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• Image copyrightPA Kraftwerk played a sell-out set at London's Tate Modern in 2013

Germany's highest court has ruled in favour of a hip-hop artist who used a two-second sample of music from the pioneering electro-pop band Kraftwerk.

Kraftwerk's Ralf Hutter sued Moses Pelham, alleging that his use of the clip, without asking, infringed the band's intellectual property rights.

But the German Constitutional Court decided that the impact on Kraftwerk did not outweigh "artistic freedom".

The sample came from the cult band's 1977 song Metal On Metal.

The dispute centres on a short drum sequence looped repeatedly in the song Nur Mir (Only Me) by Sabrina Setlur.

In 2012 Germany's Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof) ruled that Setlur's song should no longer be promoted, agreeing with Hutter that it amounted to copyright infringement.

Now the constitutional court in Karlsruhe has sent the case back to the federal court, saying it must reassess the case.

The top court believes that blocking Pelham's sample would "practically exclude the creation of pieces of music in a particular style".

In November Hutter had told the Karlsruhe court that it was incumbent on Pelham, as a fellow musician, to ask permission before creating the sample. Pelham copied the track in 1997.

Before Tuesday's ruling the German Federal Union of the Music Industry warned that an attitude of "artistic freedom trumps everything" could have far-reaching consequences. The union's director Florian Druecke said such a position "would be grist to the mill for those who claim that everything should be allowed on the internet".

German media say Pelham got support from the singer Sarah Connor, rapper Bushido and reggae musician Gentleman.

SOURCE : http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36415880

 

Noone can defeats my personal GODS. They deserve respect.

 

disgusting way to make your money,
at least the top court isn't brainwashed.

The German Federal Union of the Music Industry are pure criminals, just like buma stemra in my country.

respect? something something something

Edit: edited reply, after reconsideration (and Artics input) I decided that my comparising in that context didn't made any sense and could even be hurtful for some,

My apologies

 

Last edited: May 31, 2016

Producer samples the recording of the beat from a Kraftwerk song, and doesn't have to pay, nor even clear it with rights-ownersx, nor even ask? What an insult to the progenitors of that "music in a particular style."

So, it has to be legally permissible to rip-off Kraftwerk because all "music in a particular style" is just a derivative work of some Kraftwerk song or other. Otherwise, millions of "bedroom" EDM "producers" would have nothing to do – or they'd be forced to learn some music theory and come up with their own definitive sound for plagiarists working in another "music in a particular style" to steal from.

 

You got it, the way you spelled it suggest you think something is wrong about that,

Kraftwerk made history before when suing somebody who allegedly sampled some of theirs but it actually was not the case, they won anyhow...

 

A very welcome court decision indeed. The German constitutional court has a tendency of putting things right that our right wing federal government and the lesser courts are doing wrong.

We are all standing on the shoulders of giants, as we say in Germany, meaning even the legendary guys of Kraftwerk copied much of their work from others of course. According to German law it is a question of crossing the threshold of adding that much of your own ideas (respectively ideas nobody knows where they were copied from) to grant your piece of art protection under the law of intellectual property -- what a stupid term by the way. A one bar drum loop - Amen break, anyone? - is not crossing this threshold.

So this court decision might roughly cause results like some parts of US-American fair use rule, as far as I can tell.

Sadly the greedy music industry (Content Mafia, as we say in Germany, at least the people that I call friends), will now begin to feed the law makers with money and highly paid jobs that in the end they will change the law or even the constitution, so that those greedy Content Mafia intellectual property rights bastards will continue to earn billions and billions without ever doing any work or having any ideas. Just by sitting on the rights of a lot of old recordings and old pieces of art.

 

Actually, the case is not really over yet, so the title is misleading. It has to be re-visited.

After the federal court ("Bundesgerichtshof") voted in favor for Kraftwerk in 2012, Pelham filed a constitutional complaint ("Verfassungsbeschwerede") at the Federal Constititional Court ("Bundesverfasungsgericht"), which is the highest court in Germany, which favored pro artistic expression and as a culural technique of content creation, which I think is a good thing. We'll have to see if it will have any effect on the german copyright law in the future.

Besides that, sampling in Germany is really a huge problem. That's why you don't hear so much sample-based Hip-Hop in Germany with straight loops but a lot of flavorless synth-based stuff instead.

 

Last edited: May 31, 2016

Yeah well there is a good proverb fitting this case:"Good Artists copy,great Artists steal!" Though the last words on this case are not spoken yet, it might be a green flag for many to steal other peoples music without making it into a piece of it's own. Exactly there lies the problem with this ruling. I fear that now tons of wannabe producers will start to mash up samples from Mozart to the Stones. What will come out of that will most likely not be of any sonic value to seasoned musiclovers! A huge pile of crap, but that is not much different to that what is happening now in popular music anyway. Bottom line for me is that i hope some rare pearls emerge from it, given that this ruling passes also the higest german and EU courts!

 

EDIT:
Completely deleted what I wrote here originally, because the comment I was refering to has been edited.

Thanks to @Kwissbeats for doing so, classy move. Respect!
You know, I'm a pretty patient man, so I was able to just ignore the approximately 499 similar comments I had to read over the years. Number 500 probably was one too much, I just had the feeling I have to something about it this time.

I apologise, too

Thanks to @ArticStorm as well!

cheers guys, let's make some music!

 

Last edited: Jun 1, 2016

Definetely not quite correct. The german highest court "Bundersverfassungsgericht" didnt decided that Kraftwerk has to tolerate the sampling of their stuff. The "Bundersverfassungsgericht" just decided to give the whole case back to the BGH (Bundesgerichtshof) to rethink their first decicion.

 

I only know their 1983 single "Tour de France" contains a quote from "Sonate für Flöte und Klavier, Mvt. 1" of Paul Hindemith from 1936. Do you know any other? Would be interesting.

 

well if it is legal it isn't stealing now is it?

I don't get your reasoning, what does it has to do with sonic value?

and that's the bottom line, you can't ban art, nobody can tell me what ingredients I use for my art.

But ofc the music industries will prevail, That means you cannot sample a song for your own amusement and share it with your friends, because that is considered marketing for commercial benefit.

http://www.whosampled.com/Kraftwerk/samples/


You know who else doesn't like free art? some other repressive regimes we always talk about being years behind....
and that got everything to do with this because restricting art is inhumane and the freedom to express yourself in art the way you want should be a human right.

And I know people want to draw a line, but as artic said. it is incredible hard if not impossible to draw a line.
so why draw a line in the first place? I know, it's because it is in the human nature to response like that.
but the truth is that it shouldn't be like that.

 

This is not what they said. They said that there should be a set payment percentage that pays the original artist based on the sales of the record using the sample. At the moment artist can define how much they want to clear a sample. This can be used to block the usage of samples by wanting to much for clearing it. They say this is interfering with the creative freedom of musicians.

 

Most of my art is in 4/4 time signature, every second beat is emphasized. I can´t remember when I came across this concept or who invented it, but I like it. Same with most of the other bits and pieces my music consists of - be it scales. chords. bass line, melody line. Same with sounds like classic house organ bass. reese bass, other super sawy sounds (was it Roland who invented stacked up and slightly detuned saw waves? Sure? ).

Of course I come up with some useable stuff when playing around with my synths - even something original when stacking layers upon layers, making huge sparkling pads and drones, mixed in with samples of my sugar bunny, saying sweet things to the mic ...

On the other hand I probably heard something similar sometimes before on the radio that inspired my creations. That's what I mean by standing on the shoulders of giants. Kraftwerk is no different. Sure they did some great pioneering work of art but still based upon ideas others had before.

(if you don't quite know about reese bass, look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Saunderson#The_Reese_Bassline)

 

Moses Pelham is quite an arrogant asshole, this might be the reason Kraftwerk went on him.
Yes, their style is copied alot and even sampled. they just protect their property (which if you dont do it you lose the rights!)
Before we know the whole background story we shouldnt "judge".
BTW dont ever think a court is there to find a moral solution. Its all abt what is written and how good the lawyers presrnted the pro + contra arguments.

 

Ahh, Ok...I see


Autobahn (1974)
sampled

• Anlassen Von Automotor Und Abfahren by Karussell (1973) what means "Starting an engine and take off"

But the mentioned Sampler (Die HiFi Stereo-Kulisse, Karussell 1973) was exactly for this purpose. Its something like a sample library to use in your productions.

And the
Tour De France (1983)
sampled

• Sonate Für Flöte Und Klavier by Paul Hindermith (1936)

isnt a sample...Its just the melody played.

Ralf Hütter also said, he would have had a problem with Pelham using the beat if he would have played it on his own and then uses it...But Pelham simply stole the Beat by sampling it. And this arrogant Pelham asshole also said, he didnt even knew where the sample came from. He said he didnt knew the song is from Kraftwerk! I think in 1997 there was no HipHop producer who doenst knew everything from Kraftwerk!

And by the way...Pelham was one of the hardest fighters when it comes to copyright infringement penaltys. He even had an own company just to bring people to court who shared his music.

 

Last edited: May 31, 2016

Japp, I read about Moses Pelham likes to sue other people. He seems to like earning his money this way. Ironically he earned enough from suing others to fight against Kraftwerk (who also really much like to sue others who dare to copy or sampling their stuff) for 19 years now. In doing so we Germans got this really promising constitutional court decision.

And you know, law these times is often bought by people with lots of money and influence mainly catering their interests. That makes me think why I have to live my life by the law that was made by these people for these people's interests.

 

@Kwissbeats I quote you: "And that's the bottom line, you can't ban art, nobody can tell me what ingredients I use for my art."

Dead wrong! Of yourse I can tell you not to make use of my composition against my will and call it your art and sell it commercially! It's all aboout the way you use it and what you do with for it to be considered your creation (in German a creation is called "Schöpfung" btw, which is a sacriligious or holy/godly act like giving birth, hence we talk about "Schöpfungshöhe", the threshold of what can be considered a new piece of musical or other artistic work verses a cover/rip-off).

And the Urheberrecht actually protects your work as an artist from being ripped by others right from the moment you gave birth to it, without having the need to go somewhere and "register" your work. And that's a big difference to the english/american idea of copyright where you actuall have to do this otherwise it's not yours! And that idea is a big plus in my opinion. It protects the artist by nature! And not by money like the anglo-american copyright law.

You make it seem like having constitutions like these in place is a bad thing – you actually draw a parrallel to repressive regimes (which is ridiculous, btw).

 

It's true that pelham doesn't seem to be the nicest guy anyway it's not true that you lose your rights if you don't sue. If you are the creator you stay the creator you can not lose your copyright in German law. The only way to lose your rights to your creations is to be dead for more than 75 years.