(From an article about sampling)
Feature: Stephen Leigh

808 State

"We haven't really seen any money from our chart successes because we've had so many court cases where samples have been caught. With 'The Only Rhyme That Bites' we used a 'Big Country' sample that we thought no one would worry about. We thought, 'What use is that to anybody these days?'. We spent a day getting that sample in and then some old guy from California suddenly wakes up and says 'That's mine'. And that's 40 per cent. Tunes get's another 50 per cent for his rap. That left us with 10 per cent.

"It makes you think twice, but if something crops up, it's a great idea and we can't guarantee it getting clearance, we might risk it. We tried out a David Bowie sample using the guitar off 'Andy Warhol' at double speed. We thought we'd better check it out with the publishers and they wanted 10 grand up front and 40 per cent just for using one bar. So we dropped it. Despite those court cases we haven't used less samples, we've just used less popular ones. We don't think twice about using samples as textures - it's second nature. You can't have a moral stance over using just one chord, that doesn't bother us."