Freesound Forums

Just noticed one Freesounder who downloaded one of my creations has downloaded almost a thousand Freesound samples,
but has not contributed any. None, Nada, Zero, SFA.

If they are using this huge volume of material to create sounds why have they not contributed anything ?

Could this be one of the individuals stealing Freesound material to sell elsewhere ?.

What could be done to prevent this ?

Perhaps require users to contribute one sample for every twenty they download.

If you’ve downloaded 20 its not much to ask to post 1 sample of what you’ve created with them.

Alternatively limit the number of samples a user can download in a given period of time to restrict wholesale theft.

I suppose dishonest individuals would find ways around these controls but they may be worth a try.

Timbre
Just noticed one Freesounder who downloaded one of my creations has downloaded almost a thousand Freesound samples,
but has not contributed any. None, Nada, Zero, SFA.

If they are using this huge volume of material to create sounds why have they not contributed anything ?

Could this be one of the individuals stealing Freesound material to sell elsewhere ?.

What could be done to prevent this ?

Perhaps require users to contribute one sample for every twenty they download.

If you’ve downloaded 20 its not much to ask to post 1 sample of what you’ve created with them.

Alternatively limit the number of samples a user can download in a given period of time to restrict wholesale theft.

I suppose dishonest individuals would find ways around these controls but they may be worth a try.

As to what I use them for, I can catagorically tell you that I do not sell on to anyone else or anything like that, I don't even use sound files for any projects that I then share; I am just a hobbyist, and all I tend to do is mash some samples up with others.

Dishonest downloaders will find a way around it.
Honest downloaders are bothered by it.

So... nope, I prefer not to put up any special schemes to stop this.

The only thing we can do is send emails once in a while to people who have downloaded a lot but uploaded nothing.

- Bram

Hi Matthew,
I wasn’t aware there were barriers which prevented some downloaders from contributing. Sorry for any offence caused.

I occasionally look at what those who downloaded my creations have also downloaded from Freesound, as they obviously have excellent taste .
I was astonished to see the number of downloads this zero-contributor had made: it is the worst example of one-way-traffic I have yet seen.

I’m sure there would be a way to prevent this greed / theft, but it would mean abandoning the title “Freesound”, e.g. annual membership fee with with a maximum number of downloads per year , with the option of waiving subsequent years membership fee to members who make a significant number of sound contributions, or who only download few samples, i.e. only greedy zero-contributors would pay the membership fee more than once.

A lot of people are Magpies: They collect lots of stuff they like, probable with the intention of doing something interesting with it, but never get around to it. I bet that less than 1 download in a hundred actually gets used creatively for personal let alone commercial projects. My meagre uploads (3) have been downloaded 140 times, but I don't flatter myself it's been used yet. It's still fun to log on each day and see that another three or four bods have been interested enough to grab one. I know booger all about making music or recording sound, but I was impressed with how helpful to complete strangers the members here are that I wanted to join in and give something back.

Update: I just encountered a worse offender who has just downloaded one of mine ...

3579 downloads and not one contribution.

They haven't set a personal tagline. May I suggest one: "I'm a greedy b4st4rd".

How about 43864 downloads...at a rate of hundreds a day? ... true!

Maybe He/She (or is it a bot?) just wants to make sure they still got freesound after God destroys the internet.

Heck....maybe we should think about this.

Maybe these people just aren't as talented as we are? Can't we just settle for "sigh....." being Too cool! You know I have alot in my library from here as well, but as long they credit it doesn't matter. And as for stealing hopefully karma will lace their next joint with meth or something....it's kind of like a good game? you like one you have to have them all, it's the same way with p2p music sharing people go apeshi_t and completely put 250 gb/month or MORE into DLing.... compulsive evil bastards and robots. I'll just say we are kewl! That werks,

-Kat

Timbre,

think about this:
how many times have you looked at wikipedia?
how many times have you edited or added to an article?

Why did you not edit as many times as you looked? because you were probably unfamiliar with the subject or felt like you couldn't add anything useful?
The same goes for freesound. Not everyone has the tools or knows how to make sounds. Hell, that's why freesound exists!

We have almost 1 million users and only 3000 of those have ever submitted a sound.
Should we prevent the 993000 other users from downloading more than 100 sounds?

As CyberiaLainKittyKat says, just think about how cool YOU are and not about the people who can't be as cool as you

- Bram

If someone has downloaded 100 samples surely they must be creating something with them,
so why not post a bit of their creation on Freesound to let others hear how their sounds are being used.
The combination of sounds in their post, however amateurish, could fuel further creativity in others.

.

BTW#2 ... I have contributed to Wikipedia materially and financially.
I'm not an idealist, I'm a realist: if people do not contribute something these organisations will not survive.

does wikipedia stop you from reading their articles if you don't contribute?
does wikipedia stop you from viewing articles because you are hogging their bandwidth (and if you are not contributing)?
MANY people use freesound sounds in things you can't share (i.e. not music) but movies, slideshows, mobile phone ringtones, etc etc

Freesound 2 will tackle this problem by stressing the importance of uploads more (and making it easier), not by diminishing downloads or capping people's download capabilities.

- bram

Bram
does wikipedia stop you from reading their articles if you don't contribute?
does wikipedia stop you from viewing articles because you are hogging their bandwidth (and if you are not contributing)?

If Freesound can afford to absorb the cost of the abuse of its resources by the greedy then there is no problem,
(the "To Go!" figure on the Freesound plegie (top left) suggests otherwise).

Microscopia
I'm really amazed by the statistic quoted of only 0.3% of members actually upload sounds - I didn't realise that we uploaders were so eccentric.

On the other hand I'm impressed with the high quality and imaginativeness of the contributions from the 0.3 percent. I have no doubt that that is largely down to the fact that the few who do post are proud and conscientious about their work and put their best into it. If some limit-ratio/quota/quid pro quo/ scheme were introduced to force (or even just to encourage) more posting from less experienced, less confident, less dedicated or less able freesound users it would have a mix of three less-than-positive consequences.

1. The quality of the database would be diluted.
or.
2. It would discourage beginners who want to join in and learn but are lacking confidence.
and,
3. It would place extra work on the moderators who would have to decline contributions that are of poor interest, low quality or disguised reworking of copyright material that may simply have been uploaded so the member can access more downloads.

If I were a moderator I would not want to be in the position of having to judge submissions and risk giving offence or discouragement to the inexperienced by rejecting their work. It would put them in a situation where they would have little choice but to act in a way that's totally contradictory to the philosophy of this place.

I don't subscribe to the "thin end of the wedge" argument, but if I did I might be predicting that freesound would begin re-engineering the licence terms and introducing DRM within two years.

I feel your frustration Timbre. After reading this posting I looked at the small amount of sound I've uploaded to view how many times they've been downloaded, which I was surprised! Then I remember that I've only been notified of credit 1 time. Why would my sounds be downloaded if not used? The ratio is staggering. I also looked at my log of downloads, and looked at the list and thought "Why did I even download that? I'm never going to use that".

As to why more people download than upload... I can't give an answer. For me, recording sounds is not only a hobby, but a profession. But if you look at all the people that NEED the sounds we create (Movies, Radio, TV, Games, Cartoons, PowerPoint Presentations, Commercials, etc) the demand certainly outweighs the supply. I know a lot of the flash animation sites like Newgroungs.com have forums requesting sounds, and the FreeSound.org link gets thrown up a lot.

Like someone said, I hope that the majority of the downloads were intended for use, but never came to creation.

PS... who can I talk to about changing my Username?

Hello, I've only just started uploading files to Freesound so can't say much on the issue except . . .

Maybe there should be a system whereby people who download a lot have to start adding comments or entering ratings, otherwise they don't get to download any more.

Like where Amazon pesters you to provide feedback on sellers after you've bought something off them.

That might deter the magpies and help bring more shy individuals out of their shells a bit :wink:

thanks strangely_gnarled for backing up my words with some extra concerns that I hadn't voiced yet...

Stephan.Matson, me being the guy who runs pretty much everything around here, send an email to me via the contact page on the left, please

Timbre: the "to go" figue does not mean "to go or else...", it's simply there because we notice that there are a heck of a lot more donations if there is a figure to work towards to. And FYI: freesound is run by a university and we have plenty more bandwidth before we get into trouble

Can we all take a deep breath now and chill out, and instead of trying to stop people from doing things we don't like, encourage them to do the things we do like?

- bram

Well, I've been a member for over a year, and just now started contributing. I actually finally realized how cool this site is and how easy it is to upload.

Part of it with me was the net is an ungodly huge place, If I was looking for samples, sometimes I would think of freesound, sometimes not. Now its the first place I go, and I'm quite enjoying making sample packs as well.

Can we all take a deep breath now and chill out, and instead of trying to stop people from doing things we don't like, encourage them to do the things we do like?

Don't worry Bram, this discussion surfaces every now and then, and it is healthy to discuss it... :wink: At the end of the day, the current policy is still the best.

- LG

It might be worth pointing out that some musicians will be under contract and are not allowed to submit sounds to freesound because their music/sounds/anything they produce is infact owned by their publishing company.

Well, I've just signed up (as you can see), and I guess I will be one of those who will download a lot of samples without contributing much (if anything), ever. In my case, it's not simply greed, and I'd like to explain what I'm looking to do with Freesound.

I've been playing role playing games (mostly Dungeons & Dragons) for the past ten years or so, and a few years ago I started to be the game master (for those who are unfamiliar with DnD: describe the environment, handle the baddies, be the referee) for "my" group. Now I have a choice: I can do it the old-fashioned way, saying things like "You can just hear the drip of water from the room to the north", or I can bring an MP3 player and actually play a sample of water dripping. Same with voices, sounds of weapons, sounds of monsters, etc, etc.

For that to work, I need to have a pretty big library of sounds, and I need them locally. I don't want to stop gameplay for half an hour until I've searched Freesound for some appropriate samples, I want to have them on my player (likely a laptop computer instead of a simple MP3 player to allow me to sort and categorize the sound samples more easily).

Of course Freesound seems to be targetted at musicians primarily, but even a cursory search has already turned up quite a few interesting samples for me... although I suspect it'll take a lot of effort finding the right ones, because the tagging system is not really geared towards my needs, but I certainly won't complain.

So you see that there are absolutely legitimate reasons why someone would wish to download a lot of samples without ever uploading any of their own work (because I don't use the samples to create anything uploadable). I imagine that there might be other scenarios, like, for example, using the samples in your own videos - you don't really want someone to upload 60+ minutes of their last summer vacation on the Italian beaches, beautiful as they (the beaches) might be...