Hi guys.
I hope it's okay that I put a little comment on this topic. Since english is not my "first choice" language, you will have to bear with me on some expressions...

First of all let me clear this once for all, of course there are copyrights on styles(!) There are both "composive" rights, which are not always the programmers rights, in this case Midi Spot. For all our songstyles we pay the same fee for the socalled NcB (Nordic Copyright Bureau) as we do on our midi files. NcB is the same as GEMA in Germany, I don't know the names in UK and US, but the company who takes care of composers and writers rights. Now on "normal" styles (not specific SongStyles)the composer rights are our own, but this is actually not so importaint. What maatters are that the "ARTISTIC" rights are Midi Spots, no matter if it's a Midifile, Standard Style or SongStyle. It's perfectly the same as a painters work, a sculpture of a sculptor or Microsofts XP etc. This is actually somebody elses work, and what you buy (IF you buy ) are the rights to use this style for personal use. Of course you can edit and change all you want, in fact we actually PREFER that our customers "personalize" our files. But never will it be legal to ditribute either the original style or the edited style on any website or forum. And when Freddynl claims that he would love to go to court with this issue against us, I will say that this may be annoying and take a lot of time. But it will be a very short trial, just comparing the binary data in these files.

It is correct that in some of our earliest styles we missed the copyright meta event. However it is more often we see styles where this event has been removed. But regarding the (il)legal issue, that does not make any difference. You cannot freely copy a painting either, just because the painter didn't put his initials in the lower right corner...

Regarding this excact case with Charley, it is importaint to mention that I don't think Charlie himself removed the copyright events, or maybe even knew that this kind of distribution is illegal, and having a site with free styles is a fine idea. However it is still his responsibility that these styles are truly free and "homebaked". It is also illegal unintended to buy a watch on the street which is stolen by someone else.

Midi Spot is not a sparetime project, this is not a oneman company, and we take our work pretty serious. We belive that the quality of our work is over avarage, which is also why we have been working in cooperation with Roland and Yamaha. And we will continue to try and stop - or at least LIMIT - illegal distribution of our work. If you don't like our work, fine, then don't use it. But if you like our stuff, then consider that supporting programming houses like our own will make more and better files in the long run.

Kind Regards

Nicolai Damgaard
Product Manager
Midi Spot ApS
Denmark


[This message has been edited by Midi Spot (edited 02-28-2005).]