Dots and Loops

"Viewed through the lens of fair use, music sampling should fare well. It tends to be transformative, uses short (often unrecognizable) snippets of the original work, and creates little possibility that the new work will plausibly substitute for the old. At the very least, the fair-use doctrine should play a central role in determining the legality of sampling.
"But in practice, the fair-use defense is almost nowhere to be found in music-sampling cases; it's not even discussed."

Anthony Falzone in Slate asks why hip-hop producers have not defended the use of sampling more strongly.