Freesound Forums

With the new law incoming from Europe I'm concerning about how it will affect over the rights on sound samples allowed in this web. Is there any problem with that law or nothing to be worry about ?

I was tempted to post a similar discussion.

For anyone unaware: https://changecopyright.org/en-US/

I'm not too sure what the outcome could be, but I think Freesound would be safe since the vast (vaaaast) majority of sounds on this site were created by the users that upload who then assigned Creative Commons licenses (licenses which news articles don't really have and this new law would sort of (drastically) correct).

So as the sounds on this site already use Creative Commons licenses, I don't really see how this law could impact the site? (Although I'm a bit terrified at the prospect of slowly seeing Wikipedia become increasingly archaic and inaccurate as they may no longer be able to reference contemporary articles without hefty fees)

I suppose we won't be able to use the "Articles" forum section anymore, as posting extracts of news articles might require a licensing fee to the news provider... it will be interesting...

Since adhering to all copyright rules was built into Freesound from the beginning I don't think we need to worry about breaking a law which is trying to drag the rest of the web up to our standards.

Where articles reference and quote external sources, I think this is still fine under the "fair use" policy which hasn't really changed. Links to external sources for people who want to follow in more depth are in line with the intention of the new rules, which are aimed at stopping serving someone else’s content from your own servers (as if it were your own) and profiting from it rather than directing visitors to the original source.

Because of the extent and nature of the copying and plagiarism on the web I think we are in the bottom 0.0001% of websites that are likely to accidentally get into trouble, especially as a non-commercial space we are not trying to gain financially on the back of someone else’s hard work.

Non-the-less I'm still concerned the new laws will have unintended consequences that will undermine freedom of speech or screw up our rights in one way or another. For instance giving new legal avenues to be misused by monopolies to further increase their influence and control.

My thoughts, Wibby