Roland Attacks MT-32 Emulator Project

Posted by timothy on Saturday October 11, 2003 @08:23AM from the smart-responses dept.

canadacow writes "The MT-32 emulation project, which is an offshoot of the DosBox project recently received a cease and desist letter regarding the use of the PCM samples from the synthesizer. Normally this would be an open and shut case, but it just so happens that U.S. Copyright law (specifically 17 U.S.C. section 405) shows that Roland lost their copyright because nowhere did they explicity register it, and registering (or atleast copyright marking) was required before 1989. The MT-32, of course, was produced in 1987. You can find more details at the emulation forum on Vogons" In particular, read through this thread for Canadacow's response to Roland's lawyers, for the type of response that most lawyers probably don't expect from most programmers.

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Bizarre for a synth by tgv · 2003-10-11 08:27 · Score: 4, Insightful

For those of you who don't know: the MT-32 is a synthesizer module. So it's normal use is to generate sounds that people are going to use on commercial records. If you buy the box, you get the sounds. There are tons of sample CDs out there that contain samples of Roland instruments. So why is the PCM (sound) set of an MT-32 suddenly such a problem to them?