Original message from Korgforums: http://www.korgforums.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=25832&sid=9b8b3ceb545a673ac119723fa0d409cb

The fact is, we're still waiting for a major ruling from a court, whether European or American. And there is no intellectual property law that deals with this specific issue. Unlike using samples from records in your music.

At the moment, we say it's OK to sample an instrument so long as you don't sample the factory banks, to protect the work performed by the developer(s) of these banks, but the simple fact remain, we don't know.

Liontracs are not the first ones to do something like this. Indeed, Roland sued Nice Bytes in Germany a few years back as the latter were selling sample cd-roms of well known instruments, although only Roland sued. That case is still pending and the German court of appeal has not rendered its ruling yet. No doubt it will make case law at European level, and I wouldn't be surprised if either party, and specifically the losing one, used article 177 to ask the European Court to intervene and clarify some points of law (art 177 is a procedure whereby you can ask the European Court to clarify a point of law whilst you're into proceedings at national level).

So although caution is advisable, nobody can say for definite whether selling a sample DVD of Tyros sounds breaks the law or not.

Now, suppose it's not OK to sample the factory banks. How much do you need to modify a patch so it's no longer considered a factory sample ? If (from 0 to 127) a particular setting is 68. Does using 72 mean you're no longer sampling the factory patch ? Tricky isn't it !


Finally another there is not blind and for sure had read and understand what is the GPL license and what is the original protect RAW data...