What is the law behind sampling?

Yo!

I've been through google and other sites to find some good explanation of sampling a song. I still haven't found a good explanation of the law behind sampling. What is legal, and what is illegal. The reason behind this is that I'm working on producing beats, and I'm aware of plagiarising. I'm an oldschool guy, so I keep it real as in Real Hip Hop 90's/Underground for life.

Cheers and thanks. Keep it real !

sampling is legal as long as you clear the sample with the legal ownerfat_rob

That means I need to make a contract with the owner of the song? But, what if the owner is dead? Take Mozart for instance. 

[QUOTE="fat_rob"]sampling is legal as long as you clear the sample with the legal ownerWelis

That means I need to make a contract with the owner of the song? But, what if the owner is dead? Take Mozart for instance. 

[QUOTE="Welis"]

[QUOTE="fat_rob"]sampling is legal as long as you clear the sample with the legal ownerApocalypse33

That means I need to make a contract with the owner of the song? But, what if the owner is dead? Take Mozart for instance.

What if he wanted to sample Biggie?

[QUOTE="fat_rob"]sampling is legal as long as you clear the sample with the legal ownerWelis

That means I need to make a contract with the owner of the song? But, what if the owner is dead? Take Mozart for instance. 

[QUOTE="Apocalypse33"][QUOTE="Welis"]

[QUOTE="fat_rob"]sampling is legal as long as you clear the sample with the legal ownertmac200913

That means I need to make a contract with the owner of the song? But, what if the owner is dead? Take Mozart for instance.

What if he wanted to sample Biggie?

Probably whoever owns his masters. Puff or his mom most likely. Or a record label...

[QUOTE="Apocalypse33"][QUOTE="Welis"]

[QUOTE="fat_rob"]sampling is legal as long as you clear the sample with the legal ownertmac200913

That means I need to make a contract with the owner of the song? But, what if the owner is dead? Take Mozart for instance.

What if he wanted to sample Biggie?

[QUOTE="tmac200913"][QUOTE="Apocalypse33"][QUOTE="Welis"]

[QUOTE="fat_rob"]sampling is legal as long as you clear the sample with the legal ownerApocalypse33

That means I need to make a contract with the owner of the song? But, what if the owner is dead? Take Mozart for instance.

What if he wanted to sample Biggie?

[QUOTE="Welis"]

[QUOTE="fat_rob"]sampling is legal as long as you clear the sample with the legal ownerToriko42

That means I need to make a contract with the owner of the song? But, what if the owner is dead? Take Mozart for instance. 

This could be wrong, but he'd be sampling modern recordings of their songs so they would most likely be copyright of whoever published them? 

[QUOTE="Welis"]

[QUOTE="fat_rob"]sampling is legal as long as you clear the sample with the legal ownerToriko42

That means I need to make a contract with the owner of the song? But, what if the owner is dead? Take Mozart for instance. 

[QUOTE="Toriko42"][QUOTE="Welis"]

[QUOTE="fat_rob"]sampling is legal as long as you clear the sample with the legal ownerFoolz3h

That means I need to make a contract with the owner of the song? But, what if the owner is dead? Take Mozart for instance. 

This could be wrong, but he'd be sampling modern recordings of their songs so they would most likely be copyright of whoever published them?