Vassilis Galanos, a Science, Technology & Innovation Studies PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, wrote a paper on the ethical issues of ‘loop digging’ in contemporary music. He’s also a “rapper, photographer, vinyl and book hoarder” so I like him already.
Here’s an excerpt from the paper’s abstract:
Digital sampling is a technique used for music production within the past thirty years, mostly through the Hip-hop genre and its subgenres, while it has been widely used in newer aspects of music evolution after the new millennium. Together with the evolution of this technique legal issues have occurred together with the arise of ethical questions on the definition of music production and innovation and creativity. Several proposals have been given to these questions but no final answer is yet given. Other factors as the fans who reveal the samples’ origins in the Web seem to be unhelpful for their favorite artists as they set them in danger. A theoretical point of view is presented though the scope of Communication and Media Theory about the eternal recycling process of the postmodernity. Sampling is still in question in terms of ethics, but the scale seems like gravitating towards the fact that sampling music is definitely adding informational parts inside the infosphere with respect to the old material that is taken and with no theft intention.
Vassilis used scientific journals on Law and Legislation, critical websites and analysed the philosophical and cultural aspects of the loop digging.
Check it out on Academia.edu.