"It's curious that almost all the intellectual effort expended on the subject of sampling has been in its defence. When sampling first made waves in the mid-eighties, journalistic discussions nearly always focused on the legal aspect, framing the samplers in punk-like terms (as rebellious, iconoclastic) . Academic studies of sampling have likewise generally sided with 'the streets' versus the multinational entertainment companies. This reflects the left-wing bias of academia and a tendency to see the whole area of property rights, including copyright, as intrinsically conservative, aligned with corporations and land-owners, the status quo. Some theorists also argue that ideas of originality and intellectual property are ethnocentric, pointing out that non-Western or precapitalist folk cultures often have much looser, more collective notions of authorship. Still, it is surprising how few thinkers have considered the issue from the perspective of the samplee rather than the sampler. A Marxist analysis of sampling might conceivably see it as the purest form of exploiting the labour of others. In a more general sense, you could see it as a form of cultural strip-mining, a ransacking of the rich seams of past musical productivity."
Del nuevo libro de Simon Reynolds, "Retro-Mania".
