I was just looking at some midi loops over at Big Fish Audio and read this License Agreement.........not sure if it's OK to use them or NOT ok??
The bolded items seems to be contradicting no? Or am I just not understanding it?
 
 
 
The Following End User License Agreement is included with MIDI Lab: Funky Jazz Cuts. This License is only valid for the individual who has purchased an unopened, new and lawfully made copy of MIDI Lab: Funky Jazz Cuts from a dealer or distributor authorized by Big Fish Audio.

"Smash Up The Studio audio samples, midi files, chord progressions and musical phrases are licensed to you (not sold) for use within your music productions. This non exclusive, non transferable license is granted to, and only to the individual who has purchased a new copy/copies of our products from smashupthestudio.com, or from one of our authorized distributors. All content remains the property of Smash Up The Studio.

Unlawful copying, selling, lending, uploading to any database, servers or otherwise is strictly forbidden. Any unlicensed usage of our files will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of international law.

All files and musical content contained within our products is licensed, not sold to you for use within your musical compositions, songs, mixes, remixes, albums, records, commercials, jingles, live performances and soundtracks for film TV or theatre. The license does not allow the use of any of our files in the production of sample packs, sample CD's, music audio databases, production music libraries, or any type of downloads.

The use of any of our files whether audio or midi in isolation is strictly prohibited.

You cannot resell, lease, copy, lend, rent, upload or distribute our files.

This license you purchase is for a single user and is non transferable. By purchasing a Smash Up The Studio pack from an authorized source means that you accept the terms of this license agreement."

That is pretty typical language. What they are saying is that you can use the content to produce your own music. That use is fully licensed, and your songs using that content will be legal to copy and distribute for sale without obtaining any further permission or license from the owner of the material. What you cannot do is sell their content in your own sample pack. So if the purpose of your product is to just distribute their content, then that directly competing use is unlicensed. That would apply even if you included only a small subset of the content or if you rendered it into another format (wave to AIFF etc.). But including the sample content in your own music is the purpose of marketing the content in the first place. Even without the explicit license they are giving you, you would have a strong argument that there is an implicit license to use the content to make your own music in the "owner" selling the content distribution in the first place. 
 
 

Generally, it's a common understanding on the concept of selling their content in my own sample pack etc... is illegal, but how they worded it just confused me (a little more than the usual).
 
Thanks Slart....  

I am not a lawyer and english is not my mother language.
 
But I am just interested where you see any contradiction there?
 
I understand it (simplified) that you can use these samples in your own music compositions (which can be use for any purpose as long as they are still music compositions), but you do not own it (the copyright for these samples), you can not sell or even give it to someone else (the same as for Cakewalk products) and you can not produce other music related "peaces" with this content, other then music compositions.
 
I was reading a lot before about the definition of "music composition", it is quite tricky. But make sense.
 
The last long written restriction forbid, for example, combining some sounds from this library with something else (even your own recording) and sell/upload the result as a sample library. So, in it not allowed to use these MIDI loops in production of other MIDI loops, does not matter either or how deep you change these loops.

These are the two sentences that confused me....
 
Smash Up The Studio audio samples, midi files, chord progressions and musical phrases are licensed to you (not sold) for use within your music productions.
 
 
All files and musical content contained within our products is licensed, not sold to you for use within your musical compositions, songs, mixes, remixes, albums, records, commercials, jingles, live performances and soundtracks for film TV or theatre.

In short...you can use them to make musical compositions...which you can then sell or do with what you wish...but you CANNOT re-sell in any way the raw loops and samples.

Now I understand :)

Mesh
....
 are licensed to you (not sold) for use
...
 is licensed, not sold to you for use
...

These 2 statements was meant to be the same, but that depends from the interpretation 

Hi,
 
It also tells you that the "music business" is making sure you do not "own" anything, when you use their software. In my book, this is all the more reason for you to stop using a lot of the software out there ... and start doing music yourself. 
 
The inevitable problem is ... when you want an orchestra, and IK owns the sounds, for using the software, Trillion owns the bass sound you used, and pretty soon ... you don't own anything. The music business does.
 
At least they are not going around saying they own the piece of music! Just the sounds you used ... which in many ways, is too close to the whole thing for my tastes. I'm waiting for Fender and Gibson, to start charging you for the use of their guitars ... !!! Yeah!!!

A side note is that if someone were to sample your music, you cannot give or sell the rights to a third party to use if the sample came out of their catalog.
 
A side to the side note, and some of you may be aware, use of royalty free content may trigger a DMCA takedown notice. That is mainly due to the royalty free part was used elsewhere and that use was 'copyrighted'. That was happening a lot with some of the Sony and Cinescore content.
 
I have found scarier language in some of the social media TOS. In short, some of them say outright that if you upload to their site the content belongs to them to use in any way they want.

DrLumen
A side note is that if someone were to sample your music, you cannot give or sell the rights to a third party to use if the sample came out of their catalog.
 

 
A good point, but a confusing one. If you are using a pure sample of their product in your music, then it may still belong to the seller, and you granting a sampling license to someone for your song might not be valid for that portion of the song. So if you used a four bar intro of just their loop and nothing else, that segment cut and moved into someone else's song would not be licensed to that other person. Likely if the use of the product was transformative in that it was mixed with your own work in such a way that it could not be separated just by cutting a time segment of your song, then it becomes yours (as a licensed use in your song) to further license. But maybe not. You would become involved in any liability if you granted a license to sample your song, or if you claimed that the entire song was your own work when you sold rights to a recording company, uploaded it to a website etc. If someone just sampled your song without permission, they might be liable to the sample producer as well as to you as the song's author. Moshkito's point about clear ownership of your own completely original work is well taken.