What would a world without possessions? Paradise or a desolate place? If there were no property then music that wanted to hear everyone?
In 1977, the group Kraftwerk in Dusseldorf their album “Trans Europe Express” with the less than two minute long filler “metal on metal” on. In 1997, the singer Sabrina Setlur in Frankfurt the song “Only me” with her producer Moses Pelham to: You sang to two seconds short snippets “Metal on Metal”, which was repeated until they finished their Schlager was.
Two years later handed power plant at the Hamburg Regional Court dismissed a. Pelham had overtaken yet paid the license fees for the sample neither permission. The lawsuit went to the Court of Appeal. The album with the song “Only me”, “The new S-Class”, was not allowed to be sold, on the other hand complained Moses Pelham.
Photo: AP music producer and complainant Moses Pelham awaiting sentencing in matters sampling
The case came by the Oberlandesgericht to the Bundesgerichtshof, back to the Higher Regional court, back to the Federal court and then to the Federal Constitutional court in Karlsruhe. After 17 years, Moses Pelham can look forward. The judgment of 31 May 2016-1 BvR 1585/13 reads: “If the artistic freedom to develop an interference with the record companies right opposite, the only slightly limited recovery opportunities that exploitation interests of the phonogram producer may have to withdraw in favor of freedom of artistic exploration.” Moses Pelham is, must, resample “Metal on Metal” by Kraftwerk. A brief interim high on the freedom of the arts!
You come to understand the judgment, not around his long and confusing history. Unauthorised Sampling is brought to court for 25 years. 1991 sued the singer Gilbert O’Sullivan rapper Biz Markie, who referred to the eighties and that it has since everyone did.
For that he was sentenced. 2008 to 2012, the Federal Court dealt in detail with the legal pitfalls of sampling in the case of “Metal on Metal”. The aim was to bring two paragraphs of copyright law into harmony: Clause 24, which grants the right to “fair use” of a work of art, as long as the creative “distance” appears large enough, and Section 85 to protect the “performance of the phonogram producer” .
BGH: musicians to their samples themselves import
“do it yourself”, advised the BGH producer Moses Pelham. Musicians should kindly upload the samples of other musicians themselves new. Anyway, so the limitation as long as they were to “enabled and empowered”. At OLG already evaluators had presented those present how “metal on metal” with hammer, plate and home computers let copy without exaggerated effort deceptively in order to circumvent the related right.
that so precisely the most difficult “in an equivalent manner” nachzuspielenden samples were unprotected by law, also recognized the BGH, restricting even the freedom to use “minimum Tonfetzen” even further: “It would be contrary to the system, not to protect particularly complex services. ” Pelham put a constitutional complaint.
In Karlsruhe there was still last year for hearing. Pelham said: “I consider sampling for customary and lawful Without would not be hip hop..” Ralf Hütter of Kraftwerk told of the seventies, when she laboriously together put their pieces of tapes, a Mellotron, the mother of all samplers, absparten from the mouths and then were hit when they their intellectual property recognized work 20 years later on MTV: “It is the seventh commandment – thou shalt not steal, “Hütter said.
Photo: Uwe Geisler / picture alliance power plant at a concert in Cologne: The band realized their work in samplers with MTV again
When asked by a constitutional judge, if he did not prevent his grandfathering the Beatles of the 21st century, he said:” the Beatles recorded by the fact that they wrote their own music “.
Now what they would have never done without their models and templates so the verdict. The Federal Constitutional Court has not decided it has the event ” metal on metal “to the Federal return to to renegotiate it if necessary. Without making the artist the choice to seek with the relevant record companies either appropriate licenses or enact samples to have.
Both were with artistic freedom and “cultural evolution” incompatible. “The use of samples is one of the style-defining elements of hip-hop”, is now no longer only in the hip-hop lexicon, but also in the verdict of the German Constitutional Court.
As also is: the sample should not compete with the original recordings. “Here, the artistic and temporal distance from the original work, the significance of borrowed sequence, the economic significance of the damage to the author of the initial work and its reputation must be included.” Aesthetically, no two works conceivable further stand as “Only me” and “Metal on Metal”.
That now litigate calculated power plant for 17 years against the cultural practice of sampling and against a culture, hip-hop, to it without them there is more than an irony of Pop: It says a lot about the intellectual property in the 21st century, in the age of digital reproducibility, and the limits of the laws of the analogue media era of the past 500 years. Although Moses Pelham makes something like hip-hop, but Hesse. Kraftwerk plays his music in the museums of modern art, much to the so-called authorship.
court ruling includes scope for consideration
the court, to read also the places where it comes to the freedom limits, further defined, clear, while judges have to protect the intellectual property in future. Before too close to himself. “There is no judgment for freedom for sampling and remixing. The misconception should all those who are looking forward about it much talk,” said the Hamburg copyright expert Clemens Rasch, whose firm of musicians greatly sought becomes.
Photo: picture alliance / dpa / dpaweb power plant during an appearance in Montreux: the action against the cultural practice of sampling and against a culture, hip-hop, would not exist without them, is more than an irony of Pop
How are retained even the scope in any copyright judgment to balance between producers and users, between capital and the arts. Rasch: “There remain uncertainties over which the lawyers can look.”
From now on it will be about what is hip-hop and what he must. Where music is made, not much will change: Where is sampled for money, the samples will be previously legally remains unresolved and licensed and if necessary re-enacted; where less is sampled for money than for 15 minutes of fame in hip-hop, hardly an applicant will be found.
It is also about the go big question: Is the sampler not, since power plant occurs with music equipment, a tool like any other? How can capitalism repeatedly renegotiated if there is only him, where mind and money to serve him as a sibling? How much should individuals belong? How much should benefit everyone?
the band Kraftwerk. The can be found as a loop in the song “Only me” 
from Sabrina Setlur again derived from hip hop producer Moses Pelham. In 1997, the song was recorded, the contribution of power plant is another 20 years older. Since 2004, the music pioneers and Pelham argue before numerous courts, including the highest-instance Federal Constitutional Court on the subject. 
