In the Sunday NY Times, John Leland
wrote, in the style section:

"The law, of course, will inevitably catch up. When rap acts started sampling James Brown records in the 1980's, complaints raged that they were violating copyrights and the principles of art. In a Bronx home studio in 1987, the producer Jazzy Jay described the law of the copy: "The laws on taking samples are, You take 'em until you get caught."

Two decades later, musicians usually pay for their samples, and the aesthetic argument — that sampling was theft, not music — has quieted. Now sample fees are part of the business model, and no one seems to worry about whether it is art.

At both stages, value judgments about copying followed technology and money, not the other way around."

the title of the article is 'beyond file sharing, a nation of copiers' and it explicitly mentions blogging and how "much of the culture's heat now lies with the ability to cut, paste, clip, sample, quote, recycle, customize and recirculate."

In said spirit, here are some fun links to why this dumbass is wrong about the apparently egalitarian nature of hip hop sample settlements and other sad corporate turns in fair use law.

sonic outlaws, listen to the sample and original

negativland's hott links, always good to plunder when you're lazy

there's a second enclosure movement website chatted abt on the poptalk list that i have forgotten...argh.

my mind has been going on abt this all day and also from a chat w/ a professor about the RIAA suits going out to unsuspecting types, maybe like yrself.