Freesound Forums

Hello!

Because I don't have internet at my home where I'm recording and mixing, I download many appropriate samples at my company, and then carry them home.

At the end of the process, I use some of the samples in full length, some of them I use partially, and some of them I use just as a reference to help me make my own samples.
But the problem is, that at the end, I don't know which samples from which users are really used. What to do in such a case? I guess it is not enough to just write something like "samples from freesound.org"?

What if there are lots and lots of samples used? For 3-5 samples, it is rational to write the credits, but what about 100 or more samples?

Thanks,
Smargroth

(Of course, these are hypotetical questions. For now, I have only used 2 samples, and I do know their authors...)

See menu on the left side: Control panel > Attribution list.
Here you find all files you downloaded.

Yes, I know about the list of downloaded files.

But what I meant is, if I don't care, at the end I could not know which of the downloaded samples I have actualy used in my work. If I make heavy modifications and mixing, I would then not be able to recognize the original samples.
For example if I have 100 samples and used only 20 of them, is it better to write credits for all 100 of them, or just write some general attribution about freesound?

here's a truelife example of what i did when it was already too late to ask the question:

"the fx version is now remixed with extra noises
from the excellent freesound creative commons licensed collaborative database
- i tried to find the names of the people who provided the noises i used and credit them here
but it proved impossible to retrace may steps; sorry"

slegg

The 100 samples listed is the safest way to go if you find your self in that situation. It maybe clunky but there's also no way someone could say you didn't credit them.

But really you should make an effort to give credit where its due. I know that's a bit annoying when you're messing around with stuff but really you could make a note of who to attribute in the file you save with the modification.

If you don't there are possible grounds for someone to go after you for not using the sound under the creative commons license properly. I don't think there are any cases of this so far.

Some people may not care if you credit only by saying sounds gotten by FreeSound. But then again others will.
After all its not FreeSound who made the sound but the person who actually made it.

If you want to avoid the headaches just keep track of what samples your modifying ahead of time.

Save the sounds with the filename that Freesound gave it. This contains the sound ID, the creator and the sound name.

soundhead

If you want to avoid the headaches just keep track of what samples your modifying ahead of time.

Hi I've just signed up,

I have just uploaded a track onto Jamendo. On this track I have used lots of samples though non downloaded from this si

'crediting ' each & every person whose sample you have used is not only time consuming but also goes against the artistic flow. Business ideals have held back the ideals of art for too long.

Now of course I am not being forced to use these sample,s but I thought the whole point of a creative commons license was to make it easy to add too or evolve the digital art without all the restrictions of hard capitalist old fashion copyright.

Now for example Mr X has spent some time making 'Sample A' . & uploaded it to the sample website~ free flowing Artistic licence dot com . Miss Z downloads this sample & spends some time mixing it into a song.

Now if Miss Z posts a link to the song on the sample website so anyone can download the song for free then everyone with a well balanced sense will be happy.

Mr X gets free music and Miss Z gets free samples to make the free music.

ownership & possession cause only grief.Many suffer from the grief in greed. the possessively fanatical & extremely unbalanced capitalists ideals that have held down this planet from sharing equally since the first capitalist ( or any other politics of greed ) learned how a tool could be used also as a weapon. Until every idiot is fully functional and aware that they will not find true happiness until both Mr X & Miss Z are free to express them selves and have free access to the VAST WEALTH of materials & food available on this planet.

Or!

Stop acting like children holding onto your toys ( samples ) share them give them out and you'll naturally get it back.

for in giving we receive

:roll: ok that's just a lame argument for not having to keep track of the samples I use.It blocks my artistic flow. I've used over 80 samples in my current song . I've moshed em ,mixed em , spliced em ' diced em , reversed , split em , cut em so many different ways that none of you could even tell they were 'your sounds?' in the first place.

Capitalists ! spend a little time doing something and they think they own it. lol you own nothing you can keep indefinitely .And the more you try and hold onto it the sooner you will lose it .

hehe I love a good cyber rant !!! A little bit of humanity into the corporate techno heads whose heads are made from flesh & bones but minds are full of engines,robots,exhausts fumes,oil,scrap metal,newspaper utter trash , TV commercials,junk processed food and junk processed thoughts .

Anyway below is the link to my current song hope you enjoy this free sound.It's as much your song as it is mine .

p.s - might be a few days before it's available for download it's still being moderated

Like I said its annoying but its better than getting nothing. I am not a big fan of a lot of the CC licenses myself and would rather see more free without credit restriction licenses. The fact that they even have a simple looking license and then bury the real thing in often confusing legal jargon is annoying.

But recording sounds and music can be expensive and time consuming. Often times the higher the quality of a sound the more expensive the equipment used. Its not free. So if someone wants some compensation its fair.

Some people want the smallest bit of credit. I think its pretty generous in comparison to being given nothing or paying royalties.

Its not often hard to put a persons name at the end of a sample you modified to keep track of what your doing while your messing around.

FreeSound is supposed to be working on a multiple license structure some time down the line, which really should give people the best of both worlds:
Some form of free provided you credit the creator and meet X requirement
Other stuff Free without credit

I do get the whole mess around with samples and its a creative and sometimes different initiation of an artist. But there really needs to be some sort of middle ground of compensation between the new work, and the old works used that the new work capitalized on

@IB1
intellectual property is a complex topic. CClicenses is just one answer, not really the perfect one. I hope and believe it is only a first step.
public domain is another answer. it's of course more comfortable: no duties, no time wasting. I would call it consumerism, from a ethical point of view.

an italian songwriter, Giorgio Gaber, wrote a song that become widely popular:
"Freedom isn't to stay on a tree,
neither a gesture nor an invention,
freedom isn't a free space,
freedom is participation."

it say it all, imho.
I will quote the author of a sample because there's a value in doing it: a contact, and in this case also the acknowledgement of a community. Freesound clearly shows this value: you ask for help, you probably get help - for free. there are real persons behind these samples: public domain erase this meaningful fact.

I recently started to play with mixing softwares: to trace all samples is annoying but not impossible. I anyway manage these "gifts" maintaining my gratitude to authors. call me romantic, ingenuous... no problem

IB1

...
for in giving we receive

Then we all should give credit, as this will bring us a lot of good karma.
In cases of 'artistic flow' blocked by this small nuisance I suggest checking/replacing the valve/source. They might be damaged...

In cases of 'artistic flow' blocked by this small nuisance I suggest checking/replacing the valve/source. They might be damaged...

Exactly. How difficult can it be to honour the person who created that sample for you? Check your valves...

Some people request samples; get them, and can't even be bothered to thank the author let alone attribute them. Perhaps they are getting things too easily. Microwave society ?

Benboncan

Perhaps they are getting things too easily. Microwave society ?

Nah, I presume plain laziness (along with a feeble 'artistic flow' . Very discouraging anyway

Wow I love a good lively debate! But that is what these democratic forums are about.

But let us put this rant in to some context. Personally, I just download sounds from this and other sites and mess around with them a bit; only doing things like putting them together with other samples ETC, but I always keep the original as well. That is I think the best way to remember the authours [authors]; when you save the file from freesound, if you save it with the name freesound gave it like you should, :wink: then freesound gives it the file ID, the authour [author]and then the file's name. Might seem annoying, but best way to beat off the loyers [lawyers].

Interested in your comments, and particularly interested in what IB1 has to say about that.

matthew Galtress
And finally, I am relatively sertain [certain] that those who upload samples understand that they can be used in any form of mediam [medium] subject to the CC lisence.

Rant over!

Interested in your comments, and particularly interested in what IB1 has to say about that.

Unfortunately, the current license requires you to "creatively" transform the work to validly use it. This is too vague and not always the intent of what some freesound uploaders want to license to people. Can it be used in only a musical transformation or can people use it for sound effects in movies/games?

Vagueness in exactly how to credit and how many times to credit also leads to nuisances in the CC license. Sampling 1.0, the current exlusive CC here also forbids it to be used for advertising: "You may not use this work to advertise for or promote anything but the work you create from it." Sound becomes unfree in this way.

That's kind of annoying if someone makes a catchy song but doesn't meet the license's standard.

I think the buried legalese of it also says something like if the creator of the CC license does not want their name credited in whatever work you just gave attribution credit from, you need to remove it. That's just plain ridiculous requirements. One way or the other damn it!

To "creatively transfrom" a sample to me means you can't just take a simple and redistribute it directly or just put it under a moving image. The sound has to be part of something truly larger. For example, you take a sample of a barking dog and use that once in a 90 minute movie. Even if you haven't changed the sound itself, I think that can be considered "creatively transformed".

As for the Sampling Plus license, that is subject to change in the near future. And it does not restrict uploaders to license a sample under a different license anyway. One could upload a sound and add in the description "I created this sound and I'm releasing it as CC-BY!"

If you make a catchy song with a freesound, that does meet the standards, only thing with the current license is you cannot use your song then for a commercial (advertisement or promotion) other than for the song or album it's on itself. So you can use it for your advertising as music artist, but you cannot use it for a car commercial.

I could not find anything in the legal code about the original artist not wanting to be credited.

nemoDaedalus
To "creatively transfrom" a sample to me means you can't just take a simple and redistribute it directly or just put it under a moving image. The sound has to be part of something truly larger. For example, you take a sample of a barking dog and use that once in a 90 minute movie. Even if you haven't changed the sound itself, I think that can be considered "creatively transformed".

.....

I could not find anything in the legal code about the original artist not wanting to be credited.

section 3 e ii:

"Upon notice from any Licensor You must, to the extent practicable, remove from the Derivative Work or Collective Work any reference to such Licensor or the Original Author, as requested. "

Many people have used sounds on here exactly for video games and movies because they were under the impression it was valid to do so. And there is a degree of wiggle room that may make that possible. I can't imagine that people who made some of the sound effects on here wanted them to only be used for music transformation.

More vague and confusing jargon: "You must include a copy of, or the Uniform Resource Identifier for, this License with every copy or phonorecord of the Work or Derivative Work You distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform. "

So you put your music on a CD and attribute, now at the concert do you have to say who's samples you used in the performance?

I'm just saying Creative Commons or maybe some other license entirely can do better than this.

I've worked a lot with other CC artists, and it seems to me that most of them are less concerned with rules, and more interested in helping each other progress in their art. Today, I'm working on a song that includes a number of samples from this site.

As an artist, the last thing on my mind is license agreements. As one of the previous posters mentioned, we usually transform the sound into something completely different, and often unrecognizable. Most of the time, I'd never have to worry about someone recognizing the sample I used, let alone sue me for using it.

Now, here's why I find attribution important: As an artist who's contributed my own music for others to remix/record over, I'm always deeply interested in how people perceive my art, and especially when it becomes their art.

I've listed names in the past...people I've sampled and what not, but many of them will never come across the listing (that's right, I'm not famous) . I can follow the license agreement to a T, but it's often wasted time. As a rule, I do my best to let the person know I've used their sample. That way, they get the satisfaction of knowing that their work is appreciated, and they can have the option to have their name mentioned or not. Furthermore, I get the opportunity to capture a new audience.

Don't just consider the letter of the law... Consider why the CC exists in the first place, and don't be a shmarm

Better to be safe than sorry, though, ey? By all means let the person know, but credit it on your website to. I wouldn't want to take all the credit for a work when it is really not all mine!

I really don't know why people find attribution so difficult. Surely all you need to do is put on the site 'this song/sound was part-created using sample X, produced by user Y on www.freesound.org). And provided you have saved the file from freesound properly in the first place, it should be easy, shouldn't it? Attribution is so easy, even I can do it!