Grand Upright Music, Ltd. v. Warner Bros. Records Inc.
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

''Grand Upright Music, Ltd v. Warner Bros. Records Inc.'', 780
F. Supp. The ''Federal Supplement'' ( is a case law reporter published by West Publishing in the United States that includes select opinions of the United States district courts since 1932, and is part of the National Reporter System. Although the ''Fed ...
182 (S.D.N.Y. 1991), was a
copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...
case heard by the
United States District Court for the Southern District of New York The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (in case citations, S.D.N.Y.) is a United States district court, federal trial court whose geographic jurisdiction encompasses eight counties of New York (state), New York ...
. Songwriter
Gilbert O'Sullivan Raymond Edward "Gilbert" O'Sullivan (born 1 December 1946) is an Irish singer-songwriter who achieved his most significant success during the early 1970s with hits including "Alone Again (Naturally)", " Clair", and " Get Down". O'Sullivan's s ...
sued rapper
Biz Markie Marcel Theo Hall (April 8, 1964 – July 16, 2021), known professionally as Biz Markie, was an American rapper, singer, songwriter, DJ, and record producer. Markie was best known for his 1989 single "Just a Friend", which became a Top 40 hit in ...
after Markie
sampled Sample or samples may refer to: Base meaning * Sample (statistics), a subset of a population – complete data set * Sample (signal), a digital discrete sample of a continuous analog signal * Sample (material), a specimen or small quantity of so ...
O'Sullivan's song "
Alone Again (Naturally) "Alone Again (Naturally)" is a song by Irish singer-songwriter Gilbert O'Sullivan. It was recorded in 1972 at the same time as his album '' Back to Front'' and was a worldwide hit. The single spent six non-consecutive weeks at number one on ''B ...
". The court ruled that sampling without permission constitutes
copyright infringement Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, s ...
. The judgment changed the hip hop music industry, requiring that any future music sampling be approved by the original copyright owners.


Case

Rapper
Biz Markie Marcel Theo Hall (April 8, 1964 – July 16, 2021), known professionally as Biz Markie, was an American rapper, singer, songwriter, DJ, and record producer. Markie was best known for his 1989 single "Just a Friend", which became a Top 40 hit in ...
had
sampled Sample or samples may refer to: Base meaning * Sample (statistics), a subset of a population – complete data set * Sample (signal), a digital discrete sample of a continuous analog signal * Sample (material), a specimen or small quantity of so ...
a portion of the song "
Alone Again (Naturally) "Alone Again (Naturally)" is a song by Irish singer-songwriter Gilbert O'Sullivan. It was recorded in 1972 at the same time as his album '' Back to Front'' and was a worldwide hit. The single spent six non-consecutive weeks at number one on ''B ...
" by singer-songwriter
Gilbert O'Sullivan Raymond Edward "Gilbert" O'Sullivan (born 1 December 1946) is an Irish singer-songwriter who achieved his most significant success during the early 1970s with hits including "Alone Again (Naturally)", " Clair", and " Get Down". O'Sullivan's s ...
in the track "Alone Again" from Markie's third album, '' I Need a Haircut''. Markie and his production and recording companies were listed as co-defendants with Warner Bros. in the subsequent lawsuit. Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy granted an injunction against the defendant,
Warner Bros. Records Warner Records Inc. (formerly Warner Bros. Records Inc.) is an American record label. A subsidiary of the Warner Music Group, it is headquartered in Los Angeles, California. It was founded on March 19, 1958, as the recorded music division of the ...
, despite Warner Bros.' claim that Grand Upright did not own a valid copyright in the sampled song. Warner Bros. denied that Grand Upright owned the copyright to the song, though Grand Upright produced documentation that O'Sullivan had transferred title to them, and O'Sullivan himself testified to that regard. It also appears that the defendants unsuccessfully urged the court to take note of how common unapproved sampling was in the industry, because the court noted that "the defendants...would have this court believe that stealing is rampant in the music business and, for that reason, their conduct here should be excused." The decision received some criticism for stating that "the most persuasive evidence that the copyrights are valid and owned by the plaintiff" was that Warner Bros. had previously attempted to obtain permission to use the song. However, this would not legally establish that Grand Upright was in fact the owner, but only that Warner Bros. believed that the song was copyrighted by ''someone'', which would make their infringement knowing and willful. As Grand Upright had provided evidence that specifically established the copyright was theirs, the ruling did not hinge on this point, however. The court wrote that "it is clear that the defendants knew that they were violating the plaintiff's rights as well as the rights of others. Their only aim was to sell thousands upon thousands of records. This callous disregard for the law and for the rights of others requires not only the preliminary injunction sought by the plaintiff but also sterner measures." The judge referred the matter to a
United States Attorney United States attorneys are officials of the U.S. Department of Justice who serve as the chief federal law enforcement officers in each of the 94 U.S. federal judicial districts. Each U.S. attorney serves as the United States' chief federal c ...
for criminal prosecution, though no criminal charges were filed. Judge Duffy has been accused of bias in admonishing the defense and referring the defense for criminal prosecution. Such criticism points out that Duffy's written opinion begins with one of the biblical
ten commandments The Ten Commandments (Biblical Hebrew עשרת הדברים \ עֲשֶׂרֶת הַדְּבָרִים, ''aséret ha-dvarím'', lit. The Decalogue, The Ten Words, cf. Mishnaic Hebrew עשרת הדיברות \ עֲשֶׂרֶת הַדִּבְ ...
, "
Thou shalt not steal "Thou shalt not steal" is one of the Ten Commandments of the Jewish Torah (known to Christians as the first five books of the Old Testament), which are widely understood as moral imperatives by legal scholars, Jewish scholars, Catholic scholars ...
." According to The Copyright Infringement Project of UCLA Law and Columbia Law School, Judge Duffy's opinion in ''Grand Upright v. Warner'' demonstrates "an iffy understanding on the part of this judge of the facts and issues before him in this case."


Impact on music

The court case had a major effect on hip hop music. Sample clearance fees prohibited the use of more than one or two samples for most recordings, with some mechanical rights holders demanding up to 100% of
royalties A royalty payment is a payment made by one party to another that owns a particular asset, for the right to ongoing use of that asset. Royalties are typically agreed upon as a percentage of gross or net revenues derived from the use of an asset o ...
. As each sample had to be cleared to avoid legal action, records such as those produced by the
Bomb Squad Bomb disposal is an explosives engineering profession using the process by which hazardous explosive devices are rendered safe. ''Bomb disposal'' is an all-encompassing term to describe the separate, but interrelated functions in the milit ...
for
Public Enemy "Public enemy" is a term which was first widely used in the United States in the 1930s to describe individuals whose activities were seen as criminal and extremely damaging to society, though the phrase had been used for centuries to describe p ...
, which use dozens of samples, became prohibitively expensive to produce. According to ''
Pitchfork A pitchfork (also a hay fork) is an agricultural tool with a long handle and two to five tines used to lift and pitch or throw loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves. The term is also applied colloquially, but inaccurately, to th ...
,'' "Overnight it became forbiddingly difficult and expensive to incorporate even a handful of samples into a new beat ... Producers scaled back their creations, often augmenting one choice groove with a bevy of instrumental embellishments." As a result,
interpolation In the mathematical field of numerical analysis, interpolation is a type of estimation, a method of constructing (finding) new data points based on the range of a discrete set of known data points. In engineering and science, one often has a n ...
(replaying the requested sample using new instrumentalists, using the newly recorded version and simply paying the songwriters—and not the artist or the label—for use of the composition) became prevalent in the industry, especially in the work of
Dr. Dre Andre Romelle Young (born February 18, 1965), known professionally as Dr. Dre, is an American rapper and record producer. He is the founder and CEO of Aftermath Entertainment and Beats Electronics, and previously co-founded, co-owned, and ...
. As early as 1989, Dr. Dre's production was styled around fewer samples per track, studio instrumentation, and sampling artists such as
Parliament-Funkadelic Parliament-Funkadelic (abbreviated as P-Funk) is an American music collective of rotating musicians headed by George Clinton, primarily consisting of the funk bands Parliament and Funkadelic, both active since the 1960s. Their distinctive fu ...
who were amenable to having their music sampled. "Alone Again" is not available on current releases of Markie's ''
Haircut A hairstyle, hairdo, haircut or coiffure refers to the styling of hair, usually on the human scalp. Sometimes, this could also mean an editing of facial or body hair. The fashioning of hair can be considered an aspect of personal grooming ...
'' album. His next album was entitled '' All Samples Cleared!''


See also

* Collage#Legal issues *
Sound collage In music, montage (literally "putting together") or sound collage ("gluing together") is a technique where newly branded sound objects or compositions, including songs, are created from collage, also known as montage. This is often done throug ...


Sources and notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Grand Upright Music, Ltd. V. Warner Bros. Records Inc. United States copyright case law United States District Court for the Southern District of New York cases Sampling controversies 1991 in United States case law Warner Records