The Legal Position For Music Sampling In India

As a teenager who used to regularly watch Vh1 to keep up with the latest English music videos, the first time I heard Black Eyed Peas' 'Don't Phunk With My Heart', the opening tune sounded familiar. Years later, I realized that the famous American band had actually sampled 'Yeh Mera Dil Pyaar ka Deewaana'  from the movie Don.

Sampling, as a process, has existed for years but it is only recently, with the easy availability of widely accessible music records on the Internet, that the casual listener has started picking on this practice. Black's Law Dictionary defines "sampling" as "the process of taking a small portion of a sound recording and digitally manipulating it as a part of the new recording." The small portion in the above-noted definition could be a few notes, speech or music which could be retained in its originality or modified according to the sensibility of the new musical recording.