Freesound Forums

Definitely not public domain... The author had his work with the recording, it is his kindness that we can use the sample. It's not a big deal to indicate a name. I recommend "attribution", noncommercial or commercial depending on the agreement with the author.

I voted "public domain". A site called freesound should contain free sounds.

I intend to post a huge amount of high quality musical sounds on here, but I won´t do so if they can´t be completely free to any one, for any use, without any restrictions, forever.

How much does a free email requesting to use a free sample without official credit really cost?

Probably not much more than typing the name somewhere... maybe less.

My experience with the people here - especially when I request a sample, has been so positive - that I would feel dirty if I didn't give the artist some kind of recognition for their help.

I'm glad that Freesound is on the net... and I'm glad it's a place made up of real people... artists... musicians... and creative types all willing to help one another... it's not an amassed monolythic metalic megacorporation bent on stealing your ideas and selling them back to you at 5 to 1... and it never will be, no matter what license is used.

"attribution-noncommercial" for me, for reasons already stated by others.

I have no probs with granting commercial-usage for my sounds & music (indeed I have done so in the past).

However, I believe multiple licences are confusing, and would like my sounds to default to noncommercial unless specifically waivered (which, I believe, would increase the chance of the enduser actually following through with the attribution).

cheers, sk

CC licenses reserve 'some rights'. If one asks 'Which ones?', then they answer 'anyone you choose'. But how to choose? I think that a project like Freesound should make a decision according to his own concept. It's true that there are many rights to decline or defend, but it's not necessary for everyone, who is collaborating, to have the freedom to choose. I mean that if one wants to keep the copyright, Freesound would say 'no, that's not free sound as we understand it, you may look for another sound project'.

In that way I think ccMixter it's too much confuse and at least it's not the same as Freesound concept. There are CC licenses, but it doesn't mean that mixing all of them, peoples productions become more free. By the way, there is no ambiguity in the GNU licence: all or nothing. It may don't attend to every need and, however, it has became a tool. There is also the Opensource initiative, which allowed to expand or include in some way what wasn't possible with GNU. The point is both GNU and Opensource maintain a correlation between the license and the way the collaborators produce, think, make profitable or share their materials. There is no better license, it depends on what the authors decide: in which project to collaborate. I think the option is between projects or perspectives and not only between licenses.

LG: Why did you said that public domain licence is ambiguous?

"Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder", but as far as I know once the copyright holder have choosed Y work to be X licence there is no way to restrict the use in the future (it's not retroactive).

Once you release work into the public domain, it is irrevocable. You no longer have control over its use, and people may display, copy, modify, and even charge for it as they see fit.

Also, I'm a bit surprised at all the support for CC-BY-NC, seeing as our current license allows for most commerical use, so we would be "making freesound less free" with such a license.

To be honest, I think that most serious commercial ventures (such as a studio album or feature film) will be unable or unwilling to meet the attribution requirements of CC-BY and therefore will have to get permission from authors to use the sounds anyway.

The thing is, it's hard to get permission from all the sample authors. Some may not be reachable with the info they left on freesound, or may just be unresponsive. However, if we had a way for users to optionally pre-approve a certain use of their sound (for example, useage without attribution in exchange for payment, or a single credit for Freesound) we could create a sample library that could be licensed without attribution requirements in exchange for payment, which would go to support the project.

I don't know if this is feasible, but I think this or something similar would be the only way to make freesound useful to large businesses. I'd say it's comparable to the strategy of commercial Linux distributors or Sourceforge's free vs. enterprise models.

Maybe this isn't the best solution, but as it stands I don't think many commercial ventures will be able to get much out of freesound, CC-BY-NC or CC-BY. Perhaps thats how the community wants it, and we should stay focused on being a creative pool for audiophiles and artists and let the commerical ventures keep paying for commercial libraries. I don't know, but I wanted to throw this out for discussion.

Comments?

who's voting here?

only people who upload should be allowed to vote

i upload here and i'm happy to have the sounds used by whoever in their creative ventures

if i have a sound that is commercially precious - then i would not upload it

the fact that freesound exists - is an disincentive for anyone to make commercial sample cds - i hear the sales of such products are in decline

public domain - go record and share your sounds like a good story :idea:

I found a somewhat old conversation on the topic of the problem of attribution in feature films. If you are interested in this aspect of the licensing issue I recommend you read through this thread, a lot of good points were made and a few possible solutions were even proposed. Hopefully we can open a dialogue about this again.
http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/forum/viewtopic.php?t=527

I have to say the attribution ones suit me best

I voted "attribution", "attribution-noncommercial" and "public domain" depending on the sample. I canʻt see why giving authors a choice would be confusing...not that complicated, really. I find that different licences are appropriate to different samples. A generic sound effects sample really needs no attribution, while a nice bassline loop is something an author should be acknowledged for, I think.

Best to let the author decide the license...this is a system commonly used on other sound and image sharing sites. Itʻs better than forcing authors to accept one type of license or not post at all.

The most flexible scheme would be to allow "attribution," "attribution non-commercial," and "public-domain." This could be confusing for people searching for sounds--but they could perhaps search based on the license they wanted, for example, only for public-domain sounds.

If I had to choose one, I would suggest attribution, with attribution non-commercial a close second. I don't care much for "public domain." As Richard Stallman says at every occasion, "Free as in freedom, not free as in gratis."

-- Paul

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Previously I advocated options, but I think I want to change my persuasion to public-domain, simply because this site is unusable otherwise.

I cannot and will not keep track of ever single sample I use. It's just too time consuming.

Openclipart.org is all public domain and works well. FREEsoundproject should also be PD. If not there should be sectional license separations that allow all licenses in their own categories.

As a new comer to the site I think...after a review of the comments....I vote for "attribution".Remember these are sounds and not full length feature films!
Thanks for the chance to vote and vioce my opinion.

As much as I like democracy and the concept of people having ownership over their government, I think Bram should decide.

Walter_Odington
As much as I like democracy and the concept of people having ownership over their government, I think Bram should decide.

So... Bram, What are your last thoughts on the subject?

There's obviously never going to be a consensus here. I still think attribution is the best way to go. Clear and not MORE LIMITING than Sampling+ like attribution-noncommercial is.

Also, the works added up until the point of the license switch will theoretically always be available under Sampling+, so will that also be noted as part of a multi-licensing scheme?

I voted for "public domain". An Attribution license requires you to:

"...keep intact all copyright notices for the Work and provide, reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing: (i) the name of the Original Author (or pseudonym, if applicable) if supplied, and/or (ii) if the Original Author and/or Licensor designate another party or parties (e.g. a sponsor institute, publishing entity, journal) for attribution in Licensor's copyright notice, terms of service or by other reasonable means, the name of such party or parties; the title of the Work if supplied; to the extent reasonably practicable, the Uniform Resource Identifier, if any, that Licensor specifies to be associated with the Work, unless such URI does not refer to the copyright notice or licensing information for the Work; and in the case of a Derivative Work, a credit identifying the use of the Work in the Derivative Work (e.g., "French translation of the Work by Original Author," or "Screenplay based on original Work by Original Author". Such credit may be implemented in any reasonable manner; provided, however, that in the case of a Derivative Work or Collective Work, at a minimum such credit will appear where any other comparable authorship credit appears and in a manner at least as prominent as such other comparable authorship credit."

For _every single_ sample. If you write an album of music using sampled sounds that can easily be hundreds of different samples, with hundreds of different creators, titles, URIs, etc. This is just silly to use for something like Freesound.

ignotus
If I had to choose one, I would suggest attribution, with attribution non-commercial a close second. I don't care much for "public domain." As Richard Stallman says at every occasion, "Free as in freedom, not free as in gratis."