Free Clavinet Sample Kit

[Seus Hawkins]

Hollowsun>> Ahh, I misunderstood(Not a native speaker). Looked sellout up and found "Treachery".

Ok, yes I guess that happens, but hey, there's always be those kind of idiots/people who are down. They could also write and complain about the high prices etc. most people will be overjoyed by the service and understand. They may not write "Hey, I understand" but that's just because it's more logical/given.

Regards

[hollowsun]

Hollowsun>> Ahh, I misunderstood(Not a native speaker). Looked sellout up and found "Treachery".

Ah... I see. Yes - accused of treachery I suppose! Selling out in this context = giving in to commercial interests (as opposed to selling out in the context of not having any product stock left in your shop coz it's all sold out).

They may not write "Hey, I understand"

In fairness, quite a few did that too.

Steve

[hollowsun]

going from some of the info here I would say Fender, Gibson, Marshall, any music manufacturer is owed some pretty large sums of money from using their instruments in commercially released music.

No - it's no problem to play these instruments in your music.

The bone of contention is sampling an instrument and making the sampled version so lifelike that there is little or no incentive to buy the actual instrument and hence damaging sales. Now....

I imagine Steinway, whoever... Gibson, Fender, whoever... are probably realistic enough to realise that however well it's sampled, you'll never re-create actually 'playing' these instruments (especially guitar and others).

But with electronic keyboards (analogue, digital and/or sample-based synths... especially the latter), it is quite easy to thoroughly sample one and end up with an almost perfect copy of the original. If the product you have sampled is current and the manufacturer is trying to make a living out of selling it, if you then give those samples away (or sell them for a fraction of cost of the product you sampled), the manufacturer is understandably gonna get nervous as your sample set could potentially damage (or stop) their sales.

As a result, some manufacturers have chosen to stamp down on anyone who does this. Some impose blanket bans on sampling any of their products - period - whilst some are more pragmatic and only apply restrictions to current products (or predecessors of current products that share the same sounds/technology).

Then there is trademark copyright infringement - if you use the manufacturer's name (i.e. worldwide copyrighted trademark) when you sell or give away your samples, they can (rightly?) come after you for 'exploiting' their trade name and can argue that you are using it to enhance your own reputation (and if the samples are not very good, they could argue that they are damaging their reputation!).

However (and this is where it can get very cloudy).... some manufacturers might not be too bothered because A) your samples don't represent a threat to them and B) you making them available is free advertising for them AND if people like the samples, who knows... they might go out and buy 'the real thing' or another of their products - in this case, your freebies have actually served as a nice little promotional tool for them that has cost them nothing!!

It is a bloody nightmare and not helped by the extreme variations in peoples' attitudes that range from "It is illegal to sample other manufacturers products" to "It's ok to sample and convert anything to SoundFont and propagate it across the internet for free" (as was the attitude on sf2midi.com until recently!).

Of course, there is a middle ground where what you're doing is theoretically and practically not really harmful to anyone but.....

It must be a bloody nightmare for manufacturers too - where do they draw the line?! So... Korg turn a blind eye to you doing your discontinued Oasys PCI card clav samples - they might even appreciate the free advertising and realise that your little clav thing is not really a threat to them.... but then someone samples the crap out of a Triton Extreme, sampling every sound to absolute perfection. He converts them to SoundFont and makes them available for free on any number of sites much to everyone's delight as they ravenously download the sample-set in droves. When Korg clamp down on him, his attorneys (maybe) cite you as a precedent???!!!

Of course, the problem doesn't arise if the samples are only going to be used by yourself (as in Sascha's case) but it's this urge for people to share their samples with the wider sampling community over the internet that's the problem - that's when the trouble starts! It's all well-intentioned, that's for sure but....!!

I bet that none of those people involved in the development of these 'audio Xerox machines' ever imagined these legal/moral conundrums!!!!

I had considered contacting Dan Phillips but frak it, its all too silly, I will release the samples (probably turn out a load of unusable poo anyway).

Ha!

The problem with contacting Dan is that he won't be in a position to approve/authorise it so it will be referred to Japan who will refer it to their attorneys who will possibly (probably) just say "NO!". I dunno tho.

It is a legal minefield and whilst I apologise for raising the issue (and forcing the thread off-topic in places), I hope it's helped raise awareness of the situation as it stands in today's litigious society. Rant against it all you like but....


Steve

[Jaybez]

Steve, thanks for raising the issue. My comments may seem flippant but I am taking what you have to say on board.

My usual working style is to use synths and modular stuff and generate all sounds in "real time" rather than using sample kits so Ive never concerned myself with the issues involved in releasing samples I have made publically, hopefully Im now a little less naive.