Freesound Forums

Hello Freesounders,

I noticed a user on a website pond5 (which sells "premium" quality stock media) called PurpleLion: http://www.pond5.com/artist/PurpleLion

I noticed several sounds of his which where CC0 sounds sourced from Freesound, these ones in fact:
http://www.freesound.org/people/kirbydx/sounds/175409/
http://www.freesound.org/people/felix.blume/sounds/162350/
http://www.freesound.org/people/tamerursavas/sounds/192672/

I expect his others are from Freesound too.

As far as I'm concerned this is extremely unethical, I was curious if he is breaking any laws though. I thought CC0 sounds still stop you from claiming authorship of the sounds, and by uploading to Pond5, are you not claiming to be the author?

It really gets my goat that people do this kind of thing. To not only not attribute, but to withhold the source in the hope that someone will buy something you downloaded for free is just lame.

Would really appreciate any people well versed in the creative commons licenses to provide some info on this.

All the best

Jeffercake

Thanks for pointing this out.

I have sorted by most sales and identified the sources of some of the sounds that were sold at least once:

* http://www.pond5.com/stock-music/22344603/hail-chief.html
http://archive.org/details/HailToTheChief_482

* http://www.pond5.com/sound-effect/22344847/gunshot.html
Something from http://freesound.org/people/Xenonn/packs/8014/

* http://www.pond5.com/sound-effect/28505220/office.html
http://freesound.org/people/FunnyMan374/sounds/108695/

* http://www.pond5.com/sound-effect/25891581/psycho-style-horror-sound.html
http://freesound.org/people/tamerursavas/sounds/192672/

* http://www.pond5.com/sound-effect/24434228/ships-horn.html
http://freesound.org/people/felix.blume/sounds/162350/

* http://www.pond5.com/sound-effect/23722895/sad-trombone.html
http://freesound.org/people/kirbydx/sounds/175409/

* http://www.pond5.com/sound-effect/22360515/deep-bass-sound.html
http://freesound.org/people/StayFixDesigns/sounds/169335/

* http://www.pond5.com/stock-music/22359600/la-cumparsita-tango.html
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:La_Cumparsita_(tango).ogg

My guess is that this is mostly plagiarism, which I personally don't know much about. I don't see information on pond5's terms of use page about their policy on plagiarism and wrote an email with these links, asking for an explanation of their policy. I recommend everybody else who cares about this issue does the same to stimulate them to respond.

The user's sound uploads are gone. Did anybody take screenshots to show to pond5 support?

Not sure images will be enough to help them identify sounds, if they don't have a way to check deleted files.

PS: feel free to send them to me qubodup@gmail.com if that's easier than cutting and uploading.

The communication with pond5 support so far was that they responded in a way as if I was reporting copyright infringement and that they would look into it (fair enough, the difference between plagiarism and copyright infringement can be confusing) and then replied that the sounds are not there anymore, asking for screenshots.

I received another response:

Apologies for any confusion I may have conveyed. Please know, the clips are not on our site, because our Curatorial team has reviewed and removed them. We appreciate you telling us how you discovered them. The general rules are, that artists must modify public domain content significantly. If not, they cannot claim copyright on it and cannot sell it on our site.

If you have more questions, I'll be happy to address. If there's anything else we can do for you, please let us know.

Hi Qubodup,

Thanks very much for looking into this and contacting pond5. Good news that this isn't allowed. I stumbled across them on Pond5, having heard the ones I mentioned on Freesound before. Suspected the users other content was of a similar origin.

Cheers
Jeffercake