KVR Audio

arkmabat · Post by **arkmabat** » Mon Aug 10, 2015 12:37 pm

It bills itself as 700+ one-shots ripped from old, vintage (copyrighted?) vinyls, but then give them their own licence: "All Sounds and Samples are licensed as Royalty-Free for you to use in your commercial productions or even for DJ/Remix purposes."

arkmabat · Post by **arkmabat** » Mon Aug 10, 2015 12:47 pm

In Germany it is legal but not in the USA.

Edit: legal to sample and sell previously copyrighted one-shots. It would seem that is the case.

thecontrolcentre · Post by **thecontrolcentre** » Mon Aug 10, 2015 1:08 pm

arkmabat wrote:In Germany it is legal but not in the USA.

Seems pricey to me at £60 ... especially if there's issues about copyright of the sounds .

loachm · Post by **loachm** » Mon Aug 10, 2015 6:03 pm

arkmabat wrote:In Germany it is legal but not in the USA.

Edit: legal to sample and sell previously copyrighted one-shots. It would seem that is the case.

...I think, it's more like that there isn't a big lobby behind it that's taking legal actions against it and you might get away with certain things, but I don't think you can say it's legal. Thaat would open some other doors I can't believe would exists. This, however, is just an opinion and I'd be interested to know what it's actually like...

Dasheesh · Post by **Dasheesh** » Mon Aug 10, 2015 7:59 pm

Depends on the lawyer.

Seriously, between the lawyers and the crackers its anarchy and you are pretty much on the honor system now. That's the reason I stopped posting music on line some number of years ago. As soon as I hit the upload button I can feel the rippers man, I can feel them. 90% of the world has gone to some kind of sample based instrument at this point so I'm having to either adapt my views of right and wrong at break neck speed or stand back and not get involved at all. The only reasons I get online are to check for updates and to see what's available now. Nobody's listening anymore anyway. SO good luck with that, I'm am interested in seeing what the popular consensus is on this. Just so I can feel like I'm keeping up.

ShawnG · Post by **ShawnG** » Mon Aug 10, 2015 10:49 pm

Im no lawyer. But a one shot is removed from any musical context, would believe it would be different than sampling a loop, which contains an actual rythym? Would possibly fall into fair use, certainly wouldnt violate any songwriting copyrights. The only thing it might violate is the recording copyright, and a one shot might be not enough of a sample to be considered to be a material copy, particularly if it is re processed by the sample pack maker.

chaosWyrM · Post by **chaosWyrM** » Tue Aug 11, 2015 5:41 am

when are people going to get this straight?

"is it legal?" is an inappropriate question.

can you be sued for using it? no.

can they be sued for selling it? maybe.

either way..its not "illegal".

drunken jesus · Post by **drunken jesus** » Tue Aug 11, 2015 6:46 am

chaosWyrM wrote:when are people going to get this straight?

"is it legal?" is an inappropriate question.

can you be sued for using it? no.

can they be sued for selling it? maybe.

either way..its not "illegal".

tbh I dunno if your first answer is correct, this product is likely from people that don't have the highest work ethic since it seems they didn't actually produce any of the content so it's very likely that a lot of the "one shots" are from different sections of the same tracks so you theoretically could get sued

but in the grand scheme of things a cease and desist letter is more likely than legal action right off the bat and even then unless you're lifting a significant portion of a track to get noticed for sampling you have to have a pretty popular record to attract legal action

regardless of all that I'd never give money to shady sleazeballs like this who just re-sell portions of other peoples work, it doesn't seem to happen much with instrument parts but with drums its very common

if you want some sounds like this, the best way to do things would be to take some old soul/funk/jazz standard midi/scores and try to recreate the track then chop one shots manually and add distortion/vinyl/tape effects to taste not really much more work and you have a lot more flexibility

fluffy_little_something · Tue Aug 11, 2015 7:13 pm

arkmabat wrote:In Germany it is legal but not in the USA.

Odd, at the same time Youtube is all but dead in Germany because of copyright battles...

arkmabat · Post by **arkmabat** » Wed Aug 12, 2015 9:31 am

If the sample is short enough, by German law it is legal AFAIK.

Lotuzia · Post by **Lotuzia** » Wed Aug 12, 2015 9:39 am

arkmabat wrote:In Germany it is legal but not in the USA.

Edit: legal to sample and sell previously copyrighted one-shots. It would seem that is the case.

Not legal in Frane either.

Theres a length concern for copyright in France but it is only for composition and music writing ( ie notes, melodies, arrangements etc) For other copyrighted material, owner(s) just have to provide a proof.

SampleScience · Post by **SampleScience** » Wed Aug 12, 2015 5:42 pm

Legal or not, it seems to be common practice for some hiphop plugin developers. DopeVST with their Beat Machine instrument, entirely base on sampled vinyl samples, is being distributed by the PluginBoutique. So I guess it's legit...

Dasheesh · Post by **Dasheesh** » Wed Aug 12, 2015 5:56 pm

I'm pretty sure you can use a certain amount of time of sampled material in the U.S. without being harassed. I think television commercials do it all the time. I think it's like 6-7 seconds, at least it used to be. But to license those samples and copyright them as your own and make money off them? And now you are talking about invalidating the entire genre of hip hop from the 80's on. It's a sticky and gooey cess pool of lawyer copy right laws and individual morals we are talking about here. It depends on what they want to go after and then how they want to go after it because every instance will be treated differently. The question is THIS product legal? I don't know. hahahaha.

Dasheesh · Post by **Dasheesh** » Wed Aug 12, 2015 6:02 pm

I had to come back and say ... you guys are dragging me down a dark endless drain with this one, I will have to say, If it's been copyrighted and/or it's been licensed by law, then the law saw fit to make it legal right? that's that.

teempee · Post by **teempee** » Wed Aug 12, 2015 9:07 pm

It doesn't matter. If you feel that taking a kick drum from a record without paying royalties is wrong, then don't do it. It's your decision.

I think recreating "vinylish" samples for "legal reasons" is the silliest way of wasting resources, but if you'd rather go that route then there's a lot to choose from.

drunken jesus wrote:regardless of all that I'd never give money to shady sleazeballs like this who just re-sell portions of other peoples work, it doesn't seem to happen much with instrument parts but with drums its very common

Digging, recording and processing samples takes a lot of work and the records and necessary equipment cost money too. For the copyright holder there's no marginal cost at all. Licensing hundreds of samples for a £60 sample pack isn't feasible in real life, but let's say that it was an easy automated process. What do you think would be a fair split between the copyright holder and the sample pack producer, so that the latter wouldn't count as a shady sleazeball?

Is Boom Bap legal?