Jay-Z vs. the Sample Trolls
This is a fascinating article from Slate about a serious problem facing emcees these days: the Sample Troll. What is a sample troll, you ask? From the article:
Similar to its cousins the patent trolls, Bridgeport and companies like it hold portfolios of old rights (sometimes accumulated in dubious fashion) and use lawsuits to extort money from successful music artists for routine sampling, no matter how minimal or unnoticeable. The sample trolls have already leveraged their position into millions in settlements and court damages, but that’s not the real problem. The trolls are turning copyright into the foe rather than the friend of musical innovation.
The article is long, but it really is worth reading. There’s an audio version of it floating around somewhere, too.
This trolling thing is serious business. I hadn’t heard of the sample trolls before, but I remember reading an article in the New Yorker about a patent trolling company that was taking down RIM, the company that developed the BlackBerry. They had patented a crude wireless email system that is sort of like RIM’s, and they were suing them for like a gajillion dollars. It was going to totally sink the company but then of course Microsoft bought them out and solved the problem.
This article only relates only peripherally to what I just said. It’s interesting though, because unlike the New Yorker article, it gives suggestions about how the music industry might address the sample troll threat. I hope to see some lively discussion about this here, assuming that anyone is reading this. Post comments if you’re out there! Let’s make this a back and forth!