WIPR survey: Drake sampling case could have far-reaching consequences
A judge’s finding that rapper Drake’s sampling of a spoken-word jazz track amounted to fair use could have far-reaching consequences, according to WIPR readers.
Last week, WIPR reported that US District Judge William Pauley had found Drake’s use of 1982 spoken-word recording “Jimmy Smith Rap” in his song “Pound Cake/Paris Morton Music 2” to be fair use.
Pauley said that there can be no “reasonable dispute” that the key phrase of the “Jimmy Smith Rap” is an “unequivocal statement on the primacy of jazz over all other forms of popular music”.
He went on to explain that Drake’s use of the song transforms “brazen dismissal of all non-jazz music into a statement that ‘real music’, with no qualifiers, is ‘the only thing that’s gonna last’”.
“This is precisely the type of use that ‘adds something new, with a further purpose or different character, altering the first [work] with new expression, meaning, or message’,” said Pauley.
A majority of WIPR readers (80%), in answering a recent survey, believe that this decision could have a major impact on the use of sampling, if the judge’s finding were to survive any appellate scrutiny.
One reader explained that every musical sample transforms the original work in one way or another, which is why licences for secondary uses are available.
“This decision makes absolutely no sense. Drake's ‘Pound Cake’ doesn't actually discuss anything at all about ‘real music lasting’ which is what Judge Pauley has alluded to,” said the reader.
They want on to say that the song instead makes references to money (“Pound Cake”).
Another reader simply said: “Sampling and fair use are very complicated.”
For this week’s survey question we ask: “Who do you think should replace Michelle Lee as director of the US Patent and Trademark Office? Click here to answer.”
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