Hello........I have posted 13+ volumes of Charley's "Gems" styles at PSR Tutorial and Yahoo Groups over the past 3 years. I have never claimed them as mine, only taking credit for tweaking them. MidiSpot, in NO kind words, has claimed that many of these are their copyrighted styles and must be removed. They also "hinted" that I have intentionally removed copyright info from the styles. Joe Waters has removed all the styles from his site, and I will remove all other posts this weekend.
I'm not quite sure how to respond, if at all, as examination of actual MidiSpot styles shows no copyright info at all in them. I have no doubts that most of the conversions and editing I have done were all from styles that were/are copyrighted. How can I continue to share the styles I tweak without getting me or anyone else in trouble? Maybe I'll just take my PSR3000, computer, and crawl under a rock................-charley

Charley,
Styles have no copyright because they can't have copyright.
You cannot claim copyright on rumba-tango-beat4-beat16-reggae2 etc.......
The dutch copyright is one of the toughest worldwide and the organisation involved called BUMA/STEMRA confirmed this to me a couple of years ago when we had this discussion.
It's complete nonsens.
They would not have scared me off and I would be delighted to go to court with these assholes.
Following their claims you could in fact say that they are using worldwide recognisable standards and then claim that they are their's. Hence they breach copyright themselves.

Freddy's right, they cannot copyright the styles. Don't let them bully you. If styles were copyrighted then other keyboard makers would be running into legal issues by allowing their keyboards to convert styles, and evening taking it further by writing in the manuals what keyboards makers styles are compatable with the style conversion. Tweek all you want man and if they give you hell, well you know the rest

Squeak

My advice, share with your email buddies. Midispot just wants to protect their hard work. They do have a copyright of the styles - not songs made from the styles, but the styles themselves.

Your Gems are great. Just be more discreet in sharing them.

Beakybird

Hi guys.

They can indeed copyright the styles based on the fact that created all the data, not you.

Just because you buy and modify their programming does not make it yours. Same rule applies to everything.

If you did not create it, then you have no right to upload it unless it states clearly that the data is copyright free.

Regards.
James.


[This message has been edited by James Tubbritt (edited 02-26-2005).]

Exactly. Not a whole lot different than hosting a warez link to commercial software. It's a commercial product, that they want to sell.

It would be the equivalent of me modifying a few of the samples in my Sonic Implants soundfonts ( commercial ), and then posting them.

AJ


[This message has been edited by Bluezplayer (edited 02-26-2005).]

Hi.

I've converted styles for a long time to share with other users,
but never use any of the styles sold sperately as "addons" or from
i.e. MidiSpot or other creators / manufacturers who sell this sort
of stuff.
But at my site I only use the "onboard" styles, regardless what brand,
who I look at as free to use to whatever we like.
I respect the quality work MidiSpot and others do very high, and if we
start spread this around, why should they bother to make new and even
better stuff?

Regarding the copyright issue, I'm not quite sure about it, but I seem
to remember this has been a topic here and at other forums earlier on.
I think what the discussions ended up in, is that it is different for
the styles already in the keyboard and the commercial made and sold
separately.
Also I think that's why Yamaha only claimed the styles from the Disk
Collection that also are for sale removed from the Yahoo groups, while
the rest still are to find.

GJ

Gunnar is absolutely correct...When we buy a Yamaha ,Roland etc ..we purchased the right to do what we want with the styles[I don't think we have the right to resale them]..Third party companies creating styles for profit have the right to protect their interest....and like Gunnar said..If we don't support the developers of the software we use...then they can disapear...It has happened in the past and we need to be aware of the developers rights..

Since this post started I have received several MidiSpot style files via email. The people who sent them, as well as myself, wish to know how they are identified or copyrighted. I have analyzed them thru sequencer programs as well as style editors and cannot see anything as an identifier. Yamaha, Korg, and Roland styles are clearly identified. Why wouldn't one identify their styles clearly? Also........some of these styles sound as though they were tweaked Tyros styles.................hmmmmmm??

Hi,

I have a friend who's pretty high up at Yamaha in London and asked him once if the styles that come on the arrangers are copyrighted. I was using them, along with the styles in XGWorks for my own compositions and sending them out to record labels. His response was that no, they are not, and you can do whatever you like with them!

Of course this doesn't mean that MidiSpot would feel the same way!

Carrie

But why not ask at MidiSpot those questions about this
copyright issue and where to find about it by invite
them to this tread?
Regarding tweaked Tyros styles, remember that MidiSpot
and others deliver styles professionally to different
kb manufacturers, so it might as well be vice versa
GJ

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).]

It's amazing the people that must monitor the Synth Zone!

I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Shuji Ito, CEO of Yamaha Corp., Mr. Ikutaro Kakehashi, CEO of Roland Corp., and Mr. Tsutomu Katoh, Founder & CEO of Korg Inc. along with Mike Kovins the President of Korg U.S.A plus a host of the other Big Wigs that perhaps have 'looked in' on us lowly mortals here at the Zone.

The Synth Zone is by FAR the best Arranger Keyboard Forum on the Net - and it shows! Maybe even Generalmusic owner Matteo Galanti will pop in and say hello, who knows? Although hopefully on a leisure visit instead of "business".

Oh well fellow Synth Zoners: at least we know for sure that we're being watched by the higher up's. That in itself can be a good thing since our voices are at least being 'heard' by apparently important people. Now if only Yamaha would 'hear' our pleas for a 76 note Tyros II all would be well on the home front.

Best regards,
Mike

M. Damgaard,

If there are copyrights on styles, what about with the use of our arrangers in public audition, a gig for example?

Stam

Same rules as when use copyrighted midifiles I asume?
GJ

It is not a question of performing in public with internal factory styles. That is what arranger keyboards are made for. The issue would be making edits to those styles and them selling them as new styles or converting them to another brand’s format and selling them or giving them away. If you are sharing edited factory styles amongst others who purchased the same model keyboard, no problem because all parties have licensing via the purchase of the keyboard to use those styles.

Someone mentioned the style converter programs that are available. The only way this is really legal is if you actually own the various brands of keyboards you are converting to and from and the conversions are for your personal use.

Basically, this discussion with all its variables could go on and on for quite a while.
Suffice it to say; just think about what you are doing before you give away someone else’s hard work.


------------------
Wm. David McMahan
Nat'l Product and Support Manager
Generalmusic USA
GEM Community Forums

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

Hello Nicolai,

Great you join in I love that, my compliments!

Ofcourse I disagree to a certain point, as I clearly stated.

First of all I agree ofcourse that in styles which contain a unique melody line or styles which are song specific there's ofcourse copyright.
But these aren't standard styles!
These specific styles are part of a song and can only be used in that unique specific song.
Which makes it clearly copyright.
Even more for midi's ofcourse as these are
complete songs.
There's a lot of jurisdiction about this, which would go way beyond this board, but roughly you could say that IF a song has MORE as 16 bars equal to 8 seconds and are simular to an existing song you have a copyright problem.

But on STANDARD styles (Which is exactly what I wrote) you cannot claim copyright.
The binary code cannot be heard and does not make any sense either as it won't be the same after editing or style conversion.
And the STANDARD styles are CALLED Standard styles because they appeal to a common spread MUSIC style.
Which basicly is the answer WHY you cannot have copyright on STANDARD styles.

The example you gave about painting's is great by the way and gives a good example how complicated these matters are.
For your info; it is ALLOWED to PAINT a copy of the original painting as long as you don't put the signature of the original masterpainter on it!
It is NOT ALLOWED to publish without permission a photo from the original painting as this would make a perfect copy and needs permission.

Personally I do think you should protect your work and you have the right to do so and I will be the last to encourage free publishing of someone elses work. But legally I think you have a very weak case with the standard styles.

Greetings,
Fred

Hi again.
This is a great discussion, and I feel huge interest in all your feedback.

To Stam:
Some of you may remember BackBeat Studios which produced a lot of Roland files years ago. On his disks he stamped something like "Copying, hiring, recording and public performance of this product prohibited". We could NEVER dream of doing this. I mean especially public performance with our products is actually the whole point of a company like Midi Spot. And in Denmark several chart songs (especially in the typical scandinavian folk-country genre) has been recorded using Midi Spot products, which is also great. So please, use them as much as possible...

To Wm. David McMahan:
As I see it you actually only need the specific keyboard which the style has been copied TO using e.g. EMC software. I see no problem in buying some products for a VK4 and convert them to eg. PSR3000 - except that the actual QUALITY almost always decreases pretty much, unless you do your manual homework afterwards...

And Freddy:
First of all I kind of liked your latest message pretty much more than your first one Never mind, as Charley mentioned I may have been pretty hard on him as well. So let's continue in this way more contructive tone. Now, I don't feel we have a copyright problem inside Midi Spot since we pay a fee after a contract with NcB as mentioned in my previos message when appropriate (e.g. in the Elton John styles for Tyros and 9k we will launch within the next week). In standard styles however we do NOT pay this fee. But you are right, there has been (and still are) unclear rules regarding the composer rights of styles. Regarding what I call the "artistic rights" there maybe different laws and rules in our contries, but here in Denmark (and I tend to believe in the whole EU) "my" work will always be "my" work, and therefor copying, editing and distribution by any other person is illegal, and a style has to be seen as a piece of software. And even though many people seems to forget, copying of software programs ARE actually illegal. Now, I understand we disagree on the fact, that a style is actually copyright protected software. We will discuss it (again...) with our lawyer, and ABSOLUTELY clear lines may not be present untill a specific case and trial is executed. Until then I will then appeal to users and musicians that use commercial 3rd part products to support the companies they like and whose products they use.

Best Regards

Nicolai Damgaard
Product Manager
Midi Spot ApS

Oh, BTW keybplayer:
I'm truly honoured by your comparison

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

I worked some 14 years ago (as a freelancer)for the largest publisher in Europe (Printed Music) and this particular problem came up then - the publisher's argument was that the Midifile was in fact a binary "book" and that as such this fell under the right to "print" according to the contract that was held with the copyright holder.

This claim was however disproven as the end result or "application" was to create a sonic performance that infringed, or rather was covered under, the mechanical rights and the original publishing copyright owner.

As the company at the time had invested a significant amount of money in i) producing it's own bespoke content, ii) purchasing some midifile-producing companies in order to amass a larger repertoire and iii) spent a large amount of money marketing said repertoire this was a major problem.

To be more precise this argument took place under the GM/GS development phase, shortly before XG was introduced as the 3rd "Standard" and still holds true today - that is, the end is a reproduction of music in a sonic state, thus any midifile copyright exists in the first extent with the copyright holder.

So for instance, where a Style file or midifile is commissioned from scratch, the copyright exists with the commissioning agent or company and the exact sequence of notes created for that commission is the "song, book, composition and intellectual property."

Where a song arrangement is recreated in midifile form, the copyright again reverts to the original composer or his/her representative and a fee is paid as royalty to exploit that work, whether it be printed media, CD recording (or any other type whether it has been invented yet or not!) or indeed midifile.

Sorry to be a bore, this is my first post as such, and it's a difficult area that I'm always confronted with in my line of work on a day to day basis. . .

Hello..........I am "Charley" and am glad to see MidiSpot in this post. This is all so interesting whether we agree or not. I have no problem removing the MidiSpot styles from my Gems 1-13.............my problem is other than the styles identified, are there any others that need to be removed? Many of these styles in Gems 1 have been circulated for 2 years before becoming suspect. I have THOUSANDS of styles that were emailed, found on the web, or from FTP sites that were made freely available to me. So many were obviously copyrighted, or so new I never even considered sharing them anonymously. I have a collection of these, and they will never be made into a gem style. Most of the gems are internal styles, or user styles that I have converted. The Yamaha styles just needed a little finer tuning and I added OTS to the lot! All the gems are styles that I thought sounded exceptional on whatever keyboard I had at the time. I still plan on tweaking styles I find and sharing them if I can. I guess I just need to be more discreet about it. Now I wonder how many other gems styles shouldn't really be shared? I probably will never repost Gems 1-13 to the masses. But rest assured............Gems 14 is in the works! Thanks all. -charley

Hi Charley.

I see the huge problem in deciding which styles are copyrighted and which are not.. It's a little bit more difficult than defining the birthplace of a Windows OS or a Cubase SX. As I wrote to you in the first place, it will take a lot of time going through e.g. 400 styles to decide which of them are programmed by myself or one of our employees. However after joining this group I understand that this time is not just waisted, and that you guys are not on purpose stealing e.g. Midi Spot, d-o-o, Styles&Music, Hage or anyone of the other commercial 3rd part houses.

And since I feel you should get your free style site to work again as fast as possible, let's work together. Now I already listed to you the Midi Spot files I found on your site, but I think you should get all the other styles up again ASAP. And if I find other Midi Spot styles you hereby have my word, that nothing dramatic will happen, I will simply just send you an email with a note of which styles it is. Also you could send me a betaversion of Gems 14 before launching, and let me look over your shoulder? I know you already have my emailadress, but for other interested I will put in my signature here under. Please write if you have something on your mind...

Best Regards

Nicolai Damgaard
Product Manager
Midi Spot ApS
www.midispot.com
nd@midispot.com

Hi Nicolai
Around 20 songs catered for in Midi-spot with song specific rhythm/style files...
Sounds to me like you'd be better off taking Charley onto the staff and getting some worthwhile depth to your offering.
Roger M
Oh and p.s. there's still plenty of Technics keyboard owners out here even though the product is now no longer in existence...

RMepstead wrote:
Around 20 songs catered for in Midi-spot with song specific rhythm/style files...

Eeh.. I don't really understand? At the moment there are 132 styles available, where most of them are based on an original songs. But only a few are NAMED after the actual songs (under Song Styles), since that was not a succes in our homemarket Scandinavia. But go into "Style Disks" at click on the files or the mp3 demo's and you will understand that most of our "Standard Styles" are based on original songs as well, just with some creative names.

Regarding Technics unfortunatly it's a long time since it paid off for us programming for these keybaords. We never used any short cuts, Style Converters etc because of the catastrophal results these programs give, so every brand (keyboard) is actually programmed and not converted. After starting the cooperation with http://www.yamahamusicsoft.com/index.php?action=ProductCatalog&category_id=5006
and http://music.yamaha.com/productProduct.html?hierarchyId=1&groupId=21&productId=118 (scroll down) today we only produce styles and specific Midifiles in Tyros and PSR9000 formats, only GM and GS smf are exceptions. XG will also be available ASAP.

But Midi Spot will never prioritate having MANY files. Our philosophy has always been making the RIGHT stuff, and in high quality. Making sure that all chord variations sound right. That's why our styles often include 16 midi tracks and not just the 8 tracks you can do on the keyboard itself, just like the internal Tyros styles etc...

Best Regards
Nicolai Damgaard
Product Manager
Midi Spot ApS


[This message has been edited by Midi Spot (edited 03-02-2005).]

OK Nicolai
It's your choice to market your organisation that way - but it wouldn't have been obvious to me as a gigging professional and without your explanation I would have thought 'generic rhythms - no use to me, apart from the 20 or so that have been named specifically' and have moved on to other potential suppliers.
By the way converting to Technics from Yamaha is no problem with EMC Styleworks and the quality is brilliant.
Best wishes - Roger M
p.s. I wouldn't play Mustang Sally to Festival Rock 1 unless I wanted to be thrown off the stage...

Roger, brilliant is not the word I would use in this case. In
my ears the converted result is OK as s start before tweaking,
but not at all "as it is" without some work, specially if you
are going to use it in public.
Did you ever had the chanche to play the same style i.e. at the
kboard it's made for, and i.e. converted to KN side by side?
Regardless to what brand, I've still not heard any converted
styles who sounds as they do as originals without do a lot of
tweaking.
The best conversions I've heard, without any tweaking done, are
as I see / hear it, from Yamaha to Ketron.

Happy converting & playing
GJ

Btw,
nice to see MidiSpot and Gem take part in the discussion as well.