Freesound Forums

Hi everyone, I checked the FAQ section for an answer to this question but couldn't find one.

I'm making an independent film and I was wondering if I can use freesound samples in it? We're intending upload the film to archive.org under the NoDerivs/NonCommerical CC license. But I don't know if that's compatible with the freesound license.

Also, we do intend to sell DVDs of our movie if it's popular enough. So I'm not sure if the freesound license is okay with that. The "human readable" form says we can use "creatively transformed" versions of the sounds in both commerical and noncommercial ways, but I just wanted to speficially ask.

Also, I realize I'd have to include the author(s) of the sounds in my credits, but I'm not sure how lengthy I need to be there. Is there a suggested way to give attribution to freesound authors in movie credits? If so, please advise. Do I need to include the full text of the CC sample license in the credits?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

-Paul

hi Paul,

here we go:

1. freesound doesn't use a "share-alike" license so when using the sounds you don't have to use the same license for what you make. So, yes, your CC license is compatible with this one.

2. selling is just fine as long as you credit the authors properly!

3. I think something like a list of samples + authors + a link to freesound should be more than enough. But perhaps it would be nicer to gve the full list. Maybe something like:

Thanks to the following authors from on freesound for the use of their samples:
Authorname ( author URL)
samplename
samplename
samplename
samplename
Authorname ( author URL)
samplename
samplename
samplename
samplename
etc

The attribution license doesn't say HOW you need to attribute, so you can make something up. As long as yuou mention the author and what u used from him. More is obviously better as it will give the author more credit!!

( Last but not least: making a movie you surely create sounds of your own to use. Giving these sounds back to the community would be amazingly cool. )

- bram

In the "Rules" section of the site it says:

Do not use samples in ads/commercials. The Sampling+ license does not allow you to do this. However, you can easily contact the creator of the samples and get the right directly from them!

Does this mean that using a sound sample in a commercial or advertisement is viewed differently than using a sound sample in a commercial film?

I am not a lawyer.

Does this mean that using a sound sample in a commercial or advertisement is viewed differently than using a sound sample in a commercial film?

"Don't use a sound to promote anything but the work created from it."

I.e. take a sample, make a work, the work is only promotion of itself, not of a third good. So, what you can't do is take a sample, create a tune then use that tune to sell a ... car / kitchen appliance / toothbrush ... This is clearly different.

But as always: if you want to use a sound in a commercial, contact the author of the sound and ask him for permission or ask how much it would cost to license the sound for usage. There have been plenty of such requests on freesound and sound uploaders love to make some extra cash as a reward!!

- bram

I reckon the people doing the movie credits won't be too happy if you are asking them to credit every incidental sound....

the birds at start of reel 2 where recorded by Bram, the door opening was recorded by franz in switzerland - VW beetle engine starting at -30 degrees celicius recorded by Helga in Norway, punches by Mr Yu in China, Footsteps of marisha in New Zealand,

you might end up with credits longer than the movie it self! That kind of credit surely should be only given for something special!

Anyways might be kinda hard to prove that it's the same recording of a sparrow or a wooden door close, VW engine start etc..

If it's some geezer funking some guitar riffs and you make a 30 sec TV commercial out of it then thats a different story?

Of course if you've glitched the hell out of it in LIVE 5 - doubt he can prove it and quite frankly it aint the same noise/rythm/ pitch nomore anyways -

I reckon If recognisable/ unique credit it - if not upload some stuff for karmic purposes....

martian
you might end up with credits longer than the movie it self! That kind of credit surely should be only given for something special!
...
I reckon If recognisable/ unique credit it - if not upload some stuff for karmic purposes....

Plus... i don't think the way that Bram suggests is going to eat up too much space.

Anyway, if you use a sound in a movie, that's because because it's important enough to have it. If it's not, then don't use it.

But if you use it, as Halleck mentions, you are legally forced to credit the authors.

Or buy the sounds and you prolly won't need to credit

exactly im sure you can work something out with most folks that have put up their sounds here. Just see how they feel.

I think copyright should protect somebody's compositional or creative skills - recording a door slam and putting it on the net and expecting to get credit for it is a little far fetched- although I can honestly say I am yet to be tempted to use such a thing- I already have a billion of those basic things in my library free to use anyway..

It would have to be something pretty special - like I said a unique identifiable recording.. Ie you recording an Urhu solo which a significant section was used in place of conventional music for the opening credits of a weekly travel show.... Or maybe you bang a recognise beat on a dustbin which suvsequently is sampled and makes it 2 numba 1 in brazil - these are creditable items----- What about those monks chanting in your thailand vacation?

hang on those monks were chanting for everyone with a video camera - bet that nice german couple got pretty much the same thing - and the monks believe in karma too- you don't own their sound buddy....

wind thro the trees recording ????? Actually I already have these already but...

I'm going to EQ'ing possible pictch/ speed shift and additional processing my friendly sample heads.... after adding nightingales sitting in someother trees some other time and place..... Hanging on I'm getting creative here.... and this is just a subtle background you can hardly hear and barely notice as it's designed to be natural...

good luck in getting a subpeona ! It's unrecognisable as the same recording! In fact it isn't.

C'mon if you've put them up here - you want people to use them. I uploaded a few- for the few downloads I've got- just to play with...

Keep free sound free. keep it karmic.. You know where the line is don't you?

I'm sorry martian, but I don't understand the angle you are coming from.

Freesound sounsd are free within certain legal boundaries.

If you don't like these boundaries, then don't use sounds from freesound, as you would be commiting a crime just like when you would use a commercial sample-library without paying for it.

One of the LEGAL requisits is that you have to attribute the sounds you use. You can find the whole license of the sounds here:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/legalcode

- bram

oh and if you transform a work, the copyright/left belongs to you. If you take a song from michael jackson, and transform it until it no longer sounds like michael jackson, you can legally distribute/sell/... the song you created. The same goes for freesound.

- bram

martian
I reckon the people doing the movie credits won't be too happy if you are asking them to credit every incidental sound....

Asking?!! Nobody *asked* them to use the sounds in the first place, did they? Also, why should a FS contributer want to make movie people happy? There is life outside moving images!!

martian

I reckon If recognisable/ unique credit it - if not upload some stuff for karmic purposes....

A couple years ago, someone 'borrowed' a line drawing from a paper of mine. The funny thing is all she needed to act rightly was dropping me a line, so I got very angry... Dont know how it is in Mars, but here in planet Earth you would be surprised about the recognizing skills of some people when it comes to their own work. Take care.

Cheers

PS BTW, did you know nightingales have dialects that change depending on the place they live? Now you do.

a key word - recognise.

As Bram said if it is transformed beyond recognition it is OK.

Your female friend was behaving inappropriately -obvious really - as it's recognisable as your work ...

I think you guys are thinking too much about music etc- if a bass riff you created is used then sure you need crediting..Notice the word - created. Or someother loop you made is directly used- again credit please.

But If I sample 1 second of your loop- reverse it, filter, and use some other weird ass plugin ( downloaded free from the web of course) - then it's nothing to do with you anymore is it? Cos it sounds completely different!

On mars we obviously get out an about more than some earthlings......

martian
I think copyright should protect somebody's compositional or creative skills - recording a door slam and putting it on the net and expecting to get credit for it is a little far fetched- although I can honestly say I am yet to be tempted to use such a thing- I already have a billion of those basic things in my library free to use anyway..

It would have to be something pretty special - like I said a unique identifiable recording..

If I record a door slamming and you record a door slamming, I own the copyright to my door recording and you own a seperate copyright to yours. There are probably going to be some differences... I used a different microphone setup, you did some tweaking in post, etc. Even if they sound nearly the same the copyright and ownership is still distinct.

Under U.S. copyright law you must get permission to use, copy, distribute, perform, (etc.) a copyrighted work, with the notable "fair use" exceptions. Still, fair use law does not cover many things you might want to do with a work, such as use it in a collage or sample it liberally in another work. What Creative Commons does is provide a set of licenses that grant automatic permission to use the copyrighted work, provided that you follow certain conditions. You HAVE to follow the conditions or you automatically void the license, and whatever liberties you were taking with the material become illegal.

For the sampling plus license, the conditions are pretty reasonable. You get to copy, re-use, and transform the work as you like, and license the resulting work however you please. As I understand it, All you have to do is to credit the authors when you use their work, not use the work to advertise an unrelated product, and not sell their work in whole when you are making verbatim copies. (Selling the derivative work is still okay.)
I really don't think that's so much to ask.

There is a body of work that can be used like you want to... and that's called the public domain. You can do whatever you want with public domain material and don't have to credit anyone, since it's not copyrighted. If you're not comfortable with following the simple guidelines for CC-licensed material, maybe you should look for PD stuff.

martian,

I just had a look at your website. Looks like you do lot's of relatively high-profile work. Now, someone with your experience surely must recognise that copyright and licenses like creative commosn differ. Not only that, but surely you must understand that you can't -for example- just copy sample cd's from professionals and use them without paying for the licensing.

now, you have a much free-er law when it comes to creative commons, this is a good thing right? yes, there's the attribution and the no-commercials thing in Sampling+, but this is almost nothing vompared to copyright (where you can't do anything with someone's work).

also, an important fact -which many people forget once in a while- is that you can ask people to use their samples in a different way than the license published on this website. Many people here have been asked if it was OK to include their samples in commercial advertisments, or works that don't mention the attribution, and many people say "yes" to these questions!

- bram

Sure I bought several sample libraries for the professional work I have done, and my work is generally collage of sounds - that I generally manipulate in reason or live....

If I want something from here I guess my approach would be to trade sounds with the person who owns the sounds I am after as I don't think movie producers will be interested in crediting the Norwegian Nightingale ( which has a different accent apparently)

To be honest tho- I am quite good at making the sounds myself and spend many hours recording foley...

I will post some more sounds as I got a few to spare - if any one has some nice bird flaps let me know!

martian
If I want something from here I guess my approach would be to trade sounds with the person who owns the sounds I am after as I don't think movie producers will be interested in crediting the Norwegian Nightingale ( which has a different accent apparently)

martian

- if any one has some nice bird flaps let me know!

cheers

WEll this all goes to show what an extremly varied community a site like this brings together. The way Martian approaches this is how its been done for ages in the movie bussiness. Sound editors/designers met up and exchanged tapes etc or parts of their libraries.
I see Martians point about the credit roll very clearly. The credits is always a very touchy subject, who gets before who and who is in a bigger font etc. In some cases in hollywood law suits were filed over this. Again, not surprising because peoples livelihoods may depend on how they are credited. This is a world were your reputation is very important.
Now for example, usually, the sound dept comes in just after catering or something. There is no way that if you worked your ass of for hours, cut hundreds, thousands of fx that there is a list after that with folks from whome there is one sample layered amongst a dozen others. So, this seems indeed a bit incompatible with the licencing model used by freesound. But thats fine too, any fx that I cut into a film I plan on either pm'ing the owner to see if they'd mind not being on the credit roll. For some workflows that wont be a viable practice because it would be too time consuming, but then if your in that type of situation i doubt you'd be scrolling thru a library like freesound.

Btw Martian, its nice to have somebody doing a lot of Foley around. It would be fantastic if you could share some if it with us as i feel its a class of sound that is not well representated in the current freesound library.

And Dobroid, you know we love your samples

Cheers

Come to think of it, the sampling+ license says that you have to credit the author in the manner they specify. So, couldn't they specify that they are to be credited on the film's website or something?

Not much of a point to doing that if the person using the sound has to ask them anyway (may as well get explicit permission for use), but it could be a way for freesounders to pre-emptively allow their samples to be used in films without being on the credits roll.

There is that provision about the credit being as prominent as other credits, though.

Section 3e(i)
...credit may be implemented in any reasonable manner; provided, however, that in the case of a Derivative Work or Collective Work, at a minimum such credit will appear where any other comparable authorship credit appears and in a manner at least as prominent as such other comparable authorship credit.

Of course, I could be totally wrong about this... I am not a lawyer.

I can see dobroide has experience with movie producers

They general have no idea! if the music is too loud - they say things like don't worry it's got subtitles..... Infact they have an answer and for and are aware of everything - ( ahem cough!)

As for the birds- I'm about to start working on an animated feature - and there is one scene with an unidentified species hovering in an impossible manner with an improbable load - I guess I will try loading in my sampler and see what I can do.. I haven't started it yet - but will be in the next month- thought I'd try planning ahead for once....

I will put some foley up... I will be doing the languaging of a movie I just finshed so hopefully this month I will going thro the will look out for some nice steps and put them up..

foley is such and underrated part of a film - to me it's the most important and orgnic element...

Maybe on upload I can fill in the description and say use them as you will - if you write and say thanks it's fine - I don't really want or need a credit

Unless it's my ass kickin riffs in which case....