Prophet VS sounds with Zebra?

[pdxindy]

They both have better lawyers than me, they seemed happy to use them.

Did they use them? or just talk about using them... threats are easy and often gain compliance

[Kriminal]

I wasnt going to waste hundreds of hours to find out

[EvilDragon]

I know a lot of live players here who sampled Motif brass and play them through their E-MU rack samplers... And they exchange those samples between each other. Nobody got sued.

[Ch00rD]

changing the rate/depth still results in the same sample....

Yet one thing is copyrighted, the other isn't. Raw waveform data in waveform ROM is, same data played back by synthesizer isn't.

..and that varies company to company by the looks of it.

Which company says otherwise, and why?

While I am very much interested (if only for academic discussion) to hear of any opinions by companies involved in such matters, imho it would be much more interesting to hear of the opinion of legal scholars and especially *judges* (in important jurisdictions like Germany). Because companies tend to say lots of things which may serve their private interest, but may not be strictly true; judgements by courts, on the other hand, do have authority (at least in their particular jurisdiction).

It should be noted that the application of copyright law to subject matter which is (at least arguably) very much factual information, much like mathematic algorithms or listings of telephone numbers, is inherently problematic, to say the very least (the Feist case may be illustrative: until then, in the US it was quite common - but *completely wrong* - to believe that factual data such as telephone number listings is protectable under copyright law). Imho protection of single cycle waveforms by traditional copyright law is silly; but it makes a lot of sense to protect such waveforms under database law (e.g. Database Directive 96/9/EC). The relevant legal question here should not be whether waveforms stored in a synth are original works of art (i.e. passing the test for copyrightable subject matter), but if "there has been qualitatively and/or quantitatively a substantial investment in either the obtaining, verification or presentation of the contents."

If I had sufficient commercial interest in re-using waveforms extracted from synths produced before 1996 in a product, I think I'd take my chances.

They both have better lawyers than me, they seemed happy to use them.

Did they use them? or just talk about using them... threats are easy and often gain compliance

I can't say the same as Kriminal. I have dealt with Roland's (US) lawyers a few times as well regarding matters of intellectual property, and was totally unimpressed with their legal arguments. In my (educated) opinion, they were making the most ridiculous claims (of course systematically in Roland's favour), which had a snowball's chance in hell of standing up to legal scrutiny in a court of law. The kind of stuff that would definitely make you flunk an oral exam on copyright law. Basically, the only argument I have heard so far from any Roland representatives that was not bullshit, is that "Roland" is a registered trademark, and as such is protected under trademark law. As pdxindy hints at, most of these corporate lawyer types are merely bluffing most of the time, because that happens to work most of the time (this sad fact also helps explain how entire industries of IP trolling have spawned).

Of course, when things actually get serious enough to end up in a court of law, Roland could very well reconsider their legal representation - they certainly have deep enough pockets to afford themselves some very good lawyers. (But, sympathetic indie devs just might get even better ones, for free. )

[Sendy]

If you really want to follow the true spirit of the law:

1 - go to work, rent a video on the way home, go to bed early so you can work more tomorrow
2 - never do anything creative. you'll stumble into an IP problem and be fleeced.
3 - watch more TV.
4 - fear the police and, well, everything. especially foreigners.
5 - enjoy your freedom