In a previous post, I posted a short music theme for the article titled “Sampling and scratching in US copyright and Polish law: a comparative analysis“.

I feel obliged to mention that the “copyright infringement” sample was provided by our reliable friend Artur Zawiasiński. I wish the publisher followed our sggestions and embedded all samples in the PDF version of the article. You may download them separately for now. We will work on the 2.0 version of this article.

The aforementioned article ends like this.

Since the Polish courts have not produced any decisions concerning the use of scratches and samples, a legal analysis of such activities can be, as in this article, performed only on the basis of abstract regulation. In the light of on one hand the heritage of American case law and on the other of the analysis of the Polish law, there seems to be one controversial conclusion: the Polish quotation right provides for the ability to use samples without the consent of copyright owners of original works if some conditions are met. Nowadays music (or broadly speaking all kinds of creativity) increasingly often turns to the past and remakes, sometimes truly creatively, the existing works. Paradoxically, the Polish author’s rights law with its general provision in Article 29, section 1 and some imperfections in it notwithstanding, is more realistic and addresses creators’ needs better than the American copyright law.

Categories: Polish law | US law | copyright law.