This article argues that comparing academic citation and hip-hop sampling can help students become better users of sourcework. I contend that sampling and academic writing share a goal of building new work in response to existing sources and that this goal is obscured by lawsuits that reduce sampling to theft by applying to sound a copyright regulation system designed for print. Both sampling and citing seek to build newcompositions byworking from sources, yet academic citation systems preserve textual ownership through attribution while sampling often guards or disguises its sources. These different stances in regard to authorship and ownership belie the values shared by the two systems. |