Authorship and Originality

I've done some poking around on the "Who Sampled" website and haven't really come up with anything specific that is worth describing here. My feeling is that no matter how much digging around on the site I won't find anything new and interesting that I haven't already noticed about what this site does. As far as I can tell, the site mainly focuses on 3 types of sampling: actual audio clips (vocal or melodic) that were "borrowed" from past musical works; audio clips that were "borrowed" from pop culture (film/television/broadcast radio/etc.); and drumbeats, basslines, guitar hooks, etc., that sound very similar to another past work.
I think that this website is pretty great because as it becomes more complete it demonstrates the huge scope of the issue of sampling and borrowing old ideas. Unfortunately, I also feel that this site can never be complete because we can't really point out every single idea that has ever been reused. It would be impossible to us to determine ever single instance of an idea or riff that was inspired by an older artist, or a dramatic scene in a movie, or an interesting relationship between members of a story. It would be (I believe) impossible even to make a list of every audio clip that artists have sampled simply because of the huge variety of artists.
I've mentioned a little in class about my appreciation for Industrial music. The genre relies heavily on samples found in pop culture. One of my favorite KMFDM songs does not have any vocals. The only text in the song is a montage of samples of political leaders, televangelists, commercials for "The Best of Guns!Guns!Guns!" and dialog from a hog hunting TV show. The members of the band could probably never tell you where they got the samples. It probably just isn't important. The words used in the music serve a purpose for the musicians and that's the only thing that matters.
Daphne Keller quotes Thomas Jefferson in her article, "The Musician as a Thief": "...an individual may exclusively possess [an idea] as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone" (Keller 2). The ideas that those political leaders, televangelists, and hog hunters shared in their respective broadcasts were taken by KMFDM and shared in a creative way. Their ideas were not "stolen", they were reproduced. I don't believe you can claim to own an idea, and I also don't believe that artists will ever be able to disassociate themselves from what inspires them.