Vintage Synth Explorer Forums

I am wondering just how ethical it is to sample a drum machine (or sampling drum machine) for it's one-shot sounds and redistribute those sounds online?
Are there legal issues to be dealt with? If not, does it take away from the original sound designer of those sounds?

check out the link to free samples @ the top of the samplers thread.
first one in there has about every machine in existence.

Ethical? Dunno, that's up to you and the people to whom you potentially distribute these sounds. But it's not illegal.

See this other current thread for a discussion of related and relevant legal issues: http://www.vintagesynth.com/forum/viewt ... 5&start=15

Thanks for the reply and the link.

I'm thinking that it's not really quite ethical to do it even though it can be tempting for sure.
Whether it's legal or not doesn't matter so much once you decide that it's unethical.

There sure are a lot of grey areas in copyright and trademark policy and I suppose it only gets
more and more tricky as time goes on in this Digital Age.

Well, there are companies out there that sell sample discs of classic and current drum machines. There are also people that sample their drum machines and upload the samples for free to anyone that wants them.

As long as you are not illegally downloading samples that came from a company that charges for those samples, you are ok.

MrHope wrote:I'm thinking that it's not really quite ethical to do it even though it can be tempting for sure.
Whether it's legal or not doesn't matter so much once you decide that it's unethical.

Now that you mention it it's probably not ethical to use recordings of those drum machines in your songs either. I guess you'll either have to build your own drum machine or just sell instructions on how to program your drums on the listener's own drum machine.

Is it ethical/legal to 1:1 recreate a 909 Snare with -for instance- FM8 or any other capable synth, sample it, and sell it?

I think it's not much of a bother, be it illegal or not, the Rolands, Korgs and Yamahas are not going to spend their time hunting down everyone who used one of their drumsounds in a track, while not even *knowing* those sounds are sampled or original.

Drums can be so generic.. how about non-drum sounds? Is it allowed to (multi)sample the Flying Waltz from the JV1080 and sell it on a sample CD? Or heck, how about sampling the ROM 1:1 (clean sounds, no DSP, filters, mod, envelopes etc.) and make a good match for the original loop addresses, can we sell those -own- recordings?

Unless a manufacturer has actually copyrighted their samples (is this even possible?) it's not illegal, and I assume even if it is illegal somewhere it's probably legal somewhere else since copyright laws vary a lot between countries.

Ethical? Well a lot of people do it and lot of people use those samples so you tell me if it's ethical.

Well it's a bit complex, they may not have claimed copyrights on their ROMs, but face it: the (for instance) JV1080 came out in, what was it, 1994. In 1994 you just weren't going to sample the ROM 1:1, in 1994 a JV was what you needed when you needed the sounds of a JV. So Roland may have never considered stating that one couldn't sample their ROM and resell it. But these days, companies like Roland, Yamaha, Korg and the likes may have a problem when all they do is release a ROMpler. It's well possible to sample a complete ROM in less than a day. Modern sample players have their own LFOs, envelopes, modulation matrix and DSPs, and voice count nor multitimbrality is not much of a problem anymore. It takes one person to sample the ROM, recreate a bunch o' presets with -say- Halion, and spread them on the 'net. And gone is most of the value of the synth it came from!

The discussion may be similar to the CD/DVD download discussion. Many people argue that the traditional CD/DVD business has become obsolete and that internet is simply the modern way to deal with distribution. Perhaps ROMplers are also products from an obsolete page of the book..

Give them away? Noone is going to care about that... maybe if you went and sold them, then maybe...but even then, probably not.

You can copyright sound recordings, which means records, tapes, CD's, 8-tracks and the like.

It does not mean sounds contained within the memory of a musical instrument (whether these sounds were generated through synthesis or sampled/recorded from acoustic instruments). If the timbres within an instrument were copyrighted, you wouldn't be free to use them on your own recording (sans permission) whether they came from the original instrument or were sampled onto another and played from there. Of course no-one would buy an instrument like this.

So even if Roland or Yamaha could copyright the individual sounds on their sample-based instruments (and I'm not entirely sure they could, as I think format comes into consideration when determining if something is actually a released "sound recording" for legal purposes) it would be against their own interests to do so.

They could state that the only person allowed to 'redistribute' the sounds (e.g. usage in a recording such as a song) would be the one who bought the machine. Something similar is stated for sample libs. This could mean that if someone downloads a JV ROM soundset without owning the JV may not be allowed to redistribute those sounds in form of a song or anything else.

pricklyrobot wrote:You can copyright sound recordings, which means records, tapes, CD's, 8-tracks and the like.

It does not mean sounds contained within the memory of a musical instrument...

Wrong. You're making an assumption there. In actual fact, no country states in law precisely what consitutes a sound recording, because the technology changes faster than the law can.

The definition of copyright, by its very nature- "Intellectual property"- is a grey area, and it's up to the judge to decide what constitutes a sound recording, and what constitutes a breach of copyright, in each specific case.

Actually, Roland have successfully issued cease and desist orders to small companies selling samples of the V-Drum. This was on the sound on sound forum about 2 years ago. It turns out that the V Drum uses samples more than modelling.

I would venture to say that, because straight samples of drum machines have been around for as long as we've had samplers, that no judge could reasonably say that this was a breach of copyright. But stranger decisions have been made in a court of law!

madtheory wrote: it's up to the judge to decide what constitutes a sound recording, and what constitutes a breach of copyright, in each specific case.

Well yes, these things are based as much on precedent as they are on written legal code (and I was only giving my, admittedly non-expert, interpretation of US law which may differ significantly from other countries).

From http://www.copyright.gov (regarding US copyright):
What does copyright protect?
Copyright, a form of intellectual property law, protects original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works, such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software, and architecture. Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation, although it may protect the way these things are expressed.

To my mind a sound inside of a synth (even a sound that was originally sampled from an acoustic instrument) falls under "systems, or methods of operation" and not "works of authorship". Otherwise the synth (or drum machine) in question ceases to be an instrument and becomes something like a karaoke machine.

Potentially a synth manufacturer could treat the on-board sounds as software and control their use that way, but I've never bought a synth that required me to accept a licensing agreement.

madtheory wrote:Roland have successfully issued cease and desist orders to small companies selling samples of the V-Drum.

Large corporations frequently issue cease and desist letters to companies (particularly smaller ones with few or no legal resources) who are doing things they don't like, things which may or may not be illegal. In the absence of an actual lawsuit and subsequent legal decision, the mere issuance of a cease and desist order doesn't mean much.

madtheory wrote:I would venture to say that, because straight samples of drum machines have been around for as long as we've had samplers, that no judge could reasonably say that this was a breach of copyright. But stranger decisions have been made in a court of law!

Yes, if you're going to distribute something (especially if you're going to do it for money) that you didn't create from scratch, there's always a chance of you pissing off someone with deep enough pockets to nail you to the wall.

It's not big and it's not clever...