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Anthony Falzone at Slate writes an article about the legal defenses of sampling and questions why Diddy has not done more to defend it under the fair use doctrine.

Combs is not alone in his failure to bring fair use to the court's attention. Although the Beastie Boys successfully defended their right to sample a three-note flute sequence in one of their songs a few years back, they too failed to pursue the fair-use defense in that case.

Why would Combs, one of the biggest names in hip-hop, fail to defend sampling? Maybe it was simply inadvertence. Maybe it was a strategic decision (albeit a very bad one, as it turned out). Or maybe it was more calculating. Combs and his label can afford to pay for samples. Many aspiring artists and their fledgling labels—the next generation of would-be moguls hungry to unseat Diddy—cannot. Maybe Diddy cares more about the benefit of reduced competition than defending the work of the artist and the technique that helped create his empire. Tell us, Diddy, what were you thinking?

It's an interesting read, but I have one key problem with the assertion: Diddy is almost certainly going on the advice of his attorneys. He's not the attorney and he's not making assertions regarding copyright laws or fair use - that is how for attorneys. So, if you want to fault someone for this, I think the fault has to lie there as they decided what their legal strategy was and it didn't include fair use.