Hi folks
interesting topic and discussion. The "gut feeling" is that this would not be allowed. However, the legal situation is not as clear in every case and may even be different or not yet existing explicitly. Profiling is something new and may be you can compare it a bit with sampling. However, Sound sampling may even be considered as "stronger" vs a profile that just represents sound settings.
From the link http://www.law.berkeley.edu/journals/btlj/…/HTML/text.html
Zappa believes "If you're going to do sampling, you have to give some
consideration to the people who have already gone through a lot of time
and trouble to put specialized sounds on records, and not be a bandit
and steal those things from somebody else. But then again, according to Picasso, "Good artists copy; great artists steal." Unfortunately, the law is no more decided.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_iss…_music_sampling
A profile is basically the representation of a signal chain with special amp and room / microphone settings. Copying a profile is comparable to copying the signal chain in a physical way. Let s say I see a certain amp / cab plus microphone from a third party and replicate the same settings in my own environment to achieve a comparable result. This is certainly not the most creative way but not forbidden by any law.
This does not mean that I am supporting to copy profiles but to make aware that the legal situation is not really clear. On the other hand the commercial providers of amps and cabs could also come in and say "stop profiling our amps". This is basically the same as selling profiles. Right?
Just some food for thought
Cheers
Sacapuntas