[linux-audio-user] Copyrights on samples

[Christian Henz]

On Mon, Oct 13, 2003 at 09:54:04PM +0100, iriXx wrote:
> actually... i beg to differ.
> 
> you will have a certain element of copyright in your mechanical 
> recording of the piano, but the copyright in the sample still belongs to 
> korg/roland/yamaha etc, who are likely to be quite protective of them. 
>

Roland seems to be indeed, this was on Slashdot some days ago: 

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/11/1833213

> there may, as has been mentioned, be licensing provisions but i'd 
> suggest they'd be highly unlikely to extend to relicensing these samples 
> for redistribution. if they do allow this - then wahey, i think we 
> should all celebrate and start a GPL-distributed sf2 project. but i 
> seriously doubt this would be the case. a proprietary company doesnt 
> spend millions on developing an electric piano or synth for nothing.
> 
> it would be analagious to someone re-recording one of your songs and 
> then claiming that they own the copyright on your song.
> 

Hmm, this analogy doesn't seem right. First of all, the samples in a synth
are of course meant to be redistributed in some way. Also there is a 
difference between 'copyright of a song' and 'copyright of a recording'.

Some rap producers are actually re-recording phrases from songs so they don't
have to go through the hassles of sample-clearing.

There are soundfonts of resampled digital synths already available on sites 
like hammersound, but that doesn't have to mean they are 100% legal of course.

cheers,
Christian