The free exchange of styles might soon come to an end. According to this court ruling styles are copyrighted material:

Yamaha Authorized the World’s First Copy...cal Instruments

For now its only in China, but it probably wont take long before Yamaha takes similar moves in other parts of the world

Kind regards,
Tommy

Kind of late for that after thousands are flowing freely around the world...looks like were going back to the days of Proprietary styles exclusively for certain keyboards rendering conversions useless......I'm all for it IF they keep updating a Hugh Library of HIGH QUALITY STYLES Available.

The Chinese have been known to pirate anything and everything when it comes to others intellectual property. That goes for software, hardware, and everything in between unfortunately. It is probably a case where Chinese manufacturers were putting full fledged copies of Yamaha's Style data into keyboards manufactured in China and selling them. Yamaha had to take swift action to protect its intellectual property from being used illegally and on a massive scale. This goes way beyond, for example, Yamaha keyboard users exchanging custom Styles with one another. We do it because we own a Yamaha keyboard and so do the people we want to share our custom styles with. And we are not trying to make a profit from it. OTOH, China is apparently trying to sell keyboards with unadulturated Yamaha Styles in them with the intention of not only making a profit but claiming that Yamaha's Styles are in fact their own property and not really Yamaha's at all. That's a no no in anybodies book, except maybe the Chinese.

Best,
Mike

PS: This is not intending to castigate all Chinese people. Only the ones to whom it pertains i.e. only those partaking in the illegal and erroneous activity.

Having just read the info on this case, I looked up the website of the Chinese manufacturer (MEDELI) to see what sort of stuff they were making.

Interesting to note that the Medeli MC-710, which is the instrument quoted as containing Yamaha styles, has a 76 note keyboard. It also has a slightly more advanced brother, the MC-710, again with 76 keys.

Do the Chinese know something that Yamaha doesn't?

Can't wait for Diki's response to this bit of news........(chuckle!)

Best regards - Mike

http://www.medeli.com.hk/products/pk/mc-710.html#

It's also a "professional keyboard" MC760
http://www.medeli.com.hk/products/pk/mc-760.html#

And guess what, ...... it even have a floppydrive onboard!

Happy Plying, whatever you play on
GJ

I think calling its a 'professional keyboard' is stretching advertising just a little bit too far.

Im sure you could do a gig with it ...if you make one dollar on a gig guess what?YOUR NOW A PRO!

Hi

From page 10 of the mc 760 (the top model) manual:

========================
The accompaniment section

Accompaniment operation
Accompaniment consists of Intro, normal, variation, fill (a-a, a-b, b-a, b-b), ending. Using different sections based on the structure of songs enables you to
enhance musical performance.
========================

I can hardly wait ;-)

Regards
Jørgen



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The Unofficial YAMAHA Keyboard Resource Site

Manufactures Styles and professionally produced styles (The ones you pay for) have always been copyrighted, if you read the small print in your keyboard manuals, and also on any site that sells styles, you will see it contained within.
Style converters will not be impacted because they only provide the means to convert styles. (The user has to supply the styles)
So don’t worry about it as nothing is about to change in the near future.

Bill