[fluid-dev] Re: [ANN] Beta test of the Resonance Instrument Database

[Toby]

address@hidden wrote:
> If I decide to mix a sine wave with a square wave, add some filter and
> reverb to it and make it sound unisono it becomes my sound.

> I never heard of a musician [...] who was sentenced for using a [...]
> hardware synth and selling the songs created with 'em. 

That's right, because you used freely-available resources (sine waves)
and/or resources for which you had a license (your hardware synths) to
create something artistic with it.  The resulting *new* sound or song is
yours to sell/give away.  *New* is the keyword here.

At the other end of the spectrum, if you ripped the sampled sounds or
algorithms from the synth's internal chips and distributed them on a
website, I think it would be considered illegal by any court.

What about recording individual sounds from the analog output and making
a SoundFont/whatever out of them?  That is definitely a grey area.  
The big companies won't be very happy about you sampling their products
and distributing their work on the internet so that people can avoid
buying their sampler.  This applies especially to PCM based synths,
which are based on digital samples to begin with.

Most people would argue that it's difficult to prove you didn't add
anything artistic to your recorded sounds; that it's unlikely companies
will go after people distributing samples of their old/vintage/retired
instruments; that there are tons of sample CDs being sold that do
exactly that.  

But the big companies have powerful legal departments, they actively
seek infringements on their copyrighted sounds, they are protected by
the Sound Recording Copyright Act in the US and similar laws in other
countries and they have regularly stopped anyone selling sample CDs of
their intruments.

IANAL, obviously.


Toby

-- 
«Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it.» -Brian W. Kernighan