MarketBridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films
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Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films

Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films, 410 F.3d 792, is a 2005 court case that was important in defining American copyright law for recorded music. The case centered on the 1990 N.W.A. track "100 Miles and Runnin'", which contains a manipulated two-second sample of the 1975 Funkadelic track "Get Off Your Ass and Jam". The sample was implemented without Funkadelic's permission and with no compensation paid to Bridgeport Music, which claimed to own the rights to Funkadelic's music.

Influence
The New York University musicologist and sampling expert Lawrence Ferrara describes the effects of the Bridgeport case on sample-based music as, "extremely chilling, because it basically says that whatever you sample has to be licensed, in its most extreme interpretation." The case has also been influential in the rest of the world: on November 20, 2008, the electronic pioneers Kraftwerk were successful in a landmark case "Metall Auf Metall" in the Federal Court of Justice of Germany (Bundesgerichtshof, abbreviated BGH), which quotes Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films and decided that even the smallest shreds of sounds are copyrightable and that the sampling of a drum beat can be copyright infringement. Under German law, however, this result is de lege lata—applicable only to that case. The BGH only mentioned the Bridgeport case without discussing it. In the United States, the case has been less favorably received. Most recently and significantly, the Ninth Circuit rejected its reasoning explicitly in the 2016 VMG Salsoul v Ciccone (Madonna) case: "We recognize that the Sixth Circuit held to the contrary in Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films, 410 F.3d 792 (6th Cir. 2005), but—like the leading copyright treatise and several district courts—we find Bridgeport’s reasoning unpersuasive." A number of District courts have rejected the decision explicitly or declined to apply it, including courts in New York, Florida, California, and Louisiana. ==Footnotes==
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