a potentially unlimited amount of new forms of expression. where cultural production, at least musically, was full of of possibilities, by virtue of being able to freely appropriate from the musical past, to make new combiantions and thus new meanings. The story demonstates that a society "free to borrow and build upon the past is culturally richer then a controlled one", to use the words of Lawrence Lessig, Stanford law professor, copyright reform advocate and co founder of Creative Commons, an organisation offering a legal alternative to copyright control.
As we go forward examples like the Amen Break will become more and more rare, if nonexistent. A six circuit federal appeals court ruled in september of this year that recording artists must pay for every sample they use, not in the public domain, regardless of the length or recognizability of the samples in question. But because of various changes to US copyright laws, for example the copyright act of 1976 and the Sonny Bono copyright extention act of 1998, which extended copyrights into the mid 21st century, virtually all 20th century cultural output has been locked away from the public domain, barred from sampling unless one has deep pockets and expensive lawyers.
