Basically there are several "types" of sampling in music.

The first one is simply sampling instruments. This can be considered the same as using the same words as another author. This is more about the technical process of recording such instruments than it is about the composition. No problem here, I think.

The second one is sampling musical phrases. A drumloop or a guitar-riff or so. Once again, this is quite a lot about the recording-aspect and just a little bit about the composition. Even though there are incredible many possibilities in combining tones and rhythms, a lot of similarities can be pointed out, not in the least place since music is influenced heavily by fashion and culture. This could be compared to using well-known phrases from literature (to be or not to be?:-)).

And then there's the sampling of lyrics. This is a bit more complex; an important aspect of this is the voice of the singer, which is something very personal. This aspect can be compared (a little bit) to the font of a book. Reusing such fonts is commonly accepted, but if you'd imitate a writers handwriting, this becomes something else entirely.

In general, the comparison is hard to make. Music is a sort of three-dimensional; many phrases play at the same time, but also they repeat, often in complex ways. Also, such phrases can be transposed in frequency. It's a composition of layers. Literature is not; it is - by definition - one-dimensional. Linear. Also, there is no extensive use of repetition (with the exception of poetry, I will discuss that below). Where in music, one can sample a single layer without capturing the essence of (that part of) of the musical piece, in literature this is not really possible. If one copies an entire paragraph, it's just that: a copy. No reordering, repetition or layering occurs.

And then there's the way we make music. One always uses an instrument created by someone else and that is often played according to certain rules. In this sense, reusing sounds has always been acceptable in music and the rules cause the reusing of phrases to be rather common as well. It's even the way everybody learns how to make music: by copying others. Even the reuse of a "type of sound" is extremely common; that's why we have different musical genres. There are millions of possibilities to combine sound, but we only choose an extremely small subset of them, as determined by our culture, which demands similarities in music. Music that does not copy as least a small aspect of other music is generally not very popular.

Also, music is poetry a lot more like poetry, not prose. When lyrics are involved, it even IS poetry. So there is a rather fine line between some kinds of music an some kinds of literature while an enourmous gap exists between other kinds of music and literature.

More in general, no two forms of reuse can be compared. They're all completely different and the act of reusing has always been allowed until copyright-laws made it illegal sometime in the past two centuries. Therefore, what we're discussing here is a LEGAL and FINANCIAL problem, not a MORAL one. The moral part of this is actually quite simple and extremely hard at the same time: on the one hand, mankind produces art, which is and always has been meant to be spread since such art only has value withing the culture that consumes it and provides feedback. On the other hand, most of us know the feeling (moral is about feeling) when someone copies something you put a lot of work in without giving you credit. Some may also know the proud feeling when you find that a theory or trick you thought up was reused somewhere. So whether credit is given or not, we can often not even explain for our own intellectual property whether reuse of it is morally acceptable. Reusing art can been seen as a compliment or as theft. It is a complex interaction between the original author, the reuser and their audience. Sometimes such reuse is even encouraged (remixing of music, youtube mashups) while sometimes one explicitly attempts to prevent it (DRM).

Obviously these laws have made our society as it is today; it has enabled us to make money from "intellectual property". I think most slashdotters today do exactly that: make money of their intellectual property. In that sense, even though these laws sometimes obstruct the natural process of making art, they have their use in practice. Therefore, I think all such reuse-cases should be judged from a practical perspective. In music, the art of reusing takes many forms, some of which are brilliant, some of which merely show a lack of creativity and some are just plain plagiarism. In literature, this is the same. The result can be brilliant or it can border on theft. Therefore, we should judge all of them on their own merits. No two instances can be compared and therefore there is no way to capture this in a law. Intellectual Property laws will therefore always be too broad, but we cannot do without them anymore.

So, without reading the work we're discussing here and extensively investigating the sources of the copies, it is impossible to say something about it. Are those parts just copies? Or is there a brilliant mathematical or chronological pattern in them? Or maybe a political statement by combining complete opposites into a logical story? I don't know, but I'm pretty sure it matters. Sometimes understanding art requires extensive investigation.

So, please, don't even attempt to compare musical sampling to the copying of written words. It makes no sense. However, it is something typically seen on slashdot and elsewhere were you'll find minds that think too much: the futile attempt to provide order in our chaotic world.

Just because it's public doesn't mean it's ok to broadcast it. This blog gives a good example: If you're having an argument with your mate in public, you'd stop very fast if tv cameras show up. Privacy is really about intent & control than about the public/private distinction, which only approximates intent.