| Summary: | The film examines the creative and commercial value of musical sampling, including the related debates over artistic expression, copyright law and money. Long before people began posting their homemade video mashups on the Web, hip-hop musicians were perfecting the art of audio montage through sampling. New technologies developed in the 1980s and 1990s made it easier to reuse existing sound recordings, but soon sampling collided with the law. When recording industry lawyers got involved, what was once called “borrowed melody” became “copyright infringement.” As artists find more inventive ways to turn old tunes into new material, this film poses the question: Can you own a sound?
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