Performer\u27s Rights and Digital Sampling under U.S. and Japanese Law

A year or two ago, one of my copyright students called to my attention a problem that seemed to him to pose unique difficulties for the copyright statute. The problem arises because of a technology called digital sampling.\u27 Digital sampling is a new threat to performers\u27 rights that has grown out of the combination of digital recording technology with music synthesizer technology. This threat is a very recent one. Indeed, the digital sampling problem is so new that copyright lawyers haven\u27t yet figured out how to think about it