Thomas,
if Christian ask you to tell the visitors at your site that the styles you have downloadable is his work and from from his website, that is totally different from copyrights.
That is good manners to do if you offer someone elses stuff.
However, there are songs in that collections who are written by other authors/composers, such as i.e. Tico-Tico, and that is maybe a song within the copyrighted category?

Lindoz, the discussion about styles and copyright has been/is a "hot topic" at the SZ General Arranger forum too.
Yamaha was/is in that discussion, and there is some interesting reading about it both at SZ and Yahoo Yamaha Groups.
Kind regards
GJ

[This message has been edited by Gunnar Jonny (edited 04-13-2002).]

Ok Gunnar
I will take a look on it
Lindoz

the musicians union has rules about how many notes need to be the same for a melody to be copyrighted.

The style creators never have the same notes as the song for more than a few notes to avoid the rule. That's why the keyboard intros which identify the song always need a little editing to give the original intro.

If the style is very close to the song, they may well have to pay a royalty to the composer/arranger, I don't know. Maybe that is why Yamaha insisted on the removal of their internal styles from the user groups?

thus a style is not the same as a song, but if you can prove creation of an original style you can still sue if someone copies it, or distributes it unauthorised.

Hi again
The truth is that there are no styles which has any copyright exept those you can compare with a protected/copyright song. No one has bring the matter to court of any style. Not in EU and not in US. However, in Sweden we have a great sample soundlibrary on the internet. This library is own by the SAMI ( Swedish musicians ),and is in some ways protected. Songs however, is copyrighted in STIM ( Swedish songwriters).
If anyone is interested in sample sounds, you can mail me for further information.
Lindoz


[This message has been edited by Lindoz (edited 04-13-2002).]

Hi Lindoz,
if you can't own a style then how come Yamaha lawyers closed down the download sections of the Yamaha User Groups?

Hi Alec
They maybe are afraid of what´s comes up in the future. And if some of their styles is such styles that belongs to copyright songs, they are in trouble soon...
Rgd
Lindoz

Hi Lindoz,
The 2000 and 907 styles were all freely available and by no means are all of them based on songs, many are just the standard Yamaha simple 2 and 4 measure styles.

Yet Yamaha lawyers insisted that the user groups remove the styles of the new keyboards purely from their own commercial interest point of view. Thus there must be some legal ownership for them to do this, otherwise the user groups could just ignore them?

It looks like Yamaha want to offer styles (but only from the older products) at their own web site, so this move was to strengthen their own position in this regard, and just to prevent others from offering the Yamaha styles.

It sounds like copyright protection for keyboard music styles is still in a legal twilight zone. It seems to me, that if a keyboard manufacturer developes a product for sale to the general public that includes onboard rhythm styles, then the buyer has purchased permission to use the styles in any way they please, even for commercial gain. Why would any musician, professional or amateur, have to pay the instrument maker for the music that comes from that instrument, when ultimately the musician is responsible for the composition? Do you think Baldwin should collect royalities for every song produced with their instruments? On course not! It would be absurd. Even the commercial music styles we buy on disk, should be ours to use for whatever reason. That there is a way to delete the sequenced song and keep the style, is something that was developed by the manufacturer, not by the end user, and shouldn't be a factor to keep us from using the "purchased" style in our musical career. By offering us the style for money, it would seem again, we are buying the right to use the style for personal gain. Professional musicians must run some sort of risk by using styles or music at gigs where they are paid for their performance, the same as those who use the styles for recorded music that they will eventually try to sell. The difference is that the recording musician pays for the use of the music, not the style of the composition. If you were to copy an Elvis song note for note, sound for sound, with your voice or instrument, who gets the royalities? The song writer, not Elvis. It also seems that if there were an actual legal leg to stand on, this would have gone before some court, somewhere, long before now. A precedence has been allowed to establish itself that might not be able to be changed without a lot of legal wrangling. But then, not being a lawyer, I may be totally wrong. Just don't ask me to be on the jury and be in favor of the manufacturer.

but no-one has objected to performers using arrangers with built in styles on stage for commercial gain, if anything they would be pleased for the free advertising.

Yamaha have objected to distribution of their styles by third parties, I'm guessing either because they fear the effect on sales of those products, or because they want control of the distribution themselves so you have to go to their web site.

The baldwin piano argument does not stand because there are no styles in a piano, you have to produce all musical results yourself. When using a style in an arranger keyboard someone else has already done more than half the work for you.

If you produced a million seller with their style and made a million dollars they may well have something to say about it, even if it was your melody? Now that would be an interesting test case...

Hey what about the sounds they are all made or sampled by somebody or from something else if we compose
we cannot use styles just in case we infringe on someones copywrite than the sounds we use also must come under the same heading,:confused
jan