Freesound Forums

...you went into a restaurant, pub, supermarket, shopping centre etc., and they were playing music licensed under the Creative Commons?

Not like this would really happen, but if it did, would it be legal to put recordings of these places with that music onto Freesound?

thanks
kwah

I'm interested in this too. If I record a cafe and it has background music playing I just delete the recording. I run a shop and the PPL and PRS take music copyright extremely seriously. Personally I won't put anything up on Freesound if it has background music on, but I'd be interested to know the answer to this question. I'm not sure how you'd know it was CC licenced though. I mean how would a restaurant attribute what it was playing?

The answer is yes, but you'd have to know the particular CC license that was designated to the recording, and then attribute accordingly if used elsewhere.

Copyright cases can take years to settle in court. So the matter is quite complicated, and different countries have different rules, etc.
However, court cases are only likely if there is money involved.

There are certain 'exemptions' from copyright, perhaps the most important being 'fair use'.
According to wikipedia, the 'fair use' is a limitation or exception to copyright that looks at a four-factor balancing test to decide if a 'fair use' exemption can be applied.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

So, consider that you make a recording of a caffe, or shopping mall, etc and there is music playing.
What happens next depends also on how you use the recording.
For the sake of our argument, we will assume the recording is being used as part of something else - a movie, where there is a scene in a shopping mall.

2 of the 4 factors in the test to determine 'fair use' would be important:
1) Purpose and character of the use - You would have taken this recording and transformed it into something else. You could even say that the music that was playing was part of the envirenment and plays a totally secondary role. The important element of this new work you created is the action that the movie is portraying.
Note that this is very different, however, to taking a copyrighted music piece and using it as a soundtrack to your scene. - where it would reinforce the actions or emotions of the scene itself.
2) The other important factor is 'effect upon work's value' - The fact that a background music was playing in the shopping mall scene would not add value to your work (the movie) whilst also it would not take value away from the music being played.
Considering the case of a commercial music being used as a soundtrack, it adds value as explined above by reinforcing the actions or emotions of the scene - So the author of the music can request compensation for that value add to your work, by enforcing his copyrights.
Similarly, if you were making copies of Lady Gaga's songs and selling them on CDs on ebay, the artist could say that you were subtracting value from her work, since people would buy your illegal copies rather than her CDs. So she could enforce her copyrights to take your earnings and request punitive action on top.

Because the existence of a copyright issue in these cases also depends on how the recording is used, and how much of the total music was recorded, etc we prefer not to have such recordings at Freesound .

Very interesting. Thank you.