Legal to sell Synth Patches?

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Last edited by DarylWise on Sat Mar 14, 2015 11:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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First, it is almost certainly not legal to sample either the JV or the XV without permission from Roland. Second, you are almost certainly not going to get that permission. Roland is not at all forgiving or friendly about this and you should probably consider it a non-starter.

Now, the same probably holds for the MKS-20 because it is a digital synth based on samples. That said, since it was released before 1989, there is some possibility that the ROMS do not meet the standards for copyright protection of the time. Roland recently lost a round in a battle regarding the MT-32 ROMs because they 1) did not contain the correct copyright notice, and 2) Roland could not find the documentation relating to registration. To even begin down this route you would need to be able to examine the ROM images to see if they are in a similar situation. It's unlikely, and would most certainly involve lawyers. The MT-32 case wasn't just someone trying to make a sample library but a fairly well supported arcade emulation open source software project.

I have seen other sample libraries flying under the radar, that doesn't mean that they're legal. Without more detailed analysis and discussion, you can probably reasonably conclude that anything that is sample based cannot be sampled without permission.

YMMV.

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Last edited by DarylWise on Sat Mar 14, 2015 11:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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DarylWise wrote:Well thanks for the frank no BS answer lol. Although, whether you agree or not, I do believe it is legal to sample the JVs or XVs for personal use, but the issues arise when you consider distributing them and selling. On the issue of the MKS-20, I'll await Roland's reply with that. Thanks for the help! :)
Let us know the answer, I'm, for one, curious about the answer.

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Sampling for personal use... That means you own the instrument and thus can record it and sample it and use in your music. Because that is what a musical instrument is for.

Selling and also giving away the half-products of above scenario is another thing. :uhuhuh: And it's true the lawyers at Roland take their jobs extremely serious.
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