Talk:Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films

Possible Edits

This article is about a recent court case that is very relevant to the current music scene, which seems to revolve around sampling and mashups. I think it would benefit from a rewrite that, in particular, makes use of more resources such as the original court decision as well as other relevant reviews. The case background could be more thorough, and the court decision more elaborate with regard to the parties involved and the implications of the decision. Jeromeluo (talk) 17:47, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, and Bridgeport is significant for its absolutest rejection of the de minimis exception to copyright. It would be good to add legal and cultural context. Arttechlaw (talk) 22:38, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

POV tag

Hi -- An anonymous editor placed a POV tag on the article in May 2013 (see diff), noting in the edit summary, "(The entire "Lawrence Ferrara" paragraph seems biased, especially the last sentence. Also, the last sentence in the paragraph that discusses fair use seems too narrow and does not give an accurate view of the scope of fair use) ". Nobody has commented on this in a while, so it's clearly not exciting too much angst. Personally, the material may not give quite enough emphasis here or there, but I don't think it seems especially POV-biased. Anyway, due to the editor who put the tag on the article, failing to initiate any discussion in almost a year, I'm going to go ahead and take the tag off the front page. But I'll put it here for further discussion. --Lquilter (talk) 20:06, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

The POV seems to be over-stating the importance of the holding. Claim that "was important in defining American copyright law for recorded music" seems unsupported in light of it being rejected elsewhere, including 9th circuit in Vmg Salsoul, LLC v. Ciccone, 824 F. 3d 871 - Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit 2016 - that stated "we find Bridgeport's reasoning unpersuasive. We hold that the "de minimis" exception applies to infringement actions concerning copyrighted sound recordings, just as it applies to all other copyright infringement actions." and "Other than Bridgeport and the district courts following that decision, we are aware of no case that has held that the de minimis doctrine does not apply in a copyright infringement case." Enri999 (talk) 18:45, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Contradictory interpretation?

"However, they may still argue that their use of the sample is a fair use—that is, that the use is transformative, for noncommercial purpose, copied only a small amount, the original had a thin copyright, or the copying did not harm the market for the original work or its derivatives."

That last clause, "copying did not harm the market for the original work or its derivatives", would seem to contradict an earlier statement in the article, "Under this interpretation of the copyright law, usage of any section of a work, regardless of length, would be in violation of copyright unless the copyright owner gave permission." Which is correct? Can sampling be fair use because looping a two-second guitar stab obviously doesn't harm the market for the original; or is all uncleared sampling copyright infringement? Both of these interpretations are unsourced, so it's not a simple case of just removing the unsourced one. 49.178.48.10 (talk) 23:04, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

I've done some further reading and it seems that the court may actually just be contradicting themself; this isn't exactly shocking, given that the judge seems to literally not understand anything about music. I'm not entirely sure I fully understand academic legal papers, if anyone wants to read Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films: Has Unlicensed Digital Sampling of Copyrighted Sound Recordings Come to an End? to clarify, that'd be great. 49.178.48.10 (talk) 07:24, 27 October 2020 (UTC)