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maxwell demon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Today, the German Federal Constitutional Court decided that under certain conditions, artistic freedom can take precedence over copyright.

As dw.com reports, [dw.com] the specific case the court was about sampling two seconds of a Kraftwerk song without permission:

The legal dispute originated when electro-pop legends Kraftwerk complained, angered at Pelham "sampling" a two-second segment of the 1977 track "Metall auf Metall" and using it on an endless loop for rapper Sabrina Setlur's song. Initially, Kraftwerk won an injunction from Germany's top criminal court (the BGH) - prompting Pelham to use his only remaining recourse for appeal and to apply for the Constitutional Court to reconsider the verdict.

In particular,

The court ruled that composers can, under certain conditions, incorporate external audio clips into their own music without asking permission and do not have to pay royalties. If the copyright infringement is only "marginal," the court said, then artistic freedom takes precedence over the intellectual property rights of the original musician.

Original Submission