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| quote: | Originally posted by Nick Cenik
It's probably been mentioned already but if not: in short, if you use samples from another artist's tune(s), and you clearly label your production as a bootleg of the original, and you give it away for free (i.e., you cannot generate any royalties off it) then you will be fine. |
Again, this may be probable in practice, but as far as the letter of law is concerned, it's still copyright infringement. And they don't need to prove damages to sue you; direct damages tend to be a part of most lawsuits but courts can also pass injunctions and award punitive damages and other types of damages.
In the real world, lawyers and legal departments have limited resources and can't sue everyone who's ever done them wrong. Triage is a universal fact; emergency rooms treat the most critical patients, burglars break into the wealthiest houses, police go after the most dangerous criminals (or the easiest ones to catch, if you're a cynic like I am).
Lawyers will want to sue the people when they're (a) most likely to win and (b) most likely to get a big settlement/award if they win. That puts your insignificant bootleg pretty low on the list, since you're dirt poor and nobody's going to listen to it anyway. But circumstances can change fast; maybe your track gains some sort of notoriety or the copyright holder has already filed suit against everybody else they could find. That's why I keep saying, you probably won't get sued.
Just like you probably won't hit a tree and break your neck when you go skiing. But it still happens to some people. Make sure you understand the risk you're taking, and don't listen to any of the crap legal advice and bogus loopholes that some guy on the internet heard from a friend who heard it from his brother who heard it from his friend's brother who read it somewhere else on the internet.
Sampling is like speeding. Everybody does it, and you probably won't get caught, but it's still illegal and if you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time then you could still get busted for it.
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