Just as
the sad death of the Beastie Boys' Adam 'MCA' Yauch from cancer was announced,
aged just 47, Tuf America, Inc announced a new lawsuit against the band and co-defendants Universal Music, Brooklyn Dust Music and Capitol Records. Tuf America administers the rights to the recordings of Trouble Funk's catalogue, including the group's 1982 funk classics, "Drop the Bomb" and "Say What" and the federal lawsuit relates to two songs on the Beastie
Boys' debut album, 'Licensed
To Ill', and two more on the follow-up, 'Paul's
Boutique'. The company claims that the group illegally sampled the two
Trouble Funk songs. The 20 years delay in pursuing the litigation is partly
linked to the fact Tuf America only gained control of the copyrights in Trouble
Funk's catalogue in 1999, the additional ten year wait seemingly being down to
the fact it's only recently that the label noticed the alleged infringements.
The law suit doesn't surprise Kembrew
McLeod, associate professor of communication studies at the University of Iowa,
and co-author, with economist and researcher Peter DiCola, of the book "Creative
License: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling" who says
"'Paul’s Boutique' and other albums of that era are like ticking
legal time bombs" adding "For instance, in 2005, Run DMC was sued by
the Knack for using 'My
Sharona' for its song 'It’s
Tricky.' And they were sued 20 years after the fact." This reality is
compounded by the fact that each time "Paul's Boutique" is issued in
a new format, or repackaged, the statute of limitations on filing an infraction
claim starts anew at year zero. In his book McLeod and DiCola analyse the
samples in both "Paul's Boutique" and Public Enemy's "Fear
of a Black Planet," two classics of hip-hop's sample era, and
estimated the cost of legally producing them and licensing the samples: With
all samples intact, McLeod explains "Based on the number of sales, both
albums would have lost money per unit, and 'Paul’s
Boutique' would have lost somewhere in the neighbourhood of $20 million --
and we were being extremely conservative with our estimates."
A separate article
again asks if the Beastie Boys’ seminal works could ever have been
produced under the current sampling and clearance regimes in the USA – and asks
whether the law should change?
The Beastie Boys were triumphant in one sampling claim when they
defeated a challenge from composer and flautist James Newton who claimed
that despite a valid licence for the sample of the sound recording of his work,
the band had also sampled his composition : Newton
v Diamond 349 F.3d 591 (9th Cir 2003).
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