What a litigation-filled fortnight we are having! Kanye, Prince, Michael Jackson, Sugarhill Gang...everyone's at it or in it. Now Deadmau5 is threatening legal action against one Jesse Sinopoli, aka Dirty Circuit - a small-time producer from Louisiana.

The producer has used the main riff from Deadmau5's Faxing Berlin on his imaginatively titlted track Berlin, which is available to buy on iTunes an Amazon. Sinopoli says he thought the loop was royalty-free, after finding it in his copy of Image Line's FL Studio 8 - meaning that he thought he could use it in his own production without any problems.

“Why are these available as loops and why aren’t they credited or noted as this [copyrighted],” wrote Sinopoli on Image Line’s online forum. “I would not have used it had I known it was his.”

Image Line’s Managing Director Jean-Marie Cannie responded on the company’s messageboard, “The loops and demo songs are available to demo what’s capable in FL Studio. It doesn’t mean you can just render the songs and loops and start selling them as your own. The (single hit) samples sure are ready to use in a composition but it should be pretty clear that anything else (whether it’s a demo song, melodic loop, score) belongs to its author(s).”

FL Studio 8 users have hit back by saying it is Image Line’s responsibility to make a clear distinction between royalty free and copyrighted loops and samples - which it quite blatantly is.

Source: Beatportal