Freesound Forums

PapercutterJohn wrote:
It's just occurred to me that as the site is called Freesound, maybe it should be for public domain uploads only (not a serious suggestion but a valid thought). After all, any other licence is actually not "free". Perhaps this contributes to people grabbing stuff and not attributing. A free sound is by implication there for the taking.

Well by definition CCBY/NC are "free", it's just conditional but doesn't involve monetary gain on the part of the author. I see where you're getting at though.

It's not a good idea to force public domain licenses on authors, that would be disastrous.

Headphaze wrote:
It's not a good idea to force public domain licenses on authors, that would be disastrous.

I agree, it would! You wouldn't have many site users that's for sure! My point really was that maybe some people don't even notice the licence part and just see the word free. You'll never beat that one.

Not worth even trying, but it would account for some of the people who use sounds but don't bother with sticking to the licence.

@AlienXXX My thoughts about the rating system are that rating is fine, people like to do it, but perhaps you should be made to comment at the same time and not be able to be anonymous when rating. That may have an effect of making them think more carefully when rating, or enable the moderators to see who is just rating negatively for fun.

One thing to seriously consider is that the site is massively popular. It's not like it's broken and not working. So making changes, even to the rating system might have an unpredicted negative affect. Small changes are good, but major changes are very unpredictable. So personally I'd consider linking the ratings to comments as a better idea than discarding the rating altogether.

You‘re very right John. People don’t understand the word free, given the ‘no cost/liberty’ way the word is overloaded in English, and explaining that simply confuses them more. (People also don’t understand the implications of the word even when it is restricted to liberty, if post-19th century politics are to be believed, but that’s a whole other can of worms.)

This isn’t something that is easy to change, especially when it cooperates with the fact that people do not realise how restrictive the letter of copyright law is, while at the same time believing whatever is made available on the Internet is public domain and there for the taking.

It would take a pretty huge feat of social engineering to change this style of thinking. It would also need certain well-known architects of ‘free’ content culture who think that flagrantly flouting copyright is a good way of protesting against its abuse to maybe think again about a strategy that essentially writes their opponents’ propaganda for them.

Not that I’m in favour of the status quo — I think copyright is a necessary evil, but it really doesn’t need to be as evil as it is.

Freesound is indeed popular. May it last a thousand years. The forum is buzzing enough for me, because even though we don’t have hundreds of active posters, people who do post tend to be intelligent and articulate enough to have interesting discussions.

Actually, there is something users could do themselves to improve the licence thing. Say you're uploading a sound under the attribution licence you could keep the sound description reletively short and then, in a seperate papagraph write:

This sound by law has to be attributed if used. Please attribute it to "PapercutterJohn at Freesound.org" or whatever is applicable.

Doing this would at least clearly point out what is supposed to happen and, more importantly, clearly tell them how to easily do it.

@jamesabdulrahman Yes, Funnily enough I'm not generally a forums person, but this one has sucked me in with the quality of its user's thinking

PapercutterJohn wrote:
Doing this would at least clearly point out what is supposed to happen and, more importantly, clearly tell them how to easily do it.

John, I admire your optimism, but I think you underestimate how stupid people are. http://i.imgur.com/7Q9SDdC.png (from a qubodup sound I seem to recall). That one sort of cracks me up and makes me despair at the same time.

So we go full circle. People think free means free in all ways apart from free to use as long as you adhere to the licence.

I like the "and I'm 13" bit. I think my answer would be "Yes, I can tell".

Maybe the Freesound logo should have a tag line: Freesound. Terms and conditions apply.

You can tell I refuse to be outwitted by a 13 year old (who was probably only 12 3/4 and getting a bit above himself).

People are not necessarily 'stupid'.
Most 13 year olds might not understand the legal language of the CC licenses. For many users, English is not their first language, which also makes understanding legal language difficult.
They see Freesound and think that all they need to do is to download the sound. In fact, that is all they want to do, so they won't be looking for anything else.

We should not assume foul play from downloaders.
We should try to inform and educate rather than enforce and punish.
Goodwill can be abused (as I said before). But the good thing is that it can also spread.

For the worldwide artistic community (spanning from absolute amateurs all the way to top professionals) the world gains a lot from Freesound. The fact that a few people abuse the license unintentionally due to ignorance or from intentional malice is a small price I am willing to pay for the benefits it brings: any sound, anywhere, for anything!...

Also remember that a smartass 13 year old today, could be an accomplished and copyright respecting musician in 10 years. Freesound could have been an important part of what brought that person into music. - Educate

AlienXXX wrote:
Also remember that a smartass 13 year old today, could be an accomplished and copyright respecting musician in 10 years.

You're totally right of course, but I can't help adding that when he's an accomplished and copyright respecting musician he'll be just as fed up with people who breach his copyright.

Of course I was a little saint when I was young (not sure what went wrong)

From a very early age I was coerced into sainthood by society’s architects expert ability to exploit the inherent mental capacity for my guilt to modulate my behaviour.

I became, and have remained, a saint from the age of three when my last evil act was to blame the dog for making a mess in the kitchen (true story according to my mum). Part of being a saint is to forgive others who came to sainthood later, or not at all.

I bless those that forced the light upon me, and those who still travel in darkness and perhaps need a bigger stick to beat the light into them!

I wonder if those who download angelic chorus's are more likely to credit than those who download demonic laughter?

St Wibby.

Hahaha. Very good. I bow down to your superiousness St. Wibby!

I am superior only in age, a condition bestowed on me by accident of nature for which I can claim no credit Mr Papercutter.

To dilute my guilt at distracting this thread, I should like to endorse AlienXXX's considered attitude to the anecdotal proverbial wayward 13 year old. A quiet and diplomatic tolerance will soften hearts in the long term, whereas confrontational attack will harden them in an instant.

Wibby.

AlienXXX wrote:
We should not assume foul play from downloaders.
We should try to inform and educate rather than enforce and punish.
Goodwill can be abused (as I said before). But the good thing is that it can also spread.

Fair enough, Alien. I suppose I’m just a misanthropic SOB.

It’s true what you say though about changing opinions. People tend to flout all the copyrights and ‘copylefts’ they want until their own band’s music (etc.) gets ripped off, at which point they suddenly become all sanctimonious about it

jamesabdulrahman wrote:

Fair enough, Alien. I suppose I’m just a misanthropic SOB.

Maybe you are. You have to empathise more

AlienXXX wrote:
Educate

I still think educating them is teaching them there's rules to respect. Letting them get away with it while spouting out abuse isn't educating, its tolerating.

klankbeeld wrote:
I agree

I think that the rating system should not exist at all.
I like the comment more. Most of the time the comment is more realistic. Most of the people giving comments are friendly ore have realistic Ideas to improve my work. I like that more than starts

True, but it is nice to be able to use the search engine to find high quality audio quickly.

Also, Metadata, not comments, will become much more important soon, once everyone will start connecting A.I. applications to Freesound via the Freesound API. It's important to think ahead as far ar possible when it comes to metadata, imo.

I started a similar thread, I hope we can merge them: https://www.freesound.org/forum/freesound-project/39714/

Though I'm confused why suddenly the discussion shifted to the unclarity of licenses (another very interesting issue though for sure)