Freesound Forums

One of my sounds (haunting sequence) is in public domain, and someone put it into their beat. Call them A.
Then call some else B, who also put my sample in their song.

Now A sends a copyright notice to B because B is using my sample. B contacts me about this, and I'm a little stuck.

This seems weird to me. The sound is my creation, and surely if I don't have any problems other people using it, those who've already used it shouldn't have any problems with that either? I smell foul play on A's part.

Advice much appreciated, thanks!

This is a situation which is based on the idea of the ‘threshold of originality’.

Let’s say that A makes a beat that uses your haunting sequence verbatim (as an intro, say). B then samples that and A tries to sue B. A probably doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on, any more than someone who publishes a verbatim copy of Alice in Wonderland can slap an ‘all rights reserved’ notice on it — not that republishers of public domain books don’t do exactly that.

Now if A has processed the living daylights out of your sound to make something entirely new, that’s a little different, in the same way as the difference between someone writing an entirely new story about Alice (not infringing because the original is in the public domain) and someone writing a story about Alice based on someone else’s entirely new story about her (potentially infringing, because Alice’s Other Adventures in Wonderland might well meet the threshold of originality).

(Standard disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, just someone who has spent so much time getting tied in knots over copyright law as to leave with the impression that it desperately needs to be simplified.)

Addendum: some helpful articles can be found at http://www.newmediarights.org/business_models/artist/can_you_copyright_work_after_original_copyright_expires (US-centric but mostly applicable worldwide) and more generally http://www.newmediarights.org/business_models/artist/wizard_oz_public_domain.

This is easy. Contact user A, and tell them to behave.

Thanks James and Headphaze. Both used my sound as is, no wacky mangling.

In that case, because they have not met the threshold of originality and cannot be said to have created a derivative work, A can be suffixed with ‘hole’.