Did someone notice that, among the user license conditions, it is explicitly written that “You are not permitted to publish and/or distribute any recording(s) made with Sweelinq without our written permission.”

How did you deal with this restriction?

No matter how we try to frame such restrictions, they are pure nonsense; it’s like buying a dress and not be able to wear it publicly or, worse, be allowed to wear it publicly only if it fits well (according to who?). I would not spend a single penny for that.

Protecting the actual samples is perfectly legitimate: prohibiting their extraction, redistribution, reverse engineering or use to create another sample library makes complete sense. But that is very different from claiming control over the publication of a customer’s own musical performance produced with the instrument.

Owning or licensing the underlying samples does not automatically mean owning the resulting musical performance. Any additional restriction on what the customer may do with that output therefore raises a contractual issue, and consumer contracts are subject to specific EU regulations.

So there is a fundamental difference between “you may not redistribute our samples” and “you may not publish your own performance without our permission.” I would certainly not assume that the latter is enforceable against an EU consumer merely because it appears in an EULA.

Zitat

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Ich kann aus meiner Sicht als Sampleproduzent dazu folgendes sagen: Mir persönlich ist es absolut recht, wenn jemand meine Samples für eine öffentliche Aufführung nutzt. Allerdings ist es oftmals so, dass die Kirchengemeinden das nicht wünschen. (Je berühmter die Orgel, umso eher ist das der Fall). Manche möchten die Kontrolle behalten, andere sagen, wenn jemand eine Aufnahme mit unserer Orgel machen möchte, dann möge er das doch bitte bei uns an der realen Orgel tun. Um einheitliche Lizenzbedingungen für alle meine Sets zu haben, verlange ich daher das vorherige Einholen einer Erlaubnis. (Inwieweit das im Zweifelsfalle durchsetzbar ist, weiß ich nicht). Damit sind die Kirchengemeinden zufrieden, denn dort, wo ich weiß, dass es nicht erwünscht ist, lehne ich die Anfrage dann ab.
Manche Interessenten fragen das auch explizit vor dem Kauf, und machen dann ihre Kaufentscheidung davon abhängig, ob sie die Genehmigung bekommen oder nicht. Dafür habe ich vollstes Verständnis!

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Thank you, Reiner, for explaining the background to this. I can certainly understand the concerns of the churches, especially in the case of historically important instruments.

However, unless I am overlooking something, the current Terms and Conditions on the PipeLoops website seem to refer specifically to commercial use of the sample sets. I cannot find a provision stating that a user needs prior permission simply to make a private recording of his or her own performance and then share that recording publicly without any commercial purpose.

To me, these are two rather different situations: using a sample set commercially, and sharing a non-commercial recording made while playing a legally purchased sample set.

I would find it entirely reasonable for a sample-set producer to require that any publicly shared recording be clearly identified as having been made using a virtual reproduction of the organ, rather than the original instrument. For example, the description could state the name of the sample set and that the performance was made using Hauptwerk or Sweelinq as the audio engine.

In fact, I think such a requirement would address the understandable concern of the churches very well: listeners would not be misled into believing that they are hearing a recording made at the actual historical instrument.

If prior permission is nevertheless intended to be required for all publicly shared recordings, including completely non-commercial YouTube or TikTok recordings, perhaps it would be useful to state this explicitly in the licence conditions. As they are currently worded, I would have understood the restriction as applying to commercial use rather than to the non-commercial sharing of a private performance.

Zitat

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Hallo,

wie schon gesagt, als besonders ungewöhnlich sehe ich das nicht an. Wenn man MS Office kauft oder mietet (das aktuell favorisierte Modell), darf man etwa die mitgelieferten Grafiken auch nicht öffentlich verbreiten. Ich darf sie zwar in einer Präsentation nutzen, aber dann keine pdf-Datei der Folien irgendwo öffentlich zugänglich machen.

Rechtlich kommt es immer auf die Schöpfungshöhe an bzw. wie die von Gerichten beurteilt wird. Im Beispiel mit dem Kleid wird einem normalen Kleid keine Schöpfungshöhe zugeschrieben. Bei einem Designerkleid (Dior, Vuitton, Gucci, Armani...) kann das anders sein und das darf ich nicht nur nicht nachschneidern, sondern es könnte durchaus eine Nutzungsvereinbarung geben. Da müsste man aber einmal Angelina Jolie (klick) oder solche Leute fragen.

Bei einem klassischen Klavier oder Cello gibt es natürlich keine Probleme, aber bei digitalen Instrumenten sind ja immer irgendwelche Urheber der Klänge beteiligt, die Samples beigesteuert, das Originalinstrument zur Verfügung gestellt oder die Klänge konstruiert haben. Diese geben Verwertungsrechte weiter. Wie weit diese reichen, wird dann sicher vertraglich geregelt.

Übrigens kann man mit einfachen Videos auf Youtube schon Geld verdienen, wenn man genug Follower hat (mehr als 1000 oder so?) und einen bestimmten Traffic im Jahr erzeugt. Bei fleißigen Videoeinstellern mit genügend Followern kann daher die Grenze zwischen Video mal so privat für die Community Teilen und kommerzieller Gewinnerzielung irgendwann verschwimmen.

Beste Grüße von der Waterkant
Christoph P.

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I would actually argue that these kinds of restrictions are rather unusual outside the relatively small world of virtual pipe organs.

A useful comparison is Vienna Symphonic Library (VSL), one of the major international producers of sampled instruments and professional audio-production software. Their libraries are used in everything from private hobby projects to commercial recordings, film scores and professional productions. Their licence explicitly permits the sounds to be used in both non-commercial and commercial music releases, without requiring an additional licence fee for the resulting recording.

And this is not merely a comparison between orchestral samples and organs: VSL also offers sampled pipe organs. The underlying principle is nevertheless the same. The samples themselves remain protected intellectual property: you cannot redistribute them, extract them to create another sample library, sublicense them, etc. But a musical performance or production made with those samples is a different matter and may be published commercially.

That distinction seems much more logical to me.

I therefore find some of the restrictions encountered in the Hauptwerk/Sweelinq sample-set world rather difficult to justify.

The Microsoft Office analogy does not really convince me for the same reason. I am not proposing to extract and redistribute the samples any more than someone using a VSL violin library is redistributing the underlying violin samples. The relevant analogy would be using licensed assets as components of an original work in precisely the way for which the product was designed.

There is also a practical problem with such restrictions: they are extremely difficult to enforce. If somebody uploads an organ performance without identifying the software or sample set, how could anyone reliably determine whether it was made with Hauptwerk, Sweelinq, a different virtual-organ system, a hardware digital organ, or even another sample set of the same instrument? This may also explain why there are already enormous numbers of virtual-organ performances online.

I completely understand a church not wanting listeners to be misled into believing that a recording was actually made on its historical instrument. But there is a much simpler and more proportionate solution to that problem: require proper disclosure.

For example:

“Recorded using the virtual sample set of the XYZ organ, played through Hauptwerk/Sweelinq. This recording was not made on the original instrument.”

I would consider such a requirement entirely reasonable. It protects the identity and reputation of the real instrument and makes the situation completely transparent to the listener, without unnecessarily restricting what a musician may do with his or her own performance.

In my view, the much broader licensing model used by companies such as VSL demonstrates that protecting the intellectual property contained in a sample library and allowing musicians to freely publish the performances they create with it are perfectly compatible.