Freesound Forums

I looked around FAQs and other posts for an answer to this question
but didn't find anything.

I recently made a field recording walking up a sidewalk where I passed
by a few nightclubs, each playing different music. Does a field recording
containing maybe 10 seconds of a song become off-limits to freesound?

this is a tricky one no?

i'd go out on a limb here - I'd say that if your recording was a fair use then how can they sue - i.e it must be obviously be "passing" sound ... how prominent - is it muffled? However freesound project might have to be a bit more careful than the following example.

imagine you made a documentary about night club bouncers - you interviewed them out side a club - and music spilled into the interviews - there's no way justin timberlake could ask for royalties - however if you started to use parts of that recording as music then trouble begins..

So if you recorded a pretty clean output of a speaker and was just that one song then you have crossed a line..

I reckon put it up - the moderators will decide - ( they turned one of my recordings down - but they still let me hang out here....)

It depends. If the piece of music is clearly recognizable from the part, I tend to disallow...

I just did not pass a file from another uploader which had a radio playing in the background.

As a final thing: we moderate files but we can not claim perfection. What I mean is: I'm quite sure there are a few copyrighted works on freesound that we missed.
Moderation isn't that much to protect freesound (in case of a breach of copyright and notification we will take down all material that breaches!), but rather to protect the uploader.

There are quite a few kids out there that don't really understand copyright: for young kids copyright is something completely abstract.
I hear it on the radio, I can record it, I can download it from soneone's blog, but.... one of those actions is illegal???

In case of doubt, I would say no.

We don't ban people on freesound (except spammers ) so you could go ahead, upload it and see what happens

- bram

Thanks for the discussion.

The song pieces are very clear and loud as I walk by each night club.
One or two are recognizable as United states hit songs from the past. A couple
others I'm not sure of their origin.

Once I get around to capturing it to a file I'll probably just post it to see what
the mods think.