EXS 24 Logic Sampler Users Group

Hi Murray,

On 27-Dec-04, at 10:23 PM, Murray McDowall wrote:

>  Do you think Roland and Emapple are missing a trick here and should 
> change
>  their licence agreements to that anyone who uses these sounds has to 
> buy a
>  licence to Logic Pro 7 or a Korg Trident of their very own?

Some of it comes down to how easy is it to enforce in a court of law as 
well as how easy it is to determine that these were used.  In the case 
of someone playing a studio's Korg Triton (I think that's what you 
mean), it is too difficult for Korg to track people/studios down and 
too costly.  However, if someone creates a sample CD based on sounds 
from the Korg Triton, even if those sounds were programmed by yourself, 
and either market it as a sample lib of Korg Triton sounds or Korg 
recognizes some of its samples on your CD and you have not cleared the 
ROM samples through Korg, These companies will sue you for copyright 
infringement.  Same with Roland or any other Rompler manufacturer.

> Do you think that
>  UAD should make any band that uses the Fairchild compressor on their 
> CD should
>  pay for a licence for the use of this software?
>  Would you want to own these products if these conditions applied?

This is not a valid comparison since the Fairchild compressor is not a 
licensed recording.  It is a piece of software.  I know that you are 
trying to make your point but we need to be reasonable when making 
arguments for or against IMHO.  This IMHO is a real stretch.

>  What about your DAW software - does it seem fair that a band can 
> avail itself
>  of Logic and Protools and a host of other software items just for 
> paying for a
>  few hours of studio time? If an engineer/producer's licence of 
> Logic/Pro
>  Tools/UAD stuff is enough why should a sample vendor be able to 
> demand a
>  different regime?

Again, this is software and not a licensed recording.

>  I believe the classic counter case is the one mentioned previously on 
> this list
>  before by Eric P. from Spectrasonics who cited Enigma's use of 
> african vocal
>  samples as the lead vocal line on their million selling album which 
> was used on
>  rather too many soundtracks at the time. But should the same apply to 
> a set of
>  drum or piano samples or a string library?

Why not?  Just because one sound is more recognizable than another, 
does not make it any different IMHO.

>  The other point is that being too aggressive in their requirements 
> can actually
>  come back and bite a vendor:  a studio owner might say, "Why the f@#$ 
> should I
>  buy any sample libraries - I'm not making an album for myself." There 
> goes a
>  customer.

Perhaps.

>  We have seen how overzealous copy protection has burnt some vendors -
>  encouraging legit users to look elsewhere for plugins and widespread 
> use of
>  pirate versions.

In some cases, it hasn't.  Emagic/Apple have fairly strong copy 
protection.  While I know that some people have been turned off from 
the use of a dongle, some people still pay for it anyway.  I don't 
think that there is hard evidence that it has hurt them.  I would like 
to actually see proof that it has hurt some vendors - all I've ever 
seen has been claims of such.

In a perfect world, we would not need any copy protection nor would 
sample library developers need licensing agreements like the ones 
currently in place.  We don't live in a perfect world though....

Best regards,
Fernstudio

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