Legal Scenarios for Borrowing in Electronic Music

This article refers to various intertextual strategies in the field of electronic music and their legal categorization. The main part of the article is devoted to the problem of sampling, widely discussed in the literature and jurisprudence. Possible legal qualifications are discussed, as well as controversies related to the different scope of protection of works, artistic performances, and phonograms. The article also refers to other phenomena in the electronic field, including reedit, remix, or mash-up. In the summary, the general rules for making a legal assessment of musical borrowing strategies, interpretative guidelines in relation to a musical quotation, as well as de lege ferenda postulates are outlined.