"3) Copyright Hysteria
The Public Enemy Def Jam boxset is a perfect example. Their catalog remains influential, they still demonstrate proven commercial potential, and they did all the work of putting together their own boxset, only to have Universal nix the project presumably because they were worried about publishing and sample clearances.

What we are left with is not quite a racist conspiracy. But the accumulated devaluing of Black music works like institutional racism–all of the little things add up to a vast and widening hole in the American memory about the cultural legacy of Black artists.

Angus: When I see phrases like “copyright fence” they’re so often being used by people who seem to want the dismantling of copyright law in its entirety that I suppose I instinctively move to shore up some elements of those fences. That said, I always wince when I hear a copyright defender claiming that sampling is parasitical of “real” creatives. There’s so much misunderstanding and consequent mistrust in this debate that even working out what the middle ground might look like is hellish difficult.

Robust copyright law, interpreted logically and with understanding of different forms of creativity, is surely the least we have a right to expect in the 21st century. Creators need not only to have the rights to their work, but access to the legal mechanisms that exist to defend those rights adequately.

The main problem as I see it at present – and this goes across the board, it’s not just about sampling – is that access to those mechanisms is restricted by economics to conglomerates and wealthy individuals; this perpetuates the division by allowing a group of folks that the British technology writer Andrew Orlowski calls the Freetards to continue portraying copyright as an exploitative tool by which corporations ring-fence their profits."

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