Not very exciting news, but I know there are some people who like to see him squirm. Only $500,000? I'm sure that it's only a chip off what is his huge fortune.
Hmmm, I'd really have to hear the two tracks to form an opinion. I think of all the samples and styles of music I listen to and how many of them wouldn't exist in their current forms if artists weren't ripping breakbeats or vocal samples from a less litigious era. I'd like to see Kanye take a few more hits to his ridiculous Jesus complex, but I think I'd be more satisfied with a gay sex scandal or battering a hooker. Can't we all just share our music with the world and be happy? Y'know, in the name of creativity and all that bullshit or sumsuch?
What's a remix, then? And I think the entire Drum and Bass genre would disagree with you. Maybe you don't think that's a valid genre, I don't know. Again, I haven't heard the music in question. I do think there are obvious cases where sampling is doing the work for you, and you may as well call it "theft". But if we're talking about a two-second stab or something similar, then we're making a fuss over nothing.
Sampling does not lack creativity. In other words: sampling was not seen as merely rehashing old sounds, but as an attempt to make new from something old—an artistic strategy as time-honored as creative expression itself. But like Absinthe said, this varies in degree depending on how much and how unmodified the original source material was. Money and fame really perverts the spirit of music. If money had nothing to do with this, then anyone who ripped off a sample in a really cheap way would be seen as a dick and that would be enough. But since people can rip off others work and make huge profit from it, we have to involve laws and it just gets ****ed.
/snort ~~~~ Kanye doesn't do anything right, hahaha. It's about time he got sued for taking somebody else's anything.