The breaking point of the interview follows:

Negativland's Mark Hosler ["M"]: I wanted to ask you something more about the Zoo TV tour. One thing that wasn't really clear to me- you have a satellite dish so that you can take stuff down live off of various TV transmissions around the world?

The Edge ["E"]: Yeah, essentially the system is, like we've got the big screens on the stage which are the final image that's created. Down by the mixing board we've got a vision mixer which mixes in, blends the images from live cameras, from optical disks, and from live satellite transmissions that are taken in from a dish outside the venue. So the combination of images can be any of those sources. We've also incorporated telecommunications. We've got a telephone onstage that Bono occasionally makes calls from the stage and occasionally calling the White House or ordering pizza or whatever...um, phone sex...

Negativland's Don Joyce ["D"]: So you can kind of sample whatever's out there on the airwaves...

E: Yeah, it's kind of like information central.

M: One thing I'm curious about- there's been more and more controversy over copyright issues and sampling, and I thought that one thing you're doing in the Zoo TV tour is that you were taking these TV broadcasts- copyrighted material that you are then re-broadcasting right there in the venue where people paid for a ticket- and I wondered what you thought about that.

D: And whether you had any problem, whether it ever came up that that was illegal.

E: No, I mean, I asked the question early on- is this going to be a problem?, and apparently it, I don't think there is a problem. I mean, in theory I don't have a problem with sampling. I suppose when a sample becomes just part of another work then it's no problem. If sampling is, you know, stealing an idea and replaying the same idea, changing it very slightly, that's different. We're using the visual and images in a completely different context. If it's a live broadcast, it's like a few seconds at the most. I don't think, in spirit, there's any...

D: So you would say that a fragmentary approach is the way to go.

E: Yeah. You know, like in music terms, we've sampled things, people sample us all the time, you know, I hear the odd U2 drum loop in a dance record or whatever. You know, I don't have any problem with that.

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