Legality of distributing sampled synths

[fmr]

I have a product called 'Oscillosine' (you may have it - part of the Music Laboratory Machines series)...

It uses sine waves I sampled. "Sine waves - how are they copyrightable?" I hear you ask. Fair enough but...

I worked with someone in the US who has vintage valve test oscillators from the 40s and 50s. He and I worked hard sampling those crusty old buggers with all their foibles and deformities, sampling them in tune across the keyboatd range, etc., and I paid him for the privilege of using up a lot of his valuable time and the equipment he had spent money on and his expertise with it.

I have an MKS-80, and if I ever sample it's internal waves

FYI, and with respect to Stephen's overall point, the MKS-80 does not have any "internal waves" as it is a completely analog synthesizer. You are free to sample it to your heart's content. There is no need to give away your samples, sell them for whatever you like. If you owned, or had access to, the same lab machines that Stephen used for Oscillosine, then you could sample those as well; that's very different from sampling his product, or anyone's MKS-80 samples.

Oh yeah, it has. They are not SAMPLED WAVES, but they are waves, nevertheless. They are produced by voltage controlled oscillators, the MKS-80 VCOs, so they are MKS-80 waves. And I am aware I can sample them - what I said is that I wouldn't consider those recordings as something I have special rights on. But I think I stated that clearly in my last post

[deastman]

If an arrangement of lights is a work of art, and any "sample" of it is a derivative work, then why isn't an arrangement of circuit elements also a "work of art" and, hence, any sample also a derivative work?


It's a serious question, what is the legal mechanism that disallows visual samples of visual machines but allows audio sampling of audio machines?

(Bearing in mind, of course, that we are talking about French law and U.S. law in the same breath)

Keep in mind that I'm not a copyright attorney. For that matter, I'm a little dubious about the French ruling that the lights on the Eiffel Tower are a work of art, but that is their current status.

Comparing the lights to a circuit board is opening another huge can of worms. The copyright and patent protections afforded to electronic circuit designs are confusing at best. The board layout, schematics, physical board construction, and screened artwork all fall under different categories, and not all are protected in the same way. If you want to learn more, a quick Google search will reveal volumes of discussion and debate.

That topic aside, what concerns us is the protection afforded to the creator of an original work of art. The law on this is well established, both for sound recordings and photography.

[chj]

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea that you can sample an oscillator but as soon as you do, that sample becomes a protected work of art.

The law says nothing about it being a 'work of art'. The law says someone else can't distribute it without your permission. But if it's a run of the mill sine wave, yes your recording is protected, but who cares? Because any of us can reproduce, record and distribute the same exact thing with no problem. It's not so hard to understand.

It's a serious question, what is the legal mechanism that disallows visual samples of visual machines but allows audio sampling of audio machines?

The sampling of an audio machine is never quite the same twice. I can sustain it longer, play it at different pitches, play it at lower velocity. I can record it with different microphones, at different distances, etc. An audio machine's sound is not 'fixed'. The same instrument (aka audio machine), played by different musicians, will always sound different.

A painting is fixed. It does not change. It is a discrete and identifiable entity. Any photographic 'sample' of that painting can be attributed to the original painting.

Same thing with an audio sample. Your protected recording is fixed. By the act of recording it, YOU FIXED IT TO A SINGULAR STATE. It is a discrete and identifiable entity. If you can prove someone else created a sound from your original recording, it is protected.

That's why Harley Davidson failed in their attempt to copyright the 'Harley Davidson sound'. It is not fixed. I can make an infinite number of variations of the 'Harley' sound with the same motorcycle.

Again, stop looking for ideological reasons people. The reason is legal efficiency. If it's fixed, it's definitive, the courts can set a hard and fast rule to make their life easier.

Don't bother commenting that a 'fixed' sample can be altered, we all know that. Altering a sample makes it harder to prove, but the hard and fast rule can still stand. If you used someone else's sample, it's infringement.

[hollowsun]

A case in point: it is legal to take and distribute pictures of the Eiffel Tower shot during the day. It is not legal to take and distribute a picture of the Eiffel Tower when it is lit up at night, because the lighting is a work of art, and the artist who created that work holds the copyright.

Hmmm...

I think that may be something of an urban myth (and a red herring within this discussion). More likely is that some Parisian council electrical contractors were told where to put the lights by their boss.

If it was illegal to photograph the Eiffel Tower by night, hundreds of thousands of Japanese tourists (assuming they haven't succumbed to 'Paris Syndrome') would be in contravention!

Cheers,



Stephen

[chj]

I looked up the Eiffel tower lights thing. Silly policy, but apparently true. This is an exception, not the rule. Certainly a red herring in this discussion. But just like samples, it's not illegal to photograph the tower at night, it's just illegal to distribute them.

The tower and its representations have long been in the public domain. However, a French court ruled, in June 1990, that a special lighting display on the tower in 1989, for the tower's 100th anniversary, was an "original visual creation" protected by copyright. The Court of Cassation, France's judicial court of last resort, upheld the ruling in March 1992. The Société d'exploitation de la tour Eiffel (SETE) now considers any illumination of the tower to be under copyright. As a result, it is no longer legal to publish contemporary photographs of the tower at night without permission in France and some other countries.

The imposition of copyright has been controversial. The Director of Documentation for what was then the Société nouvelle d'exploitation de la tour Eiffel (SNTE), Stéphane Dieu, commented in January 2005, "It is really just a way to manage commercial use of the image, so that it isn't used in ways we don't approve."

[ghettosynth]

...

[hollowsun]

The law says nothing about it being a 'work of art'.

Exactly. And I don't consider my multi-sampled, vintage sine wave to be a 'work of art' (even though it clearly is, of course ).

What international copyright law does is protect my endeavours and investment and whatever 'creativity' that may or may not have gone into creating those sine wave samples such that people can't just take my 'work' and exploit it to their own advantage.

And by 'advantage', I don't necessarily mean commercial gain through selling it but just getting some 'net love' for making it available as a freebie - that is 'advantage'.

It's also 'unfair competition'. That is, I have invested heavily to record those sine wave samples and have to recoup costs of that investment through sales...

And along comes someone who just gives it away on RapidShare for free!

Both are prosecutable. How do I know this? I learnt it from a lawyer who specialises in international copyright law because I, as a developer, need to know this stuff ... so I paid him for his advice).

But the point is it doesn't matter one jot (in the eyes of the law) what the actual sound is - it could be a sine wave or it could be a unique sample taken from the Hollow Sun 1930s Novachord (*) or it could be the string section of the London Symphony Orchestra recorded at a session I arranged in Abbey Road at a cost of £100,000...

Or it could be one of my botty burps recorded on a Zoom H4!!

Either way, it doesn't matter - they are MY recordings/samples and MY copyright and it's up to ME to choose how they can be used and exploited - it is not for anyone else to decide that at their whim.

If anyone wants to use any of this stuff to sell/give away, all they have to do is ask me - I may or may not give my permission, I may or may not ask for a fee. If I refuse permission or ask for a fee that's considered unacceptable, ermmm ... tuff sh!t! It's MY copyright and *I* will decide how it's used, not someone with a bizarre sense of 'mummy, it's not fair copyleft' entitlement.

(*) The Novachord's a good case in point...

The Novachord is an extremely rare valve synthesiser made in the late 1930s by Laurens Hammond, he of C/B3 organ fame. Very few working models remain (only 1,000 were ever made). Ours was imported from the US at enormous cost. Now, bearing in mind that it weighs 1/4 of a ton, you can imagine the cost ... and this is before you factor in the custom packaging that had to be built to ship it safely.

But it arrives and it doesn't work. The power supply is completely burnt out. But you can't just pop to Maplins for a replacement - a company had to be found to custom wind transformers to the exact specification of the original. So that was done (not cheap) and it was installed but there were still problems - some components in the intricate voice circuitry had failed.

But those components don't exist any more so they had to be very carefully rebuilt by hand. And some of them give off toxic fumes when opened so care had to be taken on health and safety grounds.

Anyway, after months of painstaking renovation, the beast lives and bit by bit, after tracking down schematics, contacting patent offices, etc., in the US to dig out (and sometimes pay for) obscure but important details, etc., the thing is beginning to sound good but still needs a lot of adjustment - 150 valves, over 1,000 capacitors and miles of hand sewn wiring looms need attention. Eventually, it's working.

Samples are taken which, apart from the usual trimming, etc. need looping... and they are buggers! The slightly unstable nature of the waveforms combined with the random electro-mechanical nature of the vibrato mechanism makes them a right bastard to loop. But after a few months of that, they're done. And now they need to be mapped and turned into programs that are playable.

But to really capture/enhance that sound, we need to invoke Kontakt's filters AND they need to be scripted to make them usable ... and graphics need to be designed to make the product attractive.

Whatever, eventually it is done, the website has to be updated to include it (which requires tons of graphics to be done and body text written to sell the thing) and processes have to be put in place to for people to buy it.

It is released.

Now... hands up anyone who thinks they are entitled to just sample all that work on a lazy Saturday afternoon (or extract the raw WAVs) and just give it away or sell it or use it in a wavetable to give away!!

Ok - that's an independent sound library for Kontakt....

IT DOESN'T MATTER....

It applies equally to the contents of a ROMpler's, ermmmm, ROM! The exact same principles apply!

Cheers,


Stephen

[deastman]

It is released.

I had never actually checked out your Novachord library before. I'm listening to the demos right now, and all I can say its that its going straight to the top of my list of libraries to buy.

[jonahs]

It's funny that romplers using (legal) samples of analog synths helped to put analog synth makers out of business. Instead of better synths we get better romplers every year! And now that computer synths are up to snuff they face competition from presets(the rompler that never dies!).

The Eiffel tower ruling is disgusting. Any work in the public space should not have tyranny over people. I feel the same way about audio from radio or ads that enters my ears without my consent. It's your right and almost duty as a human to process and contextualize the world as you see fit.

Sampling sample libraries and the like is a different story. I mean, what hollow sun does is nearly historic and certainly educational... they should be getting a grant to do this. (didn't they used to be free ages ago?)

[ghettosynth]

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[chj]

The visual sampling of the lights on the eifel tower is as variable from the perspective of it being a machine ... A light show with either solid state (LEDs) or incandescent bulbs will also have a temperature variation, perhaps ever so slight and barely perceptible, but a variation nonetheless ... A light show is not a painting.

That's ridiculous, you are WAY overthinking it. Plus you're trying to use a very weird and unusual case to make an argument. That Eiffel Tower ruling flies in the face of many different types of laws. Things like the Statue of Liberty, Great Wall of China, etc. are usually in the public domain. But that area of law and the Eiffel Tower exception have nothing to do with this thread.

In one case, the aural machine, it appears that one can sample a machine. In another case, the visual machine, it seems that one cannot.

What do you mean? Of course you can. A much better example than that strange Eiffel Tower ruling would be a stage lighting system (a 'visual machine'.) Put on a light show in a specific arrangement and it is absolutely protectable. If someone else tried to argue their light show used the same exact arrangement, but was different because of the temperature variations in the lightbulbs, they'd lose quickly.

But like a musical instrument, that same stage lighting machine, can be used in an infinite number of ways. The same way a musician might recognize the 'sound' of a Gibson guitar, a lighting technician would easily recognize the 'look' of the stage lighting system. But that 'look' is not protectable. The specific light show you put together is.

Furthermore you absolutely can 'sample' a visual machine. Film your light show. Just like an audio sample, your film is protectable under copyright. If another artist simply projects your film for their own light show, you can sue them. If another artist Photoshops your film for their own light show, you can sue them.

[deastman]

While the Eiffel Tower ruling is strange, I was simply trying to illustrate the point that, contrary to what had previously been claimed, it is not legal to distribute photographs of someone's artistic creation. Just like you can't distribute a "transformed" version of someone's samples. Photographs are no different.

And since we're going down the rat hole of claiming that a work of art is not allowed to fluctuate in appearance due to temperature variations... the pigments used to create paintings fade over time, but that doesn't mean you can sell prints of someones paintings without their permission. Fluctuating color temperatures, fading pigments, pitch-shifting a sample... none of that has any bearing on the rule of law.

[ghettosynth]

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[sorohanro]

Not that it's necessary, but I feel like saying some things:

Together with my wife we sell stock audio and photos. Most of the market places (actually all I've seen so far)forbid selling photos of historical buildings or monuments. Eiffel tower is just one of the most popular examples of what you should NOT upload there.

Anyway, somehow this all discussion seems useless.
People who understand law and who actually worked in the field and had to deal with this aspect try to pour some reason. On the other side you have trolls cutting in four every word, fighting over grammar and generally speaking, trolling without actually knowing any law or regulation.

(Fighting over LEDs or incandescent bulbs when the regulation says clear "DO NOT!". What part is unclear in "DO NOT" ?
If you sample a instrument = ok,
if you sample a recording = not ok, you need permission.
Doesn't matter if the recording is on a vinyl disk, CD, radio show or a rompler bank, it is a recording.)

[chj]

you didn't seem to get my point.

OK, I get your point, maybe fixed was the wrong word. Discrete and identifiable may have been the better phrases to concentrate on. In this respect, visual machines absolutely follow the same pattern as audio machines. I'll go back to your original statement.

If an arrangement of lights is a work of art, and any "sample" of it is a derivative work, then why isn't an arrangement of circuit elements also a "work of art" and, hence, any sample also a derivative work?

It's a serious question, what is the legal mechanism that disallows visual samples of visual machines but allows audio sampling of audio machines?

Your analogies don't really follow. You're saying the 'arrangement of circuit elements' in an audio instrument should be protectable. The analogy for Eiffel Tower case would be the circuits/wiring of the lights.

What is protected in the Eiffel Tower case is not the circuits, wiring, of the lights, it's the artistic visual arrangement. By analogy in music instruments, the audio machine's circuits/wiring are not covered by copyright, but an artistic audio arrangement (i.e. a song) made with that instrument is.

You can absolutely sample the 'visual machines' in the Eiffel Tower case. Photograph the same lightbulbs they used all you want. But once they are in an artistic arrangement, you can't take a photo and redistribute it. Likewise, you can sample a synth all you want, but you can't record someone playing that synth at a gig and redistribute it. There would be no sampling laws involved, but you're redistributing their work of art. See, same principles in both music and visual art.

The analogy for audio samples would be visual photos or film. You can't just photoshop someone else's picture and call it your own. Again, same principles in both music and visual art.