OT? Copying samples from defunct companies....The moral issues

[Hardy Heern]

Ladies, Gentlemen and clever folk,

I mentioned in a post that I had the Sonido Media 'The Orchestra' sample CD and had been impressed by the 'mouthorgan free sound' of the cello. Someone has expressed an interest in trying these soundfonts but I am confronted by an obvious moral dilemma. I would welcome your opinions, personal and legal, about the ethics of copying samples (for the person who is interested in them) from my CD which I bought from Sonido bearing in mind that the company stopped trading some time back. Does the latter fact make any difference to the normal ruling.

I bought 'The Orchestra' sample CD from Sonido Media in Nov 1998. Like all my music software and samples I have hardly used it but I did do one song with the cello and piano and was rather impressed at the time. The entire library is about 300MB so it pales, sizewise, compared to GPO etc.

I found Sonido extremely good to deal with and they were very helpful at the time although I bought the disk from their UK agent for £26!! It was a very professionally produced package with a nice little pamphlet with all the sounds listed etc. I'm always sorry to see small companies disappear after all the hard work they must have put into their businesses....but that's life unfortunately and, being positive, hopefully the owners went on to more lucrative work!

This is worth some consideration as, sadly, all the companies who are active now will not necessarily be active in say 5-10yrs time so the situation will arise again.

Thanks, in advance, to anyone who can throw any light on this dilemma.

Cheers

Frank
PS I have edited this after reading the first 4 responses as I realised it was very badly and ambiguously written to the extent that it seemed that I had bought copies!

[josejherring]

If your friend is going to use it to try it out for his own personal use then there's no harm in copying the CD. If he's going to use it to make money, then find the bloody owners of the company, I'm sure there still around somewhere, and buy another CD from them for 27 pounds this time.

Remeber companies are made up of people and people die far less frequently, thank God. Look them up and give them a ring and give them the money for their hard work.

Cheers,

Jose

[Hans Adamson]

The creator still owns all copyrights to the recorded material. Whenever it is broadcast or performed publically he has a right to compensation, unless a license has been sold to the composer. In your case you have purchased a license for use of these samples in your recordings. If someone else want to use them in broadcast recordings it would be best to clear this with the copyright holder first. Find the guy and make a deal. This is to protect yourself.

Hans

[Bruce A. Richardson]

The answer, whether the use is commercial or not, is no...it's absolutely not legal or ethical to allow someone the use of the samples. There is only one entity legally entitled to do so, and that is the copyright holder.

[JonFairhurst]

There are two hard ways to deal with this and one easy way:

1) Build a time machine and go back in time, so you can buy it from the company, or

2) Build a time machine and go forward in time, until the copyright has expired.

3) Locate the copyright holder and deal with them directly.



-JF

[Hardy Heern]

I have edited my initial post after reading the first 4 responses as I realised it was very badly, and ambiguously, written to the extent that it seemed that I had bought copies! Apologies.

I suspect that the answer could be quite complicated, depending on how the company was set up. Who was the director. Did the company own the rights or did the individual....blah blah....

frank

PS Thanks for your posts!

[robin123]

If the company is not doing business anymore, it's perfectly ok, as nobody is loosing the money.

About ethics - who is the one who has never done anything illegal!!! Have you ever thought about ethics whenever you are speeding or park somewhere where you should not!!!!

[Martin Hines]

Frank,

I performed a "Sonido Media" search and found that some of their samples are still being sold (by Creative's Soundfont website). Your friend might want to contact Creative to see if they can locate "Sonido Media". Unless Soundfont.com bought a "bulk license", they must send royalty checks to someone:

http://www.soundfont.com/downloads/sonido_roland.asp

sales@soundfont.com

[Bruce A. Richardson]

If the company is not doing business anymore, it's perfectly ok, as nobody is loosing the money.

About ethics - who is the one who has never done anything illegal!!! Have you ever thought about ethics whenever you are speeding or park somewhere where you should not!!!!

That is absolutely untrue. Copyright is copyright. Whoever owned those sounds still owns them. No one besides the person who holds the copyright has ANY rights whatsoever to distribute property which is not his own.

COPY-RIGHT. Look at the word. If you do not own the COPY-RIGHT, then you have no COPYING RIGHTS.

[josejherring]

If the company is not doing business anymore, it's perfectly ok, as nobody is loosing the money.

About ethics - who is the one who has never done anything illegal!!! Have you ever thought about ethics whenever you are speeding or park somewhere where you should not!!!!

I really take personal offense to this statement. How would you like it if somebody stole your music and played it on action trailers and you never saw a cent for it. I bet you'd be thinking about ethics then!!!

This has happened to me in New York and Los Angeles and I can tell you that it makes you feel like sh**.

If people were more ethical about this sort of thing we wouldn't be having these super encrypted samples that will only play on one sample player and these ridiculously complicate "authorization" processes that bind your samples to a limited number of computers.

I pay for what I use. I don't use what I don't pay for. And I hate to suffer because some people have other attitudes about this.

I mean, my God. There are sample developers right here in this forum! They work there butts off to bring us the very best at a reasonable price. They deserve money!

If you want to give your work away for free why don't you come over to my house. My garden needs some work. Oh yeah, slavery is illegal. Guess what, so is giving away somebody elses work.

Jose