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Is it legal?

I am starting to see Splice ads everywhere, e.g. music forums on reddit, man I wish someone would take them down. Piracy is one thing but a BUSINESS based on piracy really grinds my gears.
 
I am starting to see Splice ads everywhere, e.g. music forums on reddit, man I wish someone would take them down. Piracy is one thing but a BUSINESS based on piracy really grinds my gears.
The business is not based on piracy. Just because 1 sample pack was based on sample libraries does not mean everything is. You have got lots of labels in there - Audentity, Function Loops, Loopmasters, Prime Loops, Producer Loops, Sample Magic etc. They're doing original content.
Something went wrong when Splice ordered this sample pack from some producer.
 
The business is not based on piracy. Just because 1 sample pack was based on sample libraries does not mean everything is. You have got lots of labels in there - Audentity, Function Loops, Loopmasters, Prime Loops, Producer Loops, Sample Magic etc. They're doing original content.
Something went wrong when Splice ordered this sample pack from some producer.
There is a tendency for "crowd sourced" content based businesses to not look to close at this type of thing. Or to say it's the responsibility of the "producers" and not them as middle man. I don't agree.

I think if you build your business with this type of model you have massive responsibility to do it properly and keep bootleg/pirate stuff off of your platform.
 
I’m not sure how you manage to get that interpretation!

He’s saying precisely the opposite.

If you don’t look after your own IP, why should you expect anyone else to value it.

ie: look after your own IP.

We strongly protect our IP at Spitfire, to the extent of having three independent companies working on anti piracy, and having our own traceable methods of preventing illegal use of our IP.

Apart from anything personal - it’s our absolute duty to our customers to protect our IP as strongly as we can.

Best,

Paul

Thankyou for doing so too Paul! If we as developers do nothing, then nothing changes. Also worth keeping in mind (and I am sure this is what you team are doing also) that if you want quick action, a break of the EULA moves into copyright law, meaning you can file DMCA takedown notices. It won't get you lost revenue back but at least they wont continue to profit off your work!

-DJ
 
The business is not based on piracy. Just because 1 sample pack was based on sample libraries does not mean everything is. You have got lots of labels in there - Audentity, Function Loops, Loopmasters, Prime Loops, Producer Loops, Sample Magic etc. They're doing original content.
Something went wrong when Splice ordered this sample pack from some producer.

From speaking to a few of the sample pack makers for splice over the past day, they are apparantly told by SPLICE that if they edit the sample library then its ok to make new samples with. Which is wrong. And they know its wrong. Meaning they are willingly redistributing samples they dont have the rights to. That is what piracy is in a nutshell. As you never actually own the samples you purchase but a licence to use them in music.

-DJ
 
Also this is the company that allowed their producers to resample and 'edit' direct cuts from the DOOM soundtrack.



Mick Gordon (the amazing composer behind the music) did not give permission to do so and was understandably upset. Splice did nothing about it, because they know they can get away with it. How ever if a composer was to use those samples they could be liable for a copyright claim from ID Software. Which is why its no better than piracy. Professionals should steer well clear!

-DJ
 
Mick Gordon (the amazing composer behind the music) did not give permission to do so and was understandably upset. Splice did nothing about it, because they know they can get away with it. How ever if a composer was to use those samples they could be liable for a copyright claim from ID Software. Which is why its no better than piracy. Professionals should steer well clear!
Yeah this is not ok. I hope they go out of business tomorrow, or someone with the will and resources takes them out and ends up owning the founders' houses.

Especially because the work he did on that soundtrack was incredible! Not just the output but the actual work he did was an amazing blend of technical and artistry. Total merge of genius and competence and I do not mean that in any kind of sarcastic way: it's unique, rare, and awesome.

His GDC talk covers it, worth every second:
 


Might be a wise thing to not use packs by KSHMR :/
...or published by Splice. Better using the other labels publishing their stuff on Splice.
 
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Yeah it's BS. If KSHMR is still on the site, they are lying thieves. Also, wtf is with them pushing responsibility onto users or legit copyright owners, like who has time to police everything. I can not stand these scammers and theives building whole businesses on this and just never caring or taking this into account.

If you are a building a "platform" with user generated content delivery/sales you need to build-in some kind(s) of solutions to this. If you can't solve it then your business is de facto broken. If you go ahead you should go to jail. I'm serious. If KSHMR is still on Splice then the people who run that company should be in jail.

I know it sounds like I'm over reacting but I'm just so sick of creatives/artists/musicians being ripped off at every turn. Endlessly. Have you never been ripped off? I have! And it's endemic. Everywhere.

Pay to play. Record contracts. Managers. Hollywood Accounting. All the BS Christian talks about in his videos-- producer wants points for saying 'drums should be louder'. Get outta my face with this! Enough!

Stop stealing from the people who make things and if you build your business in this way I hope you fall in poop.
 
Ok, so on the topic of splice, I got Serum on a rent-to-own basis. I'm very interested in making my own presets and wavetables for use within serum, with no real intention to sell any of them but having a firm 'never say never' stance.

So, should I only make wavetables and presets from samples I recorded myself? Do we know of any companies that are ok with the selling of transformative work? What kind of EULA's am I looking for?

I have no intention of having any of the presets or wavetables I am making sound anything like the original. I am, however, a person of principle so 'getting away with it' tastes sour to me.
 
No one is ok with selling DERIVATIVE works. Modifying samples is not transformative (from legal perspective). To be transformative you have to make a significant change to the meaning of the work, generally-- there's a bunch of tests-- but generally just editing stuff is not sufficient.

Example would be take a play or movie about one thing and 'transform' it into a sculpture that ALSO now means something different, like you are either inverting the meaning of the original work, or maybe it took place in the past and now you're turning it into a comment about something happening today, etc. That's the kind of threshold you're looking for if you want a work to be transformative.

I'm not a lawyer and I'm not claiming this is the minimum threshold, I'm just saying that that this is kind of the intended use of transformative exceptions to copyright, and if you're not doing something like this you have a harder time arguing transformative use.

Recently there was another case where Dr. Seuss sued a Star-Trek themed riff on Oh The Places You'll Go! and they were able to argue transformative use even though it was still a book. So yeah there are always exceptions, but one thing about the law is every case is different. There may be something deep down in the text of the ruling that pushed that case over the line and it may not apply to the next one. Or to yours.

I think the moral question is actually the most interesting one. What does it mean for you to be importing samples and modifying them etc. I think yes you should record your own sounds. I would not import other peoples' samples into Serum and sell them even if they are modified. I just would not be able to accept that regardless of my changes its DNA is still someone else's work.

I would look for CC / public domain recordings and make my own. Especially for wavetables, they are small short samples that don't need huge multisaples/roundrobins, etc., yeah? So taking a few snippets from recordings you made should be easy. Not as easy as just importing someone else's samples of course ;) but easier than building a huge Kontakt instrument.

But that only applies to stuff I would sell. For my own musical use, everything is fair game. Even Omnisphere (which a lot of people object to its EULA because it limits non-musical use of the samples) says straight up you can do anything you want if you're not selling samples.

What if it's just for my own use and I don't distribute the samples I've created?
If you're a licensed user, you are welcome to use your Spectrasonics instruments and libraries to create new audio samples and loops for your own use. The important thing is not to distribute them.
 
Thank you for your thoughts. I just found out that VSCO Community is Creative Commons 0 (public domain) so I've basically found what I was looking for.

EDIT: Actually, I've found a *lot* of usable Creative Commons samples. I don't think I'll need much of anything until my own recording environment is up to snuff.

EDIT: I've also found out that CC0 is not the same as public domain, though the end result is similar. Good to know for others who are looking for usable samples.
 
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So where does someone like this developer fall?

https://www.beatmachine.co.uk/vst-instruments.html

He outright samples sounds off of synth Roland's sound cards, he uses artists' likenesses, in both his ads and the gui for his plugs to which I'm sure they were most likely neither asked, nor compensated for, distributes Alan Wilder's Emax samples (of which I could swear his original Ebay ad said the winner was forbidden to resell the samples), and sells a ton of sample libraries such as Stock Aitken Waterman, Depeche Mode, And a bunch of "80s" ones (19xx libraries) where he flat out says that he went through the multitracks for the songs and sampled the instruments right off the multi tracks from the original songs for all these libraries.
 
Use of unmodified Samples appearing in isolation such as, but not limited to,
So if I have a Damage drum loop starting off a song - and I did not add any EQ, compression, etc. - and no other instruments were playing at the time, I would need Heavyocity's permission to release the track?
 
So if I have a Damage drum loop starting off a song - and I did not add any EQ, compression, etc. - and no other instruments were playing at the time, I would need Heavyocity's permission to release the track?
Technically, yes, because you are redistributing audio from the library in a way that makes it easy to copy.

But in my opinion, such rules are designed more for deterring intentional malicious copyright infringement -- not stifling a legitimate license owner's creativity. For example, many developers will have a similar rule stating you can't have a composition that plays single notes from their library in isolation. The rule is not designed to prevent a composer from playing a few single notes in isolation if that's what his composition needs -- the rule is designed to deter someone from making a composition out of single notes in a chromatic scale (or loops if a loop library) which can then be copied and repackaged as a new samples.
 
Technically, yes, because you are redistributing audio from the library in a way that makes it easy to copy.

But in my opinion, such rules are designed more for deterring intentional malicious copyright infringement -- not stifling a legitimate license owner's creativity. For example, many developers will have a similar rule stating you can't have a composition that plays single notes from their library in isolation. The rule is not designed to prevent a composer from playing a few single notes in isolation if that's what his composition needs -- the rule is designed to deter someone from making a composition out of single notes in a chromatic scale (or loops if a loop library) which can then be copied and repackaged as a new samples.
This, it's obvious when someone is taking the piss. So no you are not allowed to do that but so long as it's clearly being used in a piece of music as intended and just happens to be naked for a few seconds, no one is coming after you for that I don't think. If you however bundle up a bunch of loops together and try to sell it as a sample library....lawyers....lawyers everywhere.

There have actually been companies here who outsourced their sampling to external people. One of those external people did exactly this and slammed competing products sounds together and the company actually released the product (I do think unknowingly, which is almost just as bad in terms of management). Once it was discovered it was pulled down pretty quick, but I heard they got lucky not to be sued in that instance as the library actually sold quite a few copies. Luckily the company being pirated took mercy and accepted it being removed. Not sure how it resolved after that, that's all I remember hearing. So there are examples of people chasing it down. But that situation was clearly in the wrong, but it makes a good example of why that rule exists in terms of practicality.

If you are not comfortable with it don't risk it. But its usually crystal clear what your intentions are and that is more what they will be looking at.
 
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