I had to go away for a day on business, so I'm just catching up on all this again.

Considering what's currently available, and what's underdevelopment. I'm honestly speechless. I don't know what to say at all to be honest.

I think I understand LIONSTRACS angle of approach here on all this, but I can't how a view like this would stand up in any court of law, or how you could even convince yourselves that this is sound argument for the right to do what is being done here.

Why. ?. Because at a basic level, what your NOT doing here is just sampling an instrument.
You can sample the sound produced by a real guitar, but if you sample a keyboard. Your not sampling the real guitar, your just re-recording someone else's recordings and calling them your own.

Here's my understanding of sound design and copyright law.

1: It is ok for you to sample any real instrument as the manufacture cannot copyright the sound produced, since this is a natural thing based on the laws of the universe and so on. In this case, the only thing the manufacture can protect is their design. In other words, Steinway could sue Yamaha if Yamaha bought a Steinway Piano and started to measure it, and clone it or parts of it's design based on what they see in the Steinway.

2: The only point where it is considered ok to sample a Keyboard that produces its sound based on PCM, is when you use the Engine of that keyboard to warp the original PCM data at a extreme level in order to create something truly new that sounds nothing like the unprocessed PCM data. For exampling, making a deep evolving Pad sound out of a Piano.

3: Modelling technology is not covered by the same laws as PCM. Modelling technology falls into the same class as a real instrument because it's not based on recordings of instruments to produce it's sound. So while you can sampling this technology freely, you cannot sample the factory sounds. The programming behind them would be the property of either the sound designer who worked for the company, or the company itself. It depends on the contract signed.

Regards.
James.