Piet_B wrote:I can't imaginate that everyone taking commercial originals in the 80's had ask the original composer, even in the demo scene. There are a flood of very good covers from Madonna, Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode and even Jean Michel Jarre. And I don't really believe that there is any trouble for a song being remixed almost 20 years before in a C64 game. By the way: Bombjack is another example. The original is also a well known track by Jean-Michel-Jarre.
The commercial scene is much harder: There are several remixed like "Summer of 69", sold in different versions the 2nd or 3rd time even for making money, no matter what quality it is (and most of these covers are just cheap shit). It's a hard competition between lots of DJ's around the world and the time period between original and a remix release is going smaller and smaller. DJ's are remixing other DJ's remixing an original.
Serious: We're just talking about "computer game remixes" with which we're not earning any cent like remixes for commercial stuff where breaks of laws could be 1000x more worrying that the remixes here. So who cares there what we're doing here??? - Just do it, CZ-Tunes!!!
I'm with you... as far as the non-technical part of it goes. As long as no money is involved, most original copyright owners would probably not care to bother... Then there can be situations where loyalty comes into play like with RKO... on RKO it has to seep through both quality and C64-ethical criteria also (which is fair enough)...
But no matter how much I'm with you on the non-technical site of it all, it is still not really legal in the technical sense, and many times this is so stupidly so, even if the reason may seem ... well stupid! ... A guy asks me, if he can take a sample of a TR-808 Kick from a pirated sample CD... no... but he can take the self same drumsound from a free library on the net. same thing with compositions... so if you are telling this guy to do it, he'll still be breaking copyright.
It's just one of those isues where you HAVE to say NO! ... it's not legal, but "under the table" you say "just do it!... no one will give a fucking shit about it, as long as you earn no money and do not offend people (not refering to the original artist is a usual "deal-breaker" here)... Timbaland broke both of these unspoken rules.
It's basically very simple to calculate what you "can do"... as long as you do not considerably earn anything the original artist would want, you are "safe"... and in almost every aspect of this, this boils down to two key components: Money and Fame... I cannot see any other things you could gain from music.... but again, this has to be measured in terms of "how much violation"... the hugely famous artist with thousands of fans, might not react the same to his work being used by less famous artists the same way a not so famous one would eract to a famous person using HIS work (even if both money and fame are not breached).
This is simply the human form of "territorial pissing!"... it's that simple
... I know though, that Chris once told me that Airwolf would be ok , and that's a commercial TV series tune... as long as you so not sample the original you should be safe... at least that's the perspective I've got from talking with Chris about things... so if I'm wrong... Chris'll have to correct me 
