Freesound Forums

I just came across this website at "free-loops.com" where sounds from freesound.org are being sold. The value is that you supposedly get this big collection of useful stuff without having to wade through sites like freesound.org, yourself. The web pages there will say that a sound is covered under creative commons audio license, or whatever, but it isn't clear whether the purchasers are told how to provide attribution. I haven't purchased it, and doubt anyone here would. My guess is that this is probably legitimate, but I'm wondering if anyone hear knows about it or has double-checked to see if the product covers the legal bases correctly?

Can you name some Freesound.org sounds that you found there? I wasn't able to find anything in the few minutes I spent trying to.

At the time, I was just looking for usages of my own stuff (vanity searching, you know -- you can find some really gratifying usages out there, and some baffling ones, because the web is full of weird crap). Anyway, this is the one that led me there:
http://free-loops.com/8324-artillery-tank-fire.html
There is no mention of freesound.org, so the user name "zimbot" for attribution is really meaningless in that lack of context. It is a duplication of this sound of mine:
http://www.freesound.org/people/zimbot/sounds/117801/

Compare the descriptions, etc. Technically, this free-loops web page is already itself failing to provide proper attribution. If the product (the full download) also does not list how to provide attribution, that's even worse, because end users who want to do the right thing won't have enough information to do so. But I don't know what's in the downloadable product.

Thank you for bringing this to the attention of the Freesound community.

I have written a text that I will write to the administrators if I will find any sounds by me under CC BY license on that website: http://ompldr.org/vaGJ1Zg (backup http://codepad.org/vHmVuExR ). Feel free to copy/adapt (cc0 license , I am not a lawyer). I recommend you do not include the warning about legal action if you are not actually willing to take such steps.

I am not sure how to contact the website administrators but I assume that koenigmedia [AT] gmail [DOT] com might be an administrator, considering the footer. AFAIK that contact is associated with http://soundbible.com/ as well and I have had communication with that address, requesting license information about soundbible.com in the past.

The forum does not work. http://free-loops.com/contact.php

whois only gives me FREE-LOOPS.COM [AT] domainsbyproxy [DOT] com .

If you decide to contact the website administrator or write DMCA requests or contact PayPal, please let us know about the progress and I'd gladly help finding out whom to contact and what to write regarding the latter two as well as I am very interested in helping to protect and learning about protecting CC-BY works, especially in commercial use situations, without the authors switching to NC licenses out of frustration.

(Re-reading through 4. of the CCBY3 license reminded me of some things I should do better when re-distributing CCBY3 works.)

Thanks for the help. I've starting some efforts to see what can be done to correct the problem, but it might end up only affecting the item[s] I own. I'll post an update if and when anything happens.

BTW: at least this web site does go to some (insufficient) trouble to identify owners/licensors. By contrast, there are lots of vapid content-less web sites out there that exist only to serve misleading ads, and freesound sounds show up there as OGG format downloadables (though it is hard to figure out whether the web pages actually contain any working download links, since I'm not willing to click on most of them). I've seen the same web site showing up under several different domain names, including http://www.general-files.com/files-1/1449999/6/. I suspect these are all criminal sites, but if not, they are the scourge of the internet and should be removed from search results by search providers like google.

zimbot wrote:
... It is a duplication of this sound of mine:
http://www.freesound.org/people/zimbot/sounds/117801/

The Freesound license you've selected for that is "attribution", which does allow people to sell copies of it, (even as identical isolated samples rather than as part of a composition) ...

creativecommons.org wrote:

Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)

You are free:
to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work
to Remix — to adapt the work
to make commercial use of the work

Yes, but only under the conditions of the license, which are not being met.

An update:

Mr. Michael Koenig does indeed continue to be involved with this free-loops.com site, along with perhaps a hundred other domains, and he has been very quick to reply to email. He says he is responding to correct the problems. Let me summarize some of his points of interest, though I cannot verify anything myself:

• He loves freesound and has donated money to Bram and the University of Pamplona in recent years.
• The sounds on the free-loops web site have evolved over time (since 2006) and now have a mess of different licenses that need to be cleaned up.
• He/they will attempt to add better cc links.
• The actual download is free, but the other advertised audio is something hosted to bring in income that allows paying for a couple of music producers and a sound designer, part-time, so that members can get royalty-free loops.
• The planned action to remedy the problem, which may yet take a few weeks: Comb the site to see if there are more freesound.org sounds, and wherever so, either

• provide a link back to the appropriate freesound sound's page so people can properly attribute the sound; or
• just replace the sound with new content (most likely), to be fabricated by himself or someone else.
• Finally, a link has been added at the bottom of the web pages to allow anyone to contact him via a contact form, so as to make reporting easier. Thus, any freesound user who notices objectionable usage can contact him to point out the specific issues found, even though he says he plans to correct the problems across the entire collection.

As for the one link I had found that was one of mine (faked artillery/tank fire), it has in fact been changed. The new description reads

Digital Media: Artillery Tank Fire Sound Effect

Desc: Tank or other artillery machine firing or exploding. Complaint made by original artist so we made an even better sound. Browser may need to be cleared and closed in order to hear new sound.
Artist: Mike Koenig

So this appears to be being resolved appropriately. I did notice some other sounds that were taken from freesound when I was browsing the other day, but there are way too many sounds to do a comprehensive perusal. If anyone here is interested, I suggest you search for your freesound user name on his site (perhaps using google), and then wait to see if they get updated after a few weeks.

[EDIT: sorry, this forum web-app does not allow nested lists, so the bullets above are not properly nested]

Thank you very much for informing us of the progress!

I'm so glad to hear that the administrators are reacting. I was worried that the lack of contact ability indicated it would be hard to come through.

He loves freesound and has donated money to Bram and the University of Pamplona in recent years.

Just to make something clear: I never receive any donations, all donations always go (and went) to freesound.

- bram