The label "Frank Barknecht" hathe been affixed to this message,
Sampling in pop was common, when "white men" "sampled" "black men's" music (Bill Haley, Elvis Presley, Stones, Sinatra,...) and it became illegal, when that was tried to turn around (Biz Markie!).
I don't see stealing entire songs as equivalent to sampling. I see sampling as using a few notes or bars of an audio file {that don't actually retain any significant part of the sampled songs structure} mixing it into other "samples" and synthesizing something new from it.
And then MJ bought the Beatles songs...
Go figure...
You really gotta' wonder what he's done with them...