Would everybody PLEASE go back and read James' post from 7/03, 7:58 pm on this thread.

He spells out EXACTLY what is legal and illegal, under current US and international law, about sampling AND converting styles.

It's a good read, and MIGHT make some of you realize what is right and wrong. You all might also Google the 'fair use' policies of the RIAA, and copyright law in general. If you DON'T know the law, you really are not in a position to comment here on what is right and wrong, only on what you would LIKE to see (of course, NONE of you HAS any copyrighted material, so what do you care?).
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I still think the closest analogy I have been able to come up with was of a club owner, restaurant manager, of old folks home director TAPING your show (maybe he videos it, to get your onstage look and show), and then using it INSTEAD of hiring YOU.

'But that would never happen', you said. 'People will ALWAYS want to hear live music' you said.

BUT WHAT IF THEY DIDN'T...?

What if they were JUST...... LIKE....... YOU?

What if they didn't care WHERE their music came from, as long as it SOUNDED the same? What if they didn't care whether the club owner had payed you for that recording, and had taken it without your permission? What if the club owner BRAGGED about video-ing your show, and said he would soon do it to ALL the acts that came to his club?

And everybody said 'What a GREAT IDEA!'

WOULD YOU CARE THEN....?

Question: Is posting songs by artists other than yourself but played by you a copyright infringement eventhough it's for non-commerical reasons?

Taike

technological advance is always a double-edged sword. it is a plain and simple fact that the development of modern
recording, starting in the 1920's, has inexorably reduced
the working opportunities for the masses of live musicians
who used to enjoy, if not social standing, at least a very
good income compared to the average person. many musicians worked tons of gigs and earned well during the great depression. there are so few jobs today compared to then, and the pay for most is sparse by comparison. on the other hand, radio and tv created lucrative jobs for many for a while, recordings provided exposure never before possible, and the ranks of mega-stars has increased dramatically and their income and status is beyond any musicians of the past's wildest dreams.

there was a man who bravely fought for the rights of the
musicians who were falling victim to technology. the name
of this moral hero was James Petrillo, head of the AFM union. In the early 40's, he instituted a "recording ban" that lasted for years. the result of this well-intentioned policy was quite the opposite of its intent--it was one of the major tragedies of our time and did more to destroy
the music business for musicians than the technological
enemy ever had.

what's my point and how does this relate to the sampling
issues raised here? just this..there seem to be clear moral issues here that are inarguable by anyone who knows right from wrong. .yet they are also clouded by the advance of technology that changes the ground rules
ever faster, and, that technology is inexorable and creates
its own standards. the Fender Rhodes didn't start out to be "that great vintage rhodes sound" It started out to be
a portable ersatz piano. then the "subsitute" became its own musical genre. The arranger kb and those that play it
started out as a way to have a portable ersatz band. Yet
all of us who really are skilled and years into it know we
can do things with it that bands can't do, it has become
a way of making music that has its own standards.

so that's how the double-edge works, and that's why
what seems to be a clear moral issue on resampling has
ramifications that are unclear, and unpredictable, and why
there are so many different points of view being expressed on this subject. we are hypocrites playing
sampled arranger keyboards, and at the same time we are
not. I don't have the answer, and neither do any of you.


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Miami Mo

Technically, Taike, yes, you are supposed to get permission for ANY 'posting' of a copyrighted tune, but in practice, it only becomes a problem if it generates income, or the artist or copyright holder doesn't WANT you to post it (for whatever reason they see fit). They, as copyright holder, have certain rights, but because of the nature of the internet, unless there is a profit motive, or it does damage in some way to the copyright holder, it is seldom enforced.

A lot of the confusion on this thread comes from the fact that some companies (in fact, most) don't bother prosecuting small, private individuals for converting styles, or sampling a few keyboard sounds, because, for one thing, the litigation would cost FAR more than they could recoup, and also, as James pointed out, as long as it is an out of production arranger style, or a sound from a discontinued keyboard (no longer in a current one), the company does not stand to lose revenue from the copying (in fact, they may benefit from the publicity of it - witness the move towards Roland G70's after some of their styles got converted to Tyros!). But they are also, to varying degrees, pretty quick to insist that converted styles from their LATEST, current, in-production arranger be removed from public sites.

They rely on the exclusivity of those styles to help generate sales of the arranger that has them. Loss of that exclusivity would diminish sales.

The same goes with the SOUNDS in an arranger (or any keyboard, for that matter). As long as those sounds are exclusive to an in-production keyboard, the manufacturer relies on that exclusivity to generate sales, and by extension, the money to develop the NEXT generation of keyboards and sounds for it.

Seems pretty fair, doesn't it..?

But when a new technology comes along, that automates the tedious task of sampling EVERY single sound in a complex keyboard (THAT is what all this is about... Yes you COULD sample an entire keyboard when GIGA first came out, but it was an ENORMOUS undertaking. There are new tools now that do this automatically, at least to the point that it IS feasible, now), this interrupts that exclusivity, breaks the chain of income, and ultimately stagnates NEW sound development.

And we will ALL be the poorer for that.

Mo, that's a great post... One of the first that doesn't take a 'I want this, no matter the cost', but approaches it differently.

The thing I think is changing here, though, is not so much a change in technology, but a mere acceleration of it, and the lagging of the legal system to legislate it. It takes YEARS for the legal system, especially world-wide, to respond to new technologies, Witness how long it took to shut down Napster, and to make the free distributed work of legitimate musicians and record companies, with devastating consequences to the industry, and it's employees (including us!) illegal.

And THAT was a fairly simple, easy to understand violation of copyright!

Sampling has been around for quite a while now, and there ARE laws on the books that prevent a wholesale copying of the base ROM of a commercial keyboard (even out of production ones). But the technology to sample an entire soundset has only been around for a few years, and as I said, this was a huge undertaking, well beyond the abilities of someone that could not profit from it (it would take months of doing nothing else!), so it's occurrence went un-litigated, as no-one in their right minds would attempt such a task.!

But, within the last year or so, new automatic tools have arrived on the market that make this task not only feasible, but almost easy..! At least to the point where some shmo in Italy can CLAIM he is doing this not-for-profit (a claim I seriously doubt, considering how closely he claims he works with Dom).

But the truth of the matter is, all he is doing is something that already exists as a VERY close to illegal undertaking (you are not allowed to clone the actual ROM, but you are also supposed to 'recognizably' change the sound from the factory presets, too). But the REAL thing that has changed, the thing that legislation, if not already en point, should be RAPIDLY changed to account for, is the speed and scale of the piracy.

The music industry never worried about MP3's. They were around for a LONG time before Napster, along with simple file-sharing networks. But Napster changed the scale of distribution (and ease) by many orders of magnitude. And overnight, the music industry was faced with a challenge to respond quick enough to prevent damage. Unfortunately, the legal system took too long, the cat got out of the bag, and now the damage is done.

The keyboard industry needs to take this FAR more seriously than most of the members of THIS forum are , and jump all over this before this gets out of hand. If not, well, better get used to what you have now, because there may be a long wait for a new batch of sounds coming from Yamaha, or Roland when they know they will be cloned the day they release them...
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Many of you have taken me to task for being so adamant about this issue. "what's on YOUR laptop?' they say.

You know, boys and girls... There MIGHT be some mp3's of songs I didn't pay for, on there.... There MIGHT even be some software that arrived from a file-sharing network.

BUT... there is no way I will ever say that it ISN'T stealing, or piracy. There is no way that I would start a business that HAD to steal to survive. There is no way that I would say, well, I have done it, so everybody should. I KNOW when I have done something wrong (and illegal). I am not proud of it. And if I thought for one minute that I, by myself, could damage an entire industry (that I claim I have friends in), I would stop immediately, say mea culpa, and never do it again.

Unlike Dom....

[This message has been edited by Diki (edited 07-04-2007).]

Thank you, Diki. But, now take that they do go after the "little" guys. Take, e.g., that the artists or copyright holders find out that you've been posting songs by them on the Roland Arranger Forum or Synthzone without their permission, sue you and demand compensation. Compensation in these cases is enough to ruin most individuals as we all know. Now, you'll have two choices: pay up or fight them. But wouldn't balking at paying the fine mean that you think you had the right to post their material?

Taike

This discussion is coming full circle back to the original point that it is not a question of right v. wrong, steeling, sampling or resampling, or however one chooses to characterize what is taking place.
It is a question of MONEY.

As we all know the basic utopian legal principle that one should not take another person�s work in whole or in part and include it in one�s work with out the permission of that other person.
However, unfortunately, that is not how the world works in reality. We don�t live in a utopian world. Individual and businesses have through out the years always try to use and benefit from other persons hard labor and copyright with paying little or no compensation. That is just how the music industry is.

From a company sampling a real acoustic instrument, to another company making styles that sounds like a familiar song, and now we have some one sampling some sounds from an electronic keyboard.

To take an alarmist view that this idea of sampling (or sorry resampling) of an electronic keyboard would lead to the death of sound creation as we know it is a bit too much. People have always tried to use new technology and techniques to re invent themselves and to benefit from it.

And I still think that Yamaha is assessing all the areas of this issue and not being one sided like some of us are being. This could actually cause to increase the sales of hardware keyboards. You see
1. when you get the sounds from the sampled T2, you are not getting the real full sound you are only getting what the sampler could have captured.
2. Then how are you going to use that sound. If you don�t have the actual hardware board in the T2, and the styles of the T2 then you are not even going to come close to playing a T2. Remember these T2 sounds are going to be played on the same keyboard that most people on synth zone think is trash and is worthless.
3. It could be viewed that these sampled sounds are good demos and that the sampled sounds could encourage persons to go and get the actual hardware with the actual and ideal hardware configuration to use the sounds.

P.S If some of you are wondering why I sometimes have �resampling� in prentices, there is a difference but that is for another topic as it is not relevant for this discussion.

It is incredibly arrogant to think that on a board of seemingly intelligent, mature, and life-experienced individuals, that no one "GETS IT" but you; that there is no room for dissent or even a variation of the SAME point of view; that there is no truth other than "mine"; that if you are not 100% in lock-step with me, you're a dullard or an idiot (or at least a person of low moral character).

We all know the futility of trying to reason with a religious fanatic or trying to use logic in an argument with our wives . Once a person has decided that they are standing firmly on the moral high ground, there is scant room for any other point of view.

We all know people who are much more enamoured of the process of debate than the substance of the debate. Sometimes we call these people "devil's advocates" or something similar. I, myself, am sometimes guilty of this, but hopefully not to the point of becoming a bore (or boor).




We all know that this is horsesh.t. No way is a small operation like Dom's going to "bring down" the likes of Roland, Yamaha, and Korg. In fact, it is almost always the inovations of small companies that push the technology we see in subsequent offering by the industry giants. What we should be doing is applauding Dom (and other foward-thinking small companies) for pushing the boundaries of arranger technology and forcing the "big three" to rethink their current philosopy of built-in obsolesence and rehashing and re-releasing the same old garbage with a new model number and one or two (dated) extra features. Who gives a crap about stealing from a keyboard still utilizing USB 1.1. JMHO.

chas

Amen to that!

very interesting points there Chas...

at this stage the MS really wouldn't be a threat for the big 3 to be going out of business as Diki has stated so it doesn't seem that bad BUT we cant say "its okay" just because its one small company.

who knows - maybe in 6 months time there might be another 4 companies that are producing keyboards like the MS that rip all the sounds onto their hardware. this is where we could have a big problem...

Nick, if what Dom's doing is illegal than so is posting someone else's work online...for profit or not. Or are some above the law?

Taike



[This message has been edited by Taike (edited 07-05-2007).]