EXS 24 Logic Sampler Users Group

Eric Persing wrote:

>This is a very complicated subject, but there are two issues. One
>is the reselling of software, and the other is licensing sound
>recordings. It's easy to confuse them, but that's where people
>make the mistake.

>If you licensed a sample
>from MCA records for a project, you pay a fee, and you don't gain
>the right to sell that license to someone else.

Good point, but I would argue that loops (which, due my linear 
orientation, wasn't what I was thinking about!) are a different case. 
I meant playable instrument samples, including elements like major 
scale string runs, etc. Yes they're recordings, but unless you're 
easily amused, they generally don't mean anything until someone 
arranges them into a coherent musical idea! So they're software, not 
recordings.

>Resale would be so much easier for companies to deal with if
>copies couldn't be made, and deauthorization was easy and
>standardized. It poses a lot of problems when the user can hang
>on to the sounds after selling them...especially now that the CDs
>themselves aren't very important in actually using the product.

Again, I see that kind of theft as a separate issue - but a very real 
one that goes much farther than this. (In today's front page article 
about Tommy Mottola leaving Sony, the LA Times was going on about how 
it's the end of the era in which artist development was put ahead of 
the bottom line; music sales were down 11% because everyone's 
stealing it off the internet and burning their own CDs. And, rambling 
some more, I still think the answer is to bring back record album 
covers! That was what made owning a record so much more valuable than 
just having a cassette copy of it.)

Getting back to my original point, to me it isn't right that a 
company can charge well over $1000 for, say,  a library of orchestral 
string samples and then not let you sell it if you decide you don't 
need it anymore - or if something better comes out.

But thankfully I'm still using the Bass Legends disc I bought a few 
years ago after reviewing it and not wanting to send it back!
-- 

Nick Batzdorf
818/905-9101, fax -5434, cell 818/601-4874