Performers' Rights and Digital Sampling under U.S. and Japanese Law

A year or two ago, one of my copyright students called to my attention a problem that seemed to him to pose unique difficulties for the copyright statute. The problem arises because of a technology called digital sampling. Digital sampling is a new threat to performers' rights that has grown out of the combination of digital recording technology with music synthesizer technology. This threat is a very recent one.

Indeed, the digital sampling problem is so new that copyright lawyers haven't yet figured out how to think about it.