Freesound Forums

I like the attribution license since I think it fits the perceived idea of this site the best. I like to think that if I submit a recording I made to freesound, anyone can take it and run with it Attribution still gives the credit but still maximizes the potential of the sound - be it in a commercial or non-commercial work.

Of course most people are willing to give the rights to commercial use even if the recording was originally published under a license prohibiting commercial use, but what if the author can not be reached? This leads to "forgotten samples" which would be great in some commercial work but if the author can not be reached, they will never be part of one if the license prohibits commercial use as default as the attribution-non-commercial.

Many commercial projects can get their sounds elsewhere with very little money, but if just the right sound is in freesound I think it would be cool that people could use it as they wish as long as they credit the author.

Also there are many different kinds of commercial projects. Some people seem to think that there are some greedy corporate types here who have pockets full of money and they don't want to pay for anything even though they could. Many commercial projects are financed from the pockets of the authors and the resources are limited at best. In the end there can be zero sales and then you lose your time and maybe your money. There might be no monthly salaries and such comforts - if the product succeeds you get paid, if not you personally have to cope with the losses.

Some sites sell quite good sounds for about 1 to 2 dollars each and you can buy them one by one and pay with paypal or creditcard. That's affordable to even small commercial projects. So people will get their sounds from elsewhere anyway if it becomes too much trouble to use the samples at freesound. As can be seen basic samples are quite cheap elsewhere and you do not have to credit anybody (I don't see crediting as bad or annoying but someone might) and you can be sure where the actual sample came from.

Anyone is free to offer their samples to commercial distribution to several different vendors on the Internet if they want to make money with their recordings.

Finally it comes down to the basic idea of this site. Is the idea of the site to distribute free samples for anyone to use in their works no matter if they are commercial or not? Or is the idea to promote the recordings people make for commercial use and serve the free part only to the users who do not do commercial work?

Torusknot
Of course most people are willing to give the rights to commercial use even if the recording was originally published under a license prohibiting commercial use, but what if the author can not be reached? This leads to "forgotten samples" which would be great in some commercial work but if the author can not be reached, they will never be part of one if the license prohibits commercial use as default as the attribution-non-commercial.

Torusknot
Finally it comes down to the basic idea of this site. Is the idea of the site to distribute free samples for anyone to use in their works no matter if they are commercial or not? Or is the idea to promote the recordings people make for commercial use and serve the free part only to the users who do not do commercial work?

It's odd how 'commercial use' is often associated with some picture of evil people coming to rape our babies.

I have a feeling that a lot of 'non-commercial' oriented licenses are created by people who somehow blame 'corporations' for their problems and want to use this to 'get back at them'.

But we're getting back at the wrong people. And we have to rememer, 'corporations' are people too, and noone has ever gotten anywhere meaningful by fighting people no matter whether they immediately behave in ways I approve of or not.

In terms of sampling, negotiating a deal with every sample author, particularly with sample authors who can be assumed to not be used to negotiating deals, is simply not worth the time. You would do that if you know that for some marketing reason you will get millions upon millions more users for a particular sample, but as far as freesound goes... Hey, we're great, we're really cool, and we're tremendously helpful. But we're not unreplacable, just look at all the sample CDs out there. I repeat, negotiating a deal with every sample author is NOT an option. We have to spend some time making music, too!

And I would also like to point out that for the most part, even if we WOULD want to get back at the big corporations, labelling our stuff 'non-commercial' we're getting back at the wrong people. We're getting back at artists who simply want to make some money with their music.

As an alternative to the 'non-commercial' idea, I propose a donations system that lets one donate $5 to 'freesound' and then automatically distribute that among the samples downloaded (with the option of selecting samples individually). Also, a subtle-but-effective marketing campaign should be produced to cause people to believe that donating after downloading is the 'normal and accepted' thing to do; a simple notice and PayPal link on the page that appears after downloading would be plenty. I say focus on 'normal on accepted' because people as a rule couldn't care less what is considered decent by some other group of people, but using the word 'normal' assumes they are part of this group of 'freesound' people where the social custom is to donate after downloading. This should work in a similar way as one being able to go to a restaurant without consuming anything, but one does feel somewhat a parasite if one does. Maybe some clever slogan like 'a dollar for a download' or something like that would help as well. Marketing experts, any comments?

Thank you for keeping freesound up, I am recommending it to all musicians I help promote! (Which is one right now, but adding up

Carlo

dobroide
Honestly, I think keeping some control on the fate of sounds is ok.

Dobroide/LG, this is not a correct interpretation of any of the licenses we are talking about.

Using by-nc / by / pd does not give you any power over the work your sample is used in in any ethical way.

Using attribution-non-commercial only stops people from selling your work, or making money with derived work (derived being, "using your sample and being able to recognise that sample in the derived work".

- bram

Dobroide/LG, this is not a correct interpretation of any of the licenses we are talking about.

Using by-nc / by / pd does not give you any power over the work your sample is used in in any ethical way.

Ok, maybe I'm wrong then... I'm not an expert (I'm a prosumer - I just learned this today). But (there is always a but!) I believed that at least it granted the possibility not to agree with a use of a certain sound whereas pd does not give that right. If in any case you can't veto the use of your own sound we might as well settle for pd - as suggested by adcbicycle.

Bram
Using by-nc / by / pd does not give you any power over the work your sample is used in in any ethical way.
- bram

I totally agree with you, bram, but I think what he wanted to say was "giving you any power over the COMMERCIAL work your sample is used in in any ethical way", anyways!
I think that's a difference, I wouldn't be glad to see a Bush-promo with my sounds either!

freesound should be exactly that... free. free for all, free to share & free to use. there are many websites around where people can sell the samples they record, i like that this is a forum where people who love sound come to exchange idea's.

LG
But (there is always a but!) I believed that at least it granted the possibility not to agree with a use of a certain sound

I have to insist, this is really not correct (and it has been confirmed by the cc-licenses mailing list). You can agree or disagree all you want, but *legally* you can't say anything. Some licenses exclude "immoral" usage of material, but none of the creative-commons licenses mention this.

[edit!!]
of course you can make all your licenses non-commercial and then not grant the usage of your sounds in commercial projects you don't like
[/edit]

- bram

attribution seems wisest choice for me and gets my vote.

Agree with those who voted attribution/attribution-noncommercial/public domain -- but really, I'd like to see an option for attribution/public domain. Right now, the Freesound Project is a great and unique resource for small commercial film/game/media studios.

Larger studios rely on in-house/external audio teams and commercial audio libraries, and don't need this resource. With attribution-noncommercial and sampling+ licenses, Freesound is just not as useful for the smaller guys.

I don't want my samples to be used for promoting weapons or something like that, so that's why i chose to keep the sampling plus license.

Jovica: in that case you could change to attribution-non-commercial and when anyone asks you "can I use your sample to promote this nuclear bomb, sell it to me?" => say no!

[edit] uhm, hence contradicting myself... sorry LS/dobroide [/edit]

- bram

sampling+ is obviously not appropriate but attribution, attribution-noncommercial, public domain & anything-"share-alike" would all suit me under different projects. how about the uploader tags the samples with the licence type so you can also search for samples with a licence that suits the user's needs?

ramjac
sampling+ is obviously not appropriate but attribution, attribution-noncommercial, public domain & anything-"share-alike" would all suit me under different projects. how about the uploader tags the samples with the licence type so you can also search for samples with a licence that suits the user's needs?

Of course, and looking at the very mixed replies that's exactly what will happen.

1. we will add a set of licenses at the "description stage" ( I want my these licenses released under license XYZ)
2. we will add an extra search-option that says, search only samples under XYZ license.
3. for the "noncommercial" samples we will add (on each sample page) a link called "contact the author of this sample for commercial usage" which points to the private message section.

- bram

Bram
I have to insist, this is really not correct (and it has been confirmed by the cc-licenses mailing list). You can agree or disagree all you want, but *legally* you can't say anything. Some licenses exclude "immoral" usage of material, but none of the creative-commons licenses mention this.

Go, we need more votes!

MiceHead
Agree with those who voted attribution/attribution-noncommercial/public domain -- but really, I'd like to see an option for attribution/public domain. Right now, the Freesound Project is a great and unique resource for small commercial film/game/media studios.

I'm a sound designer at a small computer games developer, and what MiceHead is talking about is pretty much exactly what I'm using Freesound for - a source of sound effects as well as a source of inspiration. I'm also doing a lot of my own field recording work for use in our games, and I'm planning to make a lot of my recordings available on Freesound for others to use as well.

I'm a big fan of Creative Commons and the idea of the free manipulation and redistribution of culture. Freesound has been a great example of how such ideas can be turned into practise, and I for one am hoping it will continue in that fashion. Still, requiring end users of samples for any purpose - commercial or otherwise - to acknowledge the original author and giving them credit is the least you can demand of them. Being a provider of samples myself, I don't usually demand of people to give me credit, but I'm always delighted when they do.

Making it harder for people like me who, as MiceHead already pointed out, see Freesound as such a great resource for use in their (mostly) commercial work would in my view seriously diminish the usefulness and attractiveness of this service.

Right now I'm inclined to go for some sort of Attribution/Public Domain combination, although a single license covering every sound in the database would in my opinion be best, to avoid confusion and misunderstandings. Attribution seems to be the best choice for a single license as its only requirement seems to be crediting the original author, regardless of whether the work is used in a commercial or non-commercial product or service.

I hope my input is of some value.

Cheers!

-- Andy, SLX Games

I'm all for public domain sharing, because for me, this is what it's all about: freedom and sound! I don't care how or even will my work be used for someones work, sound creation is my hobby and passion and I would like other to have access to it. Today, I use exclusively free or open source software, and that is the smallest tribute I can give to creators of all those wonderfull effects and machines and the overall audio community...
This is of course just my subjective view, so please take it just as that. I understand lots of people are putting hard work and want's to take some credit for that, and that's realy fine by me.

martypinso

I agree with the idea of saying who did it but I am having problems to do that in the final credit of a film. Is there another way to credit the owner of a sound without having to credit every sample in an end credit roll of a film? Would it be possible to have a log on the Freesound site so that it would keep a history of usage of that sound in the world and act as an official credit and be compatible with the license.

As you probably know, every line of a credit is a very political issue. Even though I am very excited and happy I discovered the site... I am having a good pleasure to share my sounds with the community. I think the originality and the sound quality of the samples on the site could be very helpful for me occasionnaly, but, unfortunetly, I have not used any because of that restriction of crediting the owner. I agree with the principles but I really don't feel it's realistic to do it in the end credit. We use about 500 sounds in a movie, so, because I got 10 sounds from freesound, I have to credit every single one of them, ok, but not in the credit...

Am I the only one who's having this problem?

Has the Freesound "management" ever considered something like martypinso suggests? i.e. a page or query on the freesound site that lists what projects used what sounds (and perhaps, for a given sound, what projects has it been used in). These would be built by the person using the sound ("My Cool Movie utilizes the following sounds:...". In the movie credits, they could just list one credit to freesound (e.g. a URL that is easy to remember). Thus audiences (or rather, people who cared enough about the sound in the project to read the sound credits) may come to see "Freesound" in credits, and visit the site. We may want to make a "gentle suggestion" that if the project used a lot of sounds from one person, the credits list that person, e.g. "Sounds from Freesound, special thanks to Conrad Iver and Terra Sunder".

Also, people who hope that their sounds will be used in projects could see what sounds have been used in projects. This may help them to get a sense of the "demand". Plus it is fun to see what people are doing with the sounds.

I also wonder about making a "gentle suggestion" that if a sound is used commercially and money is exchanged, a small portion of the money be donated to freesound. In this regard freesound is a way of allowing producers and consumers (of sounds) to find each other, similar to ebay. If freesound did not (continue to) exist, these connections would not be made.

But do we really want Freesound to be a "B2B" for sounds? I worry that the ideas I listed above may steer freesound away from its original mission? Bram - is the mission "create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, ... released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License" and "create an open database of sounds that can also be used for scientific research"?? I got those from http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/whatIsFreesound.php.

daveincamas
[.... big snip...]

three rather interesting ideas dave...
noted!

- bram

daveincamas

But do we really want Freesound to be a "B2B" for sounds? I worry that the ideas I listed above may steer freesound away from its original mission? Bram - is the mission "create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, ... released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License" and "create an open database of sounds that can also be used for scientific research"?? I got those from http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/whatIsFreesound.php.

I agree Dave.

I had a very similar experience to martypinso. I needed one small fairly insignificant sound of for a short film. And since I was the only one in the credits, it seemed silly for me to get a freesound sample and then have to include this in the credits. So I simply went and found the sound on another site.
This is a situation where attribution is restrictive and hurts freesound.
I definitely like the idea of being able to search only public domain samples if I choose.