Archive for category: Intellectual Property Law

Bill C-32, also known as the Copyright Modernization Act, are proposed amendments to the Canada’s Copyright Act. Many consider these changes long overdue. The last time that the Copyright Act was amended was in 1997. Since that time, we have seen the advent of technological powerhouses such as Facebook, Twitter, Skype, YouTube and Google among countless others. Just as these entities have reshaped the way we interact with technology and share information, regulatory guidelines that address these shifts are also essential. Bill C-32 attempts to address these technological trends and the new challenges that they present.

Most people who listen to urban styles of music, like rap, hip hop and dance, know that the beats they hear on a recording have been taken from somewhere else. The increasing affordability of recording technology in today’s commonplace home studio makes the use of other people’s music more and more widespread. Music sampling is roughly defined as lifting a piece of recorded music (a “sample”) from an existing recording and using it in a new recording. Often, a few bars containing a drum beat will be repeated in “looped” sequence to form the backbeat of the new recording. At other times, the sample may be of vocals, other instruments, or even a nanosecond of background noise. The sample may then be manipulated in different ways and combined with other sounds and sound effects to make a new creation. What is common to all of these incidents is the use of someone else’s recording to produce a new one.