We write about music copyright cases quite regularly. In this
article we discuss the issue of whether copying a very short
snippet of a sound recording infringes copyright. This issue came
up in Europe recently.
Readers who know a bit about copyright will know that European
copyright is a minefield, an area of law that is almost
impenetrable to those who do not specialise in it. It is therefore
with some trepidation that I write these words, but a copyright
decision by Europe's top court on a novel issue simply cannot
be ignored.
The case involved a name that older readers will recognise,
Kraftwerk, a German band whose best known song is
Autobahn. This case involved a different Kraftwerk song, a
1977 song called Metall auf Metall. The allegation was
that a band called Pelham had electronically copied some two
seconds of a rhythm section of Kraftwerk's song and used it in
what is known as a "continuous loop" in a song called
Nur mir. The act of electronic copying
