legality of sampling sample based hardware?

[scamme]

Pollux, you're applying logic to law. Bad boy! Sit in the corner for 20 minutes.

The law protects (among other things) "sound recordings". Reverbs aren't recordings, they're sound processors. And it turns out there a technology that makes it easy to approximate the effect of many kinds of sound processors -- any that fall into the category of inifinite impulse response (IIR) filters.

Sample-based instruments use sound recordings, which are covered by copyright law.

From the point of view of what seems right and wrong the two cases look similar. But from a legal standpoint they don't have the key ingredient in common: a sound recording.

There may be ways for reverb manufacturers to protect their inventions, but it's not the sound recording copyright. This isn't a matter of whether it's fair or not, just whether there's law to protect them.

Laws like this aren't easy to get right. Many folks think some copyright laws go overboard (and I think they have some very good arguments). In any case, the protection of sampled instruments from being sampled is pure luck on the part of the sampled instrument manufacturers. They're covered, but not because anyone intended them to be. It's only because they use something that's protected for other reasons.

So basicly what i understand from your post is that 'Yamaha' won't feel so negative about someone put few of their samples on the net, maybe they even concider it like an "old tool memory refreshment". I'll try to ask for permission.