Kraftwerk have lost a decades-long copyright dispute with the producer Moses Pelham.
The case revolved around a two-second drum loop from the group’s 1977 track ‘Metall auf Metall’, which Pelham sampled for Sabrina Setlur’s 1997 single ‘Nur mir’ without permission. Kraftwerk subsequently took legal action over the matter in a case that has lasted almost three decades.
The European Court of Justice ruled in favour of Pelham earlier this week, as Loop Rituals reports, deciding that use of the brief sample is lawful under the “pastiche” loophole in European Union copyright law. Under this exception, work that calls to mind an existing piece while also showing clear differences from it gets a pass.
The legal battle first began in 1999 and has since been heard before multiple national and European courts. The European Court of Justice’s ruling could have significant implications on sampling practices by artists across the continent going forward, giving them freer rein to sample existing recordings without consent provided the adequate conditions are met.
