Doug, it’s not unclear at all. Their licensing is very clear. Take a look at a license from, say Garritan Orchestral Libraries:

“With this library, you are obtaining a license for your use only. The sounds, samples and programming in the Garritan Personal Orchestra™ library and Garritan Orchestral Strings remain the property of Gary Garritan and harps.com Corp. and are licensed (not sold) to you for use in music production, public performance, and reasonable musical purposes within musical compositions.

This license expressly forbids resale or other distribution of these sounds, either as they exist on these discs or any modification thereof. Any duplicating, copying, distributing, transferring, uploading or downloading, trading or reselling of these libraries or any of the contents therein is strictly prohibited. You cannot sell, loan, share, rent, lease, loan, trade, reissue, resell nor assign any or all of the enclosed sounds to anyone. You cannot redistribute them through an archive, nor a collection, nor through the Internet, nor binaries groups, nor newsgroup, nor any type of removable media nor through a network. The sounds and samples contained herein cannot be edited, digitally altered, re-synthesized or manipulated without direct written consent of Gary Garritan. The enclosed sounds cannot be re-used in any other commercial sample library or any competitive product.”

They know what they’re doing.

Joe

Sure, for private use just like a CD. But does it imply a license for sound recordings (which have the additional statute), and/or public distribution or public display?

That’s the trick, and since people sell keyboard sample sets (from sampled steinways to cacophonic crashes) for profit. Its totally unclear as to how one is licensed to use these sound samples, and if the 6th Cir. opinion is taken to its literal conclusion, then most keyboard players who record or distribute their work based on keyboard sample sets in the United States are now copyright infringers.

Doug- you could argue that Yamaha and Korg give implied licenses to use these recorded sounds in exchange for purchasing their equipment.

Derek- great stuff, as usual. What brand of racehorse blinders are these guys wearing?

By this logic, wouldn’t tone samples used to run electronic keyboards require a separate copyright license? All those bands that used their Yamaha or Korg without obtaining a separate license for the sounds might be in trouble. Think of the licensing profits! But hey, that’s the free market at work.