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rfmcdonaldSPIN's Marc Hogan wrote about a copyright case in Germany that pitted Kraftwerk's 1979 "Metall auf Metall" influenced German rapper-singer Sabrina Setlur's 1997 single "Nur Mir".
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b5XHOuxk2U&w=420&h=315]
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KQLxP-UX_Y&w=420&h=315]
I can detect a certain similarity between "Nur Mir" and "Metall auf Metall", but nothing very strong. Is this effort at protection of intellectual property, in practice, just a way of sharply limiting legitimate forms of musical influence and citations?
The Economist has a good article, with good comments on the subject.
[A]lthough Kraftwerk's music played a huge role in the birth of sampling, they've recently won a legal victory that could restrict other would-be sample-wielders to the "Planet Rock" approach: basically, sampling without sampling. As the German legal publication Juve reports, Germany's highest court for non-constitutional legal matters has ruled in favor of Kraftwerk in a long-running case involving a sample of "Metal on Metal," from the techno-pop trailblazers' landmark 1977 album Trans-Europe Express. At dispute was a sample used in German rapper Sabrina Setlur's 1997 single "Nur Mir" ("Only Me") by producers Moses Pelham and Martin Haas.
After more than a decade of legal wrangling, the Federal Court of Justice of Germany reportedly found that a music producer can't legally copy another artist's recording to that extent that the producer has the ability and the equipment to make the same sounds herself. The judges determined that "Nur Mir" could've recreated Kraftwerk's sounds, "Planet Rock"-style, in 1997, and that's why Kraftwerk won the case.
Still, the ruling opens a whole new can of worms when it comes to sampling in Germany. The Economist, which somewhat confusingly refers to the court (Bundesgerichtshof in German) as "the German supreme court," reports that the judges said the recreation of the sample would have to be good enough to satisfy the typical consumer. That creates something of a paradox, according to Udo Kornmeier, the attorney for the defense, who's quoted as asking, "How can you be sure that the artist has succeeded before the work has been released to the consumer?
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b5XHOuxk2U&w=420&h=315]
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KQLxP-UX_Y&w=420&h=315]
I can detect a certain similarity between "Nur Mir" and "Metall auf Metall", but nothing very strong. Is this effort at protection of intellectual property, in practice, just a way of sharply limiting legitimate forms of musical influence and citations?
The Economist has a good article, with good comments on the subject.
