Possible Implications?

Just read a story about a federal appeals court ruling that licenses for sampled music must be obtained before they can be used in another piece of music, even if the sample is "unrecognizable". The story is here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5944091/.

From a moral and legal standpoint, what does this imply for the skinning community? So far, the community has set its own rules and standards, but is that likely to change if rulings like this start to affect more than the musical arts?

My personal opinion is that this community is doing a good job of policing itself, and any intervention from outside groups or authorities should be resisted. This ruling should have no effect other than to generate (interesting) topics for discussion.

My background is that I am a consumer more than a creator. What little work I've done has been nothing more than adaptations of other's creatons, with their permission. I recognize that my opinion may be biased because of this, so I'm opening up the discussion to get a feel for what the "real" artists in the community have to say.

What do you think?

Jeff
1,655 views 4 replies
Reply #2 Top
It won't have any impact on this type of area really.
The way entertainment law works is(was) that if you sampled a piece of music from another artist/musician, and used it on a commercial recording, you didn't have get permission from the original artist, however, you were lawfully bound to pay that artists royalites.
Reply #3 Top
The only thing in this area skinning I've ever wondered about is when an artist includes a font with their skin. Isn't that redistributing someone else's work? A perfect example of a favorite font distributed in a few WBSkins is HOOGE which is copyrighted to ©2001 | www.miniml.com | design by craig kroeger which he sells for $10 per font or $100 for all his fonts at his website.
Reply #4 Top
Yeah, Hooge shouldn't be distributed any longer. It was originally a freeware font, along with 2 other he made, but then he started doing them in packs that had to be purchased.