It was bound to happen: an 80s instrument

[Numanoid]

So just forget about sampling "You Suffer" by Napalm Death

[Numanoid]

Who's going to buy something you cant use on a record?

Churches, theathers, hobbyists and schools I guess

[beely]

I'm just taking issue with the language that it's implicitly illegal when you do.

I don't think anyone has said it's implicitly illegal, just that the biggest problems come from sound recording copyrights, and trademark/trade dress/implied endorsement problems when you mention products that were sampled or you advertise with company trademarks etc.

The bottom line is, the "proper" way to do it is to gain official permission/licenses, or not do it at all, rather than do it and hope you get away with it, mostly relating to sampling gear that uses sound recordings as a fundamental way they produce sounds. It's often pretty difficult to track down whether copyrights are still enforceable as all documentation relating to it will be held by the company itself, and while you can look up things like whether trademarks are still valid (been doing a bit of this myself, recently! ), you can't (to my knowledge) do the same with copyrights, as this works rather differently.

[beely]

Who's going to buy something you cant use on a record?

That was a joke...

[chili beans]

We sampled and tweaked these patched from original synths such as Fairlight, Synclavier, Yamaha DX7, Roland D-50, EMULATOR II, KORG M1, OBERHEIM OBX, PROPHET 5, SYNTHEX and many more…
It sounds like they're not the straight sounds sampled but have been tweaked then sampled. I think selling tweaked samples is legal but not the presets from a particular synth

[fluffy_little_something]

Just checked a few videos on the D50, I don't even like its sound somehow. Too digital, kitschy and wishy-washy for my taste.

[ghettosynth]

I'm just taking issue with the language that it's implicitly illegal when you do.

I don't think anyone has said it's implicitly illegal, just that the biggest problems come from sound recording copyrights, and trademark/trade dress/implied endorsement problems when you mention products that were sampled or you advertise with company trademarks etc.

No, they did, very early someone asked "isn't that illegal?" I wrote a long response several pages ago.

The bottom line is, the "proper" way to do it is to gain official permission/licenses, or not do it at all, rather than do it and hope you get away with it, mostly relating to sampling gear that uses sound recordings as a fundamental way they produce sounds. It's often pretty difficult to track down whether copyrights are still enforceable as all documentation relating to it will be held by the company itself, and while you can look up things like whether trademarks are still valid (been doing a bit of this myself, recently! ), you can't (to my knowledge) do the same with copyrights, as this works rather differently.

Yes, and no. That's the party line here and I get that. But, along with our civic duty to respect copyrights comes are civic duty to exercise them. The entire premise of copyright is based on a limited exclusivity in order to foster societal benefit.

So, I'm not convinced that it's always the right approach to ask permission and neither were the MT-32 emulator guys. I think that conceptually there is an issue with making an instrument and then telling people, post fact, that there was some implicit license and it's ok to record the samples for one type of expression but not another. I also think that the Supreme Court's bright line rule is too aggressive, even with respect to music, but certainly with respect to other sound recordings.

Ok, that said, I think that you're not too bright if you sample the D50 and call your instrument the LA50 and don't expect a phone call from Roland.

But, I'm willing to bet that there are, literately, thousands of loops of the TR-909 that have never asked Roland's permission and will never get sued by Roland. There was no license agreement with the 909 that said that you couldn't make musical performances that were exactly eight bars long and contained no other instruments. So, despite the party line here, I think that's totally ok and I expect that Roland won't waste their time chasing that sort of thing because they don't actually want the courts to think about the difference between sampling music and sampling an instrument explicitly intended to be used in other recordings.

Further, there are rulings in other domains where something that was not subject to copyright in the first place isn't automatically protected in a derivative work. So, if you make a recording of something that's in the public domain, then it should be reasonable to have a discussion of whether that recording is transformative. The Supreme Court washed their hands of this issue with an overly broad bright line rule, but that only applies to audio recordings and we just haven't had the right set of conditions to revisit this. We may never see this revisited.

At any rate, I don't want to get into a long debate. My point was that it's not implicitly illegal to sample and that there is more than one approach to deciding whether or not it is prudent to do so. If you aren't prepared for a battle though, you should probably stay away from sampling Roland's preciouses.

[beely]

I think selling tweaked samples is legal but not the presets from a particular synth

Not if your tweaked patches use sound recordings that are under someone elses' copyright, no, you cannot create and sell derivative works from someone elses' content.

Again, if the source synth doesn't uses samples as it's method of producing sound, such as an analog synth, you are basically free to sample the hell out of it, including any presets that exist, without getting into trouble. But the situation is different for sample-based synths and romplers.

[ghettosynth]

We sampled and tweaked these patched from original synths such as Fairlight, Synclavier, Yamaha DX7, Roland D-50, EMULATOR II, KORG M1, OBERHEIM OBX, PROPHET 5, SYNTHEX and many more…
It sounds like they're not the straight sounds sampled but have been tweaked then sampled. I think selling tweaked samples is legal but not the presets from a particular synth

Well, you can think whatever you like, but you'd be wrong. There is so much misunderstanding of copyright among musicians, aren't you guys interested in this stuff?

You are describing a derivative work. In other fields, derivative works may or may not be infringing based on certain fair use tests, but with audio samples, this is not the case, that was the Supreme Court's bright line rule that I've been talking about. "If you want to sample, get a license."

BTW: you can sample the OBX, the P5, the synthex, the DX7, and the Synclavier until the cows come home. You can sometimes sample the Fairlight adn the D-50 but, strictly speaking, you can probably never sample the M1, without permission, that is.

[beely]

Thans Ghetto, I agree with you.

It seems that one of the reasons Roland are more aggressive about this kind of thing these days is that they didn't pursue copyright infringements to the TR sounds back in the day, and effectively lost control of the ability to prevent people using/selling them (yes, I know some of the TR boxes were analog or analog/digital hybrid, as well as the straight sample-based ones) and once they realised that not ignoring their back catalog of instruments might actually be a good, commercially exploitable thing, they seemed keen to avoid that situation happening again and so started to make more of an effort to protect their IP.

[beely]

Well, you can think whatever you like, but you'd be wrong. There is so much misunderstanding of copyright among musicians, aren't you guys interested in this stuff?

Indeed, and this is why I also tend to wade into these threads, because I do find it interesting, and to try to "correct" (where possible) some of these weird things where people post how they think the world should work as fact, rather than the way it *actually* does...

[AnX]

Who's going to buy something you cant use on a record?

Churches, theathers, hobbyists and schools I guess

Exactly. Nobody Roland was targetting with the D50.

[Numanoid]

Well, you can think whatever you like, but you'd be wrong. There is so much misunderstanding of copyright among musicians, aren't you guys interested in this stuff?

Indeed, and this is why I also tend to wade into these threads, because I do find it interesting, and to try to "correct" (where possible) some of these weird things where people post how they think the world should work as fact, rather than the way it *actually* does...

How has PNS managed to sell Deepflight without breaching any copyright? It has been sold for years now:
http://www.kontaktbanks.com/kb_deepflight.html

"Deepflight is a Kontakt library based on the best sounds of the legendary Roland D-50 synthesizer."

[SampleScience]

Well, you can think whatever you like, but you'd be wrong. There is so much misunderstanding of copyright among musicians, aren't you guys interested in this stuff?

Indeed, and this is why I also tend to wade into these threads, because I do find it interesting, and to try to "correct" (where possible) some of these weird things where people post how they think the world should work as fact, rather than the way it *actually* does...

How has PNS managed to sell Deepflight without breaching any copyright? It has been sold for years now:
http://www.kontaktbanks.com/kb_deepflight.html

"Deepflight is a Kontakt library based on the best sounds of the legendary Roland D-50 synthesizer."

Probably because they didn't recreate the internal structure of the synth. Still, I think it's interesting that Roland let it go but prevented others of sampling their D-50. Nice find!

[Teksonik]

Roland/Persing are missing a huge opportunity in my opinion. If they released an accurate VSTi/AU/AAX version of the D-50 I'm of the opinion it would sell like hotcakes. I would buy a VSTi version in a heartbeat and it just might....might...be the one instrument that I would buy a Dongle to use (of course I'd prefer no dongle/iLok).

The D-50 is one of the synths from that era that I've always wanted but never owned.......