[microsound] mashups made legal?

[Graham Miller <grahammiller@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9071-2489166,00.html

from the article:

While getting tough on infringement of the rules, the report also  
proposes a liberalisation to help the creative industries, arguing  
that at least two of the exciting developments in the American music  
and business world might have happened in Britain.

The report suggests that exemptions to copyright law should be  
allowed for “transformative works”. This would permit the use of  
copyright material in new and creative ways, so long as it did not  
detract from the value of that material or offend artistic integrity.  
It calls on the EU to amend the law to allow for that exception.

It would allow “rappers” and other creators to rework old material.  
The rise of hip-hop in the US has been attributed to that relaxation.

Similarly, the existence of the exemption in America was cited by  
Google to the Gowers report as one of the reasons that search engines  
started there rather than in Britain. It allowed them to “cache” the  
content of other websites without breaching copyright.