Timbaland Illegally Samples music from obscure file format


Well, I’m not sure if Timbaland did it purposely or if he was under the impression that he had permission, but he took music for Nelly Furtado’s song “Do It”. The sampled song is in the MOD format, popular in the early 1990s electronic BBS music scene. Currently it has a pretty decent underground following, as you can see at modarchive.org. You can see the MOD artist’s information here. And you can see some more detailed information at this forum. If you listen to the original file and then the background at the beginning of the Nelly song it is extremely obvious that they are the same song. I hope that Tempest (Janne Suni) gets the compensation he deserves. Tempest did not license his music under a permissive license so if the song makes money, he deserves it. After all, it was his creative genius that came up with the song. Obviously, it was good enough if Timbaland wanted to use it.

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