Copyright: BORROWING- 90's style

SAMPLING - Hi tech "cut and paste....." or "how can scanning my own copy be wrong???"

Technical transformations. From digital sampling to the hi-tech manufacture of sculptures, artists are increasingly using technology to let them "capture" and swiftly transform other people's ideas. Increasingly, though, the courts are sticking up for the people whose materials are borrowed.

Thus, in 1992, the courts for the first time upheld a music infringement suit against a rapper who incorporated a digital sampling of someone else's work into his own album. The album was pulled off store shelves worldwide, and a large money judgement was likely.

And cases are becoming more frequent. in 1991 Wall Street trader-turned-artist Jeff Koons was sued by postcard maker Art Rogers, after Koons sent a copy of a Rogers photograph (of Rogers, his wife, and eight German Shepherd puppies) to Koons's studio in Italy, with instructions to his workmen to create a sculpture "just like the photo." Koons then sold three copies of the sculpture for a total of more than $350,000. Rogers felt his work had been ripped off and wanted some of the profits; Mr. Koons felt he'd made legitimateuse of something that inspired him.

In April 1992 the Federal Appeals Court in Manhattan ruled that the sculpture was an unlawful copying and that Rogers was entitled to monetary compensation, perhaps even treble damages.