Just before the passing of the Beastie Boy’s Adam Yauch, a lawsuit was filed against the group related to sampling on their 1989 album Paul’s Boutique.

An obvious question is why almost 25 years went by before anyone decided to sue.

The reason? The alleged samples can’t actually be heard by the ordinary listener.

It’s bad enough that identifiable samples are illegal to use, when common sense tells us they almost certainly have no effect (or possibly a positive effect) on sales of the original source. This is preposterous.

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