What do you “own” and what don’t you “own” and how can you use it? A question that I don’t have the legal training to answer. I always thought if you aren’t selling it or using it commercially you are good with sampling anything. Guess I was wrong.
Taken to an extreme, it should be obvious why this isn’t the case. What would happen if you could buy an album, create one long sample of the whole thing, and then give it away? I’m sure there’s a complex web of legal precedent over what is protected to encourage artists to create and what is considered fair use of their creative work.
It's a very long continuum of examples for copyright of recorded works (which carries over into discussions of sample based synths -- hardware or software), and I'm not a copyright lawyer, but let's consider 2 examples from this continuum that are closer to one another factually:
1. You rip samples from a Mellotron (or software instruments thereof). Doing nothing but copy and distribute. Obviously not allowed.
2. You sample a Mellotron instrument, clean the samples up with a tool like iZotope RX, then import those samples into an instrument like the PX where you add modulation, filtering, layering with other sounds, and then effects. THEN you sample THAT creation and distribute (for free or commercially). One could easily argue that you're on solid ground there because your creation is so far removed from the original "recordings". There's a legal analysis at work here which is more complicated than I'm presenting, but you get the idea...
Here's one problem. Copyright law isn't "black and white" -- like many areas of the law, it cannot be. With copyright law there exists the law's competing interests of protecting creative works while allowing space for more creative works.
Here's another problem. Copyright attorneys are paid hourly. In my second example, the Mellotron guys could still feel like you've infringed upon their work and find a copyright lawyer to file suit (even if they aren't likely to win) -- as Lady Gaia pointed out: anyone can sue anyone for anything.
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