O'Sullivan v. Markie for the US, and Pelham, Haas v. Hütter, Schneider-Esleben in the EU. Sampling requires copyright clearance. Flat. The EU precedence is ba

O'Sullivan v. Markie for the US, and Pelham, Haas v. Hütter, Schneider-Esleben in the EU. Sampling requires copyright clearance. Flat. The EU precedence is basically that if a sample can be recognised, then it is copyright infringing. That says exactly nothing about how long it is, and that is obviously an issue that scares the big records into legally checking everything, but just burns all the small ones into not sampling unless they're extremely certain. The US precedence is that you require the original copyright holder to approve the sample and its size. Which is somewhat worse than the EU rulings.