UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE *SCHOOL OF *LAW *COURSEWORK FOR CONTRACT LAW (MUSIC*) AUTHOR – BHAVNIT PATEL *DATE - 25TH* APRIL 2008 SEMINAR GROUP - 1 SEMINAR TUTOR -* SHARON FARGUHAR* *On what basis does the inclusion of samples of a recording made by *Pink Floyd constitute an infringement of copyright? In civil law regarding copyright, there are two types of infringement; primary and secondary. Primary is concerned with the unauthorised use of copyrighted works and secondary would involve the dealing or making commercial use of such infringing copies. In the music industry, an infringement of copyright often consists of an existing piece of music being used by an artist without permission from the person or company who own the rights to the original music or recorded sound. This is exactly what has happened with Alexei Duff. He has used two samples from two Pink Floyd tracks and did not get permission from the appropriate copyright owners. If found guilty in court, this would be regarded as primary infringement. There is a lot of confusion about sampling in the music industry. Several think that if only a small fraction of a piece of music is sampled, whether it is a few notes or a few seconds, then it does not need to be cleared for use however this is not the case. The 1988 Copyright Act says that for an infringement of copyright to have taken place, the sample used must be of a substantial part. This means that it is the quality rather than the quantity of the sample used which determines if an infringement of copyright has occurred. In the case of Alexie Duff, one of his tracks uses a ten second sample extracted from the song “Dark side of the moon” and the sample is loope ...