Interesting to hear about the company pursuing royalties for the use of the default sounds that ship with Sony Vegas. I've always wondered what the legal specifics of using the included loops and samples in Logic, Reason etc are, since I hear them in pop songs and commercials and so on - definitely could trigger a pattern match.
It's probably mentioned in the documents that come with the software. I know that when I bought my Korg ER-1 way too long ago, I pored over the manual and the bit about the presets definitely stuck out to me - you were apparently not allowed to use any of the preset beats in any commercial music. Is that ever enforced? I can't possibly see the legal department of a musical instrument company going after a musician for using presets. That's especially true for music software companies, which (I presume) operate on much smaller budgets.
I know Native Instruments doesn't pursue anything if they have the same clause; dance music producers love Massive and it's presets, you here them all over the place.
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The FM office was alive with debate this morning as it surfaced that both the drum loop and the main riff from the club-classic Faxing Berlin by Deadmau5 are available as loops in FL Studio 8. Not only that, but a little-known artist is currently being struck down by the wrath of the law for using the loop (which he assumed was Royalty-free and claims to have used not knowing it was Deadmau5's riff) in a recent release. "
"I've always wondered what the legal specifics of using the included loops and samples in Logic, Reason etc are [...]"
I cannot speak for all music composition hardware and software, but from my experience, the primary constraints on the products that I use (e.g., Reason) are generally two-fold:
1. Packaging or recording factory-included loops or sounds for the purpose of re-distribution as a stand-alone audio library is prohibited.
2. Using factory-included sample tracks for commercial purposes is prohibited.
Otherwise, factory-included loops and sounds can be used commercially in your compositions.
Again, the above are just my experiences. However, as noted by leviathant's comment with the Korg ER-1 experience, it is always a good idea to read the license agreement.
