What's Stealing and What Is Creative Sampling?

Last week we read part of Steven Shaviro’s “Connected” as well as chapters 7 and 12 from Jeff Rice’s book “Writing About Cool”. The most interesting part of these reads were the questions brought up about the ideas of authorship and the rights to intellectual property in regards to sampling. Rice defines sampling as “joining pieces of different songs together to create a new song” (58). However, I do not feel that it needs to be limited to music, but the idea of taking small bits or samples from different places and putting them together is sampling in a general sense. Whether it is a research paper, a news article, a song, or a speech, sampling is commonplace. The question we started to touch on and I think bears deeper investigation is where is the line between sampling that is acceptable and sampling that constitutes stealing.

I think there are a few key components to delineate between stealing and acceptable sampling. The most important one is the spirit of the sampling. If someone is using the sample as a building block to something completely different, then there is no harm done and it is acceptable. Scratching is a perfect example of this, where the originally used songs did not really contribute to the newly formed message. If the original work or idea is used but the meaning is completely changed, then it is probably not stealing. However, I think it is also important that when a sample is used that the original author be given credit. If this doesn’t occur, the sampler would have to be assumed to be trying to take the credit for him or her self, which is in the spirit of stealing. The only clear thing about trying to figure out the differences between types of sampling is that it cannot be done with a single boundary line. Case by case analysis probably needs to be applied to some degree, as the length of the sample, how recognizable it is, and usage of it all play a role in whether or not it is stealing.

To further complicate things, in some ways almost nothing is ever made from scratch without any sampling of ideas. Could Watson and Crick have solved the structure of DNA without the X-ray diffraction information of Rosalind Franklin? And could Franklin have obtained her information without someone developing the X-ray diffraction technique before her? The answer is probably no to both these questions, and I think it is important to realize that sampling did play a role. It plays a role in almost all discoveries and new creations, so whatever we do, we should make sure we do not eliminate it.

Another issue we touched on in class and is mentioned in the Shaviro reading is making people pay for samples of information. I tend to think it is not a good road to go down as it certainly could limit our ability to create new ideas. How does it make sense to own an idea or sound to the point that others need to pay for it? What if Watson and Crick published their paper on the structure of DNA, and then every researcher thereafter had to pay them for using that structure? Needless to say, I don’t think science would be where it is now. People should not be allowed to take someone else’s work directly without giving credit to the original author, but I just do not see how money should be given to use an idea. It is another point of contention though as many music artists do not want their song used at all if they do not receive money, so it is just another gray area.