Freesound Forums

The title "thefreesoundproject" is an egregious and inexcusable misrepresentation of the license which the material on this site is provided under. By discriminating so specifically based on 'nature of use' the Sampling+ license is profoundly less free than practically all other open licenses available. This is a restriction far beyond the restrictions imposed by commercial audio libraries.

Because of the misrepresentation of the freeness of this project we will likely find the samples here creeping into music which is truly intended to be free and making it unfree. For example, no music containing sample+ licensed material would likely be permitted to be included onto the Debian Linux distribution.

I suppose it's too late to change anything, but I wanted to point out how negligent and socially irresponsible the naming and public image of this project is considering the license of the content.

Welcome to freesound. I am seeking arcade sounds, world instrument mutlisamples, etc. Do you have any?

hello gmaxwell_ and welcome to (un)freesound,

I'm not sure you're 100% right. See, the "summary" of the Sampling+ license is quite confusing and we've had plenty of discussions about it here.
It's very interesting to read the *legal* code: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/legalcode

This part is the interesting part:

"Your Derivative Work(s) must only make a partial use of the original Work, or if You choose to use the original Work as a whole, You must either use the Work as an insubstantial portion of Your Derivative Work(s) or transform it into something substantially different from the original Work."

As I interpret it -but I'm not a lawyer and I'd love a lawyer to look at it, if you know one, please help me out here- it means you can use the samples as long as they are insubstantial to the work you are creating. Now, this very vague. In my opinion, using a sound in -say- a linux distribution sounds like it's "insubstantial" but, I might be wrong.

We've been talking about this before and perhaps I could add it this week: perhaps users should be allowed to choose between a completely free licence (let's say the creative commons attribution license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/ )... ?

Please, instead of -pardon me- trolling a bit like you did, why not give some valuable feedback on this issue. Seeing where you're coming from, I'm thinking your input would be more than valuable!

kindest,

- bram

fully agree with you Bram, suggesting possible modifications would help more than uhhh... "cogersela con papel de fumar"... being 'touchy' (thank you Mr Webster)

can't please everyone. but is it that hard to give credit?

Maybe he owns a sample library that people have to pay for and he's just jealous.

Probably because someone got his samples and uploaded them. hehe

I think this site is accurate, ive only been here 10 minutes, signed up and grabbed a number of very professional sounding samples... im yet to see a request for money heck there's not even adverts on this site.....

Im on a number of forums, bass related and audio electronics mainly, and what i can never understand is how some people go to the trouble of signing up, read all the legalities only to whinge about it in ONE post and never come back. Man i got better things to do with my time.

Nice site BTW. I think i could become a nuisance here. hehe

Damien

Bram-- I genrally agree with you. But the creative commons license needs more clarification.

Point to note: I found links to more than one version of the license on the freesound site. One link led to a more restrictive version that forbids alteration. I am assuming here that the operative version is the one presetned in registration.

I am presently discussing the issue on a forum in Second Life. If I were to use material from freesound, I would clip less that 10 seconds. (That is a limit imposed by Second LIfe.) I would then include it with other sound clips in an object that makes, for example, ambient farm sounds. The object would be available for copy by anyone. To give attribution, I woud include a notecard in the object, identifiying sounds from freesounds and citing the authoir. The card would also say that it must be kept with any copies of the sounds.

That is all I could do to protect the license. Anyone could copy the object and reuse the sounds without attribution.

Now I don't think I would be liable for the action of the other person, but my concern is that I don't want your contributors to find that people are using their work in ways that they thought were prohibited under the license.

In fact, I found a couple of train sounds that I may want to use as described. But I am deferring use of them until this issue Is clarified. I said, on the SL thread, that I would raise the issue in this forum and get back to them.

I must advi

selbyevans
Point to note: I found links to more than one version of the license on the freesound site. One link led to a more restrictive version that forbids alteration. I am assuming here that the operative version is the one presetned in registration.

That's one license for the webpages and one license for the sounds.

selbyevans
I am presently discussing the issue on a forum in Second Life. If I were to use material from freesound, I would clip less that 10 seconds. (That is a limit imposed by Second LIfe.) I would then include it with other sound clips in an object that makes, for example, ambient farm sounds. The object would be available for copy by anyone. To give attribution, I woud include a notecard in the object, identifiying sounds from freesounds and citing the authoir. The card would also say that it must be kept with any copies of the sounds.
That is all I could do to protect the license. Anyone could copy the object and reuse the sounds without attribution.

You say, "Anyone could copy the object and reuse the sounds without attribution.". yes, that's true. Just like anyone could sample a CD from Madonna. Both are breaches of copyright. Both are illegal. The advantage of CC is that it allows you play within the rules and still get away -legally- with doing some things with sounds.

Now I don't think I would be liable for the action of the other person, but my concern is that I don't want your contributors to find that people are using their work in ways that they thought were prohibited under the license.
In fact, I found a couple of train sounds that I may want to use as described. But I am deferring use of them until this issue Is clarified. I said, on the SL thread, that I would raise the issue in this forum and get back to them.

I don't really understand your issues with attribution. It's just like any other license. It's difficult to impose it, but you just have to hope people do.

"All rights reserved" => get's stolen anyway, you are illegal
"Some rights reserved" => you have the power to 'steal' legally, ...

- bram

if you post your own sounds here, you should be forced to agree that they are free from the point of upload onto the site. What the hells the point in using samples that someone's laweyer is going to hound you later on, for using.

beter yet, record your own sounds! and sound original. Now there's a thought. I mean how hard is it to record a train engine, and should you be able to copyright such a thing. songs yes, should be copyrightable, but some novice playing three notes on a dx7 patch? Come on!

it's always amaizing to hear people who've written two or three songs in their lifetime, worry about someone stealing their masterpiece. ... .... ..... .....

:roll:

I don't understand what all of the fuss is about. The terms clearly state what is acceptable usage and what is not. Those who have uploaded sounds here have agreed to those terms. If someone else as a downloader is unhappy with those terms then they should either contact the creator of the sounds for additional usage rights or go somewhere else.

In response to the original post: the sounds here really are FREE. No one has paid to download any of the sounds. Your statement that the license is more restrictive than a commercial license is simply false, and you also neglected to mention that there is a hefty fee involved with commercial libraries.

In repsonse to Brian Tuley's post: I don't think anyone here has been worrying "about someone stealing their masterpiece". All of the complaints have been from people who want to download sounds absolutley free and with no restrictions on their use.

I think that the Freesound Project is an amazing resource. I admire the effort and thought that has gone into this project. IMHO the criticisms I've read are unfounded and selfish.

-Richard Humphries

Well said Richard. In fact Brian, a majority of the people here ARE recording their own sounds.

I guess a few pissers out of over 30,000 people here on the site isn't a bad ratio.

I'm broke and plotting to rob a sound bank.

Anybody with me?

We'll need to quickly launder the crap into a tune for all to share and enjoy.

Get my drift?

The original poster has a very valid complaint and in part I agree, though I believe the person goes a bit overboard in applying GNU's definition of free as in freedom to the Freesound organization, and is wrong about sampling plus being more restrictive (at least in this setting) than commercial libraries.

I must preface the rest of this message with the standard warning that I am not a lawier, this is not legal advice, use at your own risk, not for use in running a nuclear facility, possible side effects include possible complete waste of time, etc. etc.

Sampleing plus has some restrictions on commercial use of samples (ie, the advertiseing clause), which other lisences do not include, such as the GPL. Since both the GPL and Sampleing+ do not allow sublisenceing (ie, something made with GPL content must be covered under the GPL, and something made with Sampleing+ content must be lisenced under Sampleing+) it would be legally diffacult to include Sampleing+ content in something covered under the GPL without special premission by the creator of the content.

brian tuley
if you post your own sounds here, you should be forced to agree that they are free from the point of upload onto the site. What the hells the point in using samples that someone's laweyer is going to hound you later on, for using.

Well, for the record all the samples that I uploaded are or else I would not have uploaded them. But I speak only for myself, the guy that spent about 20 hours of his own time making the samples I decided to share from scratch.

You're welcome. Anything else you'd like to force me to do? Pay you to use them? :-\

Don't have much of an opinion to the goodness/badness of the Sampling+ licesne. All the legal mumbo jumbo is beyond me.

But After downloading some packs I casually clicked on the "CC Some Rights Reserved" icon, thinking it was the license for the samples. (I know its the website license now). But it wigged me out when it said "No Derivative Works"

I am betting a lot of people make this mistake just not reading closely the text under the CC logo.

Perhaps the web master should put a huge "THIS IS THE LICENSE FOR THE WEBSITE, NOT THE SAMPLES" above the more restrictive website license.

I don't get what all the fuzz is about. Creative Commons were made to be understandable so you wouldn't have to be a lawyer to read the smallprints.

IEverything is written so clearly under the "legal" section (http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/legal.php).

Ofcourse the website itself (the programmingcode etc.) is under a different license (which also happens to be a Creative Commons, but a different version). But that has nothing to do with uploading/downloading/using samples!!

Am I wrong or what?

I agree that all the legal stuff is VERY easy to understand...and I'm grateful that there's an organization like Creative Commons to handle this kind of project in a standardized way.

And I also think that the rules are fair. As far as I understand, if I made a song with these samples all I would have to do when releasing the song is credit the person who created the samples...which I would want to do anyway!!

-o

we_tigers
I agree that all the legal stuff is VERY easy to understand...and I'm grateful that there's an organization like Creative Commons to handle this kind of project in a standardized way.

And I also think that the rules are fair. As far as I understand, if I made a song with these samples all I would have to do when releasing the song is credit the person who created the samples...which I would want to do anyway!!

-o

I really like the ease with which I can assemble attribution information. That is a real strength of this site. As someone working in an academic context, I think that is an absolutely critical feature.

OTOH, I can remember, in the infancy of the WWW, creating icon libraries that were meant to be freely distributable, without restriction--attribution not a problem. It tickles me when I still occasionally find an icon I designed lurking on some page. The only thing that would irk me would be to find someone selling material I had created for free use.

Possibly Free Sound needs a second tier license, free for any non-commercial use with no restrictions?

-- Paul

|(*,+,#,(#,=,*,+)(=,#,+,*)(+,*,=,#)|

I'm a total newbie at these forums and at this site.... and I hate to bump a thread, but let me see if I understand things correctly....

"Your Derivative Work(s) must only make a partial use of the original Work, or if You choose to use the original Work as a whole, You must either use the Work as an insubstantial portion of Your Derivative Work(s) or transform it into something substantially different from the original Work."

As per the license, you can aslo 'mash up' the original in order to use a sound commercially.

I'd like to use computer games as an example for my questions. And I want to make it clear that it would be a commercial project. Lets say I want a gunshot sound. That sound is going to likely be only about 1 second long. How do you use a 1 second clip 'partially'??? And how do you 'mash up' a short sound like that without making it completely into something else likely not even sounding like the original gunshot sound?

It says it has to be substantially different, unless the sound is an insubstantial portion of the derivative work. Would sound effects for games be an insubstantial portion? Like a gunshot, though likely used often, is only a small part of the whole game since it's not being used in a song or musical background.

In short, should I even bother obtaining resources at this site for a game project? I can edit some sounds/efects and change them a bit, but some sounds don't lend themselves to such changes, and also it's the whole commercial usage thing I don't quite understand.

Any help would be greatly appreciated !

P.S. I believe a section for totally free usage sounds would be a great idea, it takes the fuss out of clarifying terms of useage, and a lot of people are looking for just that, completely free use in commercial projects.

Jason

I am not a lawyer.

use the Work as an insubstantial portion of Your Derivative Work

I say using a single gunshot sound in your game might be considered as "insubstantial". If you remove the gunshot sound and exchange it with something else your game still works. Then again, say you'd use richard's thunder samples, maybe they could be quite substantial to the game, setting the mood.

People who work on commercial projects should perhaps PAY for good samples, or even better CONTACT the people who made the sample and ask for PERMISSION. It is not because you release a sample under a CC license that you can't release it to someone else under a DIFFERENT license. People seem to forget that all the time.

Welcome to freesound, we're looking forward to your contributions

- bram