In a statement, a person speaking for Rhino, a subsidiary of Warner Music Group that deals with the label’s back catalog, said: “De La Soul is one of hip-hop’s seminal acts, and we’d love for their music to reach audiences on digital platforms around the world, but we don’t believe it is possible to clear all of the samples for digital use, and we wouldn’t want to release the albums other than in their complete, original forms. We understand this is very frustrating for the artists and the fans; it is frustrating for us, too.”  A number of people interviewed say the legal phrase “now known or hereafter discovered” may determine De La Soul’s digital future. It ensures that samples cleared in the past are legal for use on streaming services and for digital music retailers.  Michelle Bayer, who handles De La Soul’s publishing administration, said that phrase’s potential absence on the group’s contracts for samples could complicate matters for Warner Music. (Warner Music would not provide details about the sample contracts.)  “It’s tricky because someone could deny the sample use now, or negotiate high upfront advances, maybe even higher percentage or royalty than was originally negotiated, which lessens what the label can earn,” she said. “Before, people were like, ‘Oh yeah, whatever you want to do, we don’t even know what you’re talking about, sampling, who cares, whatever.’ Now, it’s like, ‘Wow, that’s a big piece of real estate.’”  Ms. Bayer added that people are still filing copyright claims on samples from De La Soul’s early records.  “Two songs from the first album just came up that had never come up before,” Ms. Bayer said. “I think when Warner got the catalog, I think people started making claims, people were kind of coming out of the woodwork going, ‘Oh, well now it’s a major label involved, and we can possibly get more from them than we might have gotten from an independent label like Tommy Boy.’”  But others, including Paul Huston, the producer known as Prince Paul, who worked closely with the group on its first three albums, say they did their due diligence. “Sampling was obviously new, but we were told, ‘Hey, here’s some sample-clearance forms — you have to fill these out,’” Mr. Huston said, adding that Tommy Boy became much more careful after the success of “3 Feet High and Rising.” “It got to the point where it was like, ‘What is that scratch!?’”  Tom Silverman, the founder of Tommy Boy Records — which also put out albums by Digital Underground and Queen Latifah — said that making the group’s catalog available digitally would not be difficult, considering that Warner Music should know the copyright holders who have been receiving royalties for the physical sales of the records.  Mr. Silverman said: “Cutting a deal, you would think, to give them more money, shouldn’t be that hard, especially if you’re fair and logical and say, ‘Let me pay you the same percentage that we’ve always paid you on physical on digital, too, so you can make that much money.’ So it doesn’t really make a lot of sense that they’ve haven’t even tried.”  For De La Soul, Warner Music and the owners of the copyrighted samples, the catalog’s absence from digital media can be felt in an absence of income. That money would have come from downloads (the iTunes Music Store opened in 2003); streaming; ringtones (Mr. Silverman points out the group’s 1991 single “Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey)” as a potential ringtone windfall); and deals with television, movies and advertisers.  The cultural loss, said Ahmir Thompson, the Roots drummer known as Questlove, is just as significant.  “Unless Warner’s illustrious history is so disposable that they can let one or two classics just fall by the wayside,” Mr. Thompson said, “and live in this sort of storied folklore — I mean, ‘3 Feet High and Rising’ is very much in danger of being the classic tree that fell in the forest that was once given high praise and now is just a stump.”  Lonnie Lynn, the rapper known as Common who has appeared on De La Soul albums, said the lack of a digital presence is a blow to available hip-hop history. “It’s obviously disappointing, because I feel like De La is timeless music, and I feel like there’s a 16-year-old that would find De La and be like, ‘Aw, man, that’s cool.’”  The group says it volunteered to bear the administrative burden of making the catalog available but that Warner Music was not interested.  Mr. Jolicoeur acknowledges the potential task Warner faces is “a lot of work,” but Mr. Mason argues the time to do that work is now. “When I try my best to tap into the psyche of record execs and how they think, they know there’s some value — that’s why they’re not letting go,” he said. “But on this side of the fence, you’re like, ‘I’d appreciate you don’t wait until one of us die to do this.’ Can I enjoy some of the fruits of my own labor, while I’m alive? Obviously, we’re in the music industry — more people are more valuable dead than alive, you know? Can we change that landscape?”  “It really financially hurts these guys,” Ms. Mannis-Gardner said. “If Warners won’t license it, perhaps they could sell it back to the band members.”  Mr. Huston said that several independent labels had approached him about releasing these records but that interest fizzles when he directs them to Warner Music.  “It’s like almost when you’re a kid and somebody says, ‘Hey, can I borrow your bike?’” he said, laughing. “And it’s like, ‘I don’t know, my mom won’t let me; you can ask my mom,’ and they go: ‘Ohhh, that’s all right. I don’t need to borrow it.’”  Mr. Silverman, who still runs Tommy Boy, hopes to obtain his label’s entire back catalog from Warner Music, and making De La Soul’s disputed albums available digitally is the first thing he said he would do. “They’ll be making a lot more money when that stuff becomes available,” he said. “Not the download part, the streaming part. It’s like they missed the entire era of downloads.”  Given the success of its Kickstarter campaign, De La Soul hasn’t ruled out turning to crowdfunding to free its catalog.  “Maybe that’s what’s next,” Mr. Jolicoeur said. “This music has to be addressed and released. It has to. When? We’ll see. But somewhere it’s going to happen.”  A version of this article appears in print on August 14, 2016, on page AR14 of the New York edition with the headline: A Hip-Hop Legacy Stuck in Digital Limbo. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
The hip-hop pioneers have their first new album in 12 years, “And the Anonymous Nobody.” But if you want to hear their early work, look for CDs, vinyl and cassettes.