i got this reply Direct from Yamaha Japan :

Dear worth

Thank you for your email.

Regarding internal Styles on the product, Yamaha has the copyright because they are Yamaha original. Yamaha grants the free license to users under the expected usage circumstance.

Please refer to the website below for more detail information. http://www.amei.or.jp/information/information080428-e.htm

Thank you

Yamaha Customer Service - Japan.

i clicked on the link and it states :


AMEI: On Internal Content in Electronic Musical Instruments
April 28, 2008

Electronic musical instruments are provided with “internal content” such as sound waveform data and performance data with the intention that said internal content is to be used for musical expression. Such internal content is provided for musical performance and/or recording by the user of the instrument, and this type of “normal use” is to be supported and encouraged. No restrictions should apply to “normal use” of the internal content of a legitimately acquired electronic musical instrument.
However, the recent growth of digital technology and the Internet in combination with the inclusion of convenient features that add to the value of electronic musical instruments, has led to unprecedented problems in the form of illegitimate copying and distribution of internal content that is outside the scope of “normal use”.
Not only does such illegitimate use of internal electronic musical instrument content result in substantial losses to the producers of electronic musical instruments, but it is also an impediment to the progress of musical culture in general.
AMEI proposes the following to eliminate illegitimate use of internal content provided with electronic musical instruments and promote the proper use of such instruments.

The following uses of internal electronics musical instrument content are illegitimate:

The extraction of internal electronic musical instrument content from an electronic musical instrument and, whether in original or modified form …

Recording said content to a separate medium and offering that medium itself for sale, or producing an electronic musical instrument into which the extracted content has been incorporated and offering that instrument for sale.
Making said content available on, or transmitting said content over, a computer network.
A user may employ an electronic musical instrument for instrumental performance or the recording of such performances without restriction, but use that falls outside the scope of “normal use,” such as copying the instrument’s built-in content and/or distributing the instrument’s built-in content via a network (including making the instrument’s built-in content transmittable), may be in violation of copyright law.

Although the fact that copyright law protects music CDs and published MIDI data is well known, the fact that copyright law also applies to the internal content of electronic musical instruments is less widely recognized. AMEI intends to continue its research into intellectual property rights with regard to internal content in electronic musical instruments.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Definitions

1. Electronic musical instrument.
In addition to electronic musical instruments composed of hardware, this term includes music-production software that runs on a computer (software synthesizers, software music sequencers, and others).

2. The term “internal electronic musical instrument content” refers to the following:
Sound waveform data.
Waveform data sampled from acoustic musical instruments or other sources that is intended for playback.
Style data.
Style data is data that provides the material for automatic accompaniment, including rhythm and bass sounds as well as preset accompaniment patterns.
Data to support music production and performance.
Phrase data, audio loops, and similar data incorporated into software synthesizers or other functions.
Internal demonstration tunes.

Wow! Great work, Spalding, or shall I start calling you "Sherlock".

Responses to your post should prove very interesting.

Ian

Of course this ALSO means you cannot swap the internal styles from one Yamaha PSR model to another different model

That would be "outside normal use" .

Or from a Tyros 3 to a PSR S910 either

Guess all the folks at the Yamaha forums should be concerned hey??

Dennis

i found this article verry time ago on internet. maby has nothing to with this topic but good to know. the article is about ROYALTY-FREE ACCESS TO yamaha XG SOUND LIBRARY for software Developers...............

link:
http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/55491478.html

and this article is good one too:

first short text from this article:

hree-point agreement:
Yamaha and Roland have agreed on the following three points.
1) Both companies will actively support the GM2 Format established in 1998 (see Note 2).
2) Both companies will offer open access to Yamaha's XG Format (see Note 3) and Roland's GS Format(See Note 4).
3) Both companies will develop hardware and software products to support all three formats, i.e. GM2, XG and GS.

"By combining our efforts and actively supporting the GM2, XG and GS Formats, we are committed to offering better compatibility and much wider availability of MIDI content to elevate the usage and benefit of MIDI," said Yamaha Corporation President Shuji Ito.
"Both Roland and Yamaha have pledged to actively seek the endorsement of other companies to ensure that GM2 becomes the global standard," added Roland Corporation President Katsuyoshi Dan.


link: http://www.global.yamaha.com/news/2001/20010119.html

[This message has been edited by AFG Music (edited 06-17-2010).]

Hi

The first article is 11 years old; and relates to sounds in games using the Microsoft Direct Music technology.

The second article is 9 years old. Nice intensions, but what has happened?

Jørgen

------------------
The Unofficial YAMAHA Keyboard Resource Site

the fact that yamaha make their styles backward compatible for use within their own products would indicate that copying styles from one yamaha product to use on another yamaha product might still fall under normal use but certainly cloning a yamaha product ,its styles, its internal sounds and then distributing that or selling that on another keyboard or packageing the styles as part of the sale on another keyboard is definately illegal and would not fall under normal use.

Obviusly it will be for lawyers to argue out what is normal use but its a high risk strategy for any business to copy another businesses work wholesale and then hope they can avoid copyright laws under "normal Use" as an exemption.

It is unlikely that private users would get prosecuted as there is no money in it but a commercial business most certainly would if the matter was brought before a judge.

[This message has been edited by spalding1968 (edited 06-18-2010).]

Hi

Don't mix things.

What is illegal, is illegal whether there is money involved or not.

But you are right, private users with no money involved will most probably not get prosecuted. But it is still not allowed to give away internal software, e.g. styles.

Regards
Jørgen

------------------
The Unofficial YAMAHA Keyboard Resource Site

the first article is about DLS format(DirectMusic's DownLoadable Sound (DLS)).
http://www.midi.org/techspecs/dls/dls.php


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DLS_format

but also about sounds in GAMES, you can read this in first article:

Yamaha Corporation, Hamamatsu City, Shizuoka, the world's largest manufacturer of musical instruments, has begun offering software developers royalty-free access to its library of voices that are compatible with DirectMusic, Microsoft's MIDI-based music creation tool.

Yamaha's library contains over 300 voices ranging from musical sounds to special sound effects, all recorded in high quality XG format, the company's electronic sound generator format for musical instruments and electronic music devices.

In addition, Yamaha is also granting developers permission to use voices from its electronic musical instruments in games developed with DirectMusic.
---------------------
and you can read also this in first article:

DirectMusic is garnering the attention of a large number of software developers as it provides an environment for developing interactive Windows software
with music and special sound effects based on the MIDI format. By using DirectMusic's DownLoadable Sound (DLS) feature that allows the unrestricted addition of voice data, software developers can include voices they have created on their own.
--------------------------
you can read also this in first article:

Yamaha is also granting software developers permission to use voices from its electronic musical instruments for creating their own DLS data, giving developers access to many special voices not included in the XG voice library.
---------------------------
you can read on second article:

2) Both companies will offer open access to Yamaha's XG Format (see Note 3) and Roland's GS Format(See Note 4).

----

what they meant with offer open acces to XG and GS format?

if i am wrong about this articles, any help is welcome.


[This message has been edited by AFG Music (edited 06-18-2010).]

no one can say whether you are wrong or right about the article AFG until you state what your view is. What point are you making ?

what they Meant by:
--------------------------
Yamaha is also granting software developers permission to use voices from its electronic musical instruments for creating their own DLS data, giving developers access to many special voices not included in the XG voice library.
-------------------------

it mean that someone can resample whole YAMAHA product to DLS format?

-------------------------
what they meant with offer open acces to XG and GS format?

is this about resampling sounds from hardware instruments output?

it means exactly what it says. Yamaha are granting SOME software developers permission to use some of their sounds. If you have not been granted permission or been offered to use some of their sounds then this obviously does not apply to you or anyone else that has not been specifivcally granted permission.