Freesound Terms and Conditions

The owner of this website is Universitat Pompeu Fabra (“UPF” or “we/us”) with tax number (CIF) Q-5850017 and domiciliated at Plaça de la Mercè, 10-12, Barcelona, Spain.

These general terms and conditions govern the use of and access to the website of Freesound ("Freesound"), a project of the Music Technology Group at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, and the services made available to users at https://freesound.org ("Website" or the “Site”).

Contact. Any questions regarding Freesound, the Site, our services or these terms should be addressed via the online web form.

Specific terms of use that are applicable to Freesound API users can be found here.

User/s: Freesound aims to create a huge collaborative database of audio fragments, samples, recordings and all kinds of beeps, ... released under Creative Commons licenses that allow their reuse. In these Terms and Conditions ("Terms") the term "User/s" refers to individuals registered on the Website who are part of the Freesound collaborative community.

The use of the Website implies the express and full acceptance by any user (“You”, “User” or “Users”) of the provisions of these Terms, which expressly include and by reference to our Privacy Policy and Cookies Policy. Users agree to use the Website in accordance with the provisions of the same and the law. Accordingly, Users are recommended to read carefully these terms and conditions and any instructions shown on the Website each time they access the site.

As a user, you have to be 18 years old or more to be registered.

We reserve the right to modify or delete at any time and without notice any content, services and information that are published in this website, as well as limit or modify these terms and conditions. Any modification will take effect as from the date of publishing and will bind any user accessing the page after publication. These terms may be saved and printed by the user using the "print" function of the browser.

Independently of any free or open source software or content license that may apply to any works, and except for works that are in the public domain, all the elements of this Website - including each individual work and the structure, arrangement and selection of those works - are covered by intellectual or industrial property rights. The rights in content, source code, form, design and name of the products, applications, tools, pages, brands, commercial names, logotypes, images, sounds and graphics, belong to, or have been granted to or are the object of a license in the name of, UPF. Authorship and the right to use these works in any manner, including reproduction, modification, distribution or public communication, are protected by law.

Registration. To post content to Freesound, you must create an account by completing the corresponding form with your details and agreeing to these Terms. The passwords are confidential and it is therefore your responsibility to safeguard and ensure their correct use. You agree to notify us immediately upon learning of any unauthorized use of your account or any other breach of security known to you. On confirmation of the account, you are granted a limited, revocable, non-exclusive and non-transferable license to use the Freesound services in accordance with these Terms. The privacy policy applicable to personal data collected and processed by Freesound is set out in the following link https://freesound.org/help/privacy/

Term. The account will be activated and remain in force unless terminated by either us or you hereunder. You may cancel your account at any time. All cancellations should be addressed to our online web form. We may suspend or cancel your registration immediately in case of breach by you of these Terms, by written notice. We may provide you 7 days’ notice of termination in any other circumstance. On termination for any reason, your access to your account and all of its content will be disabled and your personal data will be deleted, except as maintained in backups (for back-up retrieval purposes only or for any contingency). The content you have posted to the site will be reviewed and, at your option, may be deleted or kept online.

Responsibility and Use. You are responsible for all activities undertaken under your account. In addition, by using the account to upload content to Freesound, or by using the Freesound service to send content, you hereby expressly agree that other Freesound users and third parties may view and share your content according to these terms. You agree not to use the Freesound account for any illegal or unauthorized purpose or any activity that infringes third-party rights. Unless otherwise agreed in writing with us, you may not use the Freesound website portal for commercial purposes. You must not use the service in any manner that may deteriorate it or violate any laws (including but not limited to copyright laws). You agree to indemnify and hold us harmless to the fullest extent allowed by law regarding all matters related to your use of your Freesound account.

Security. You understand that the Freesound account can be used for transmission of your content, and that during processing, your content, including name, sounds, sound metadata, and certain account information may be transferred unencrypted over the internet.

Freesound provides services to users that allow them to post content on the Website (e.g. sounds and sound metadata), distribution lists, chat rooms, newsgroups, forums, blogs, etc. ("interactive services"). Users must provide and use such content and services in accordance with current legislation, these Terms, any specific conditions regarding the provision of these services, and ethical conduct. In particular but without limitation, users may not use this Site in breach of any intellectual and industrial property rights (copyright, trademarks, trade secrets, etc.) nor of personal rights such as image, honor, and personal intimacy. Without limitation, you agree not to use such services to disclose, publish or disseminate any spam, illegal code/virus/malware, confidential or misleading information or advertising, or other harmful uses that may damage the systems, reputation and interests of UPF, its licensees or its users.

Please note that Freesound is a user community and network and to develop this community certain of your user activity (uploading, downloading, comments, bookmarks) is visible to other users. You may also send and receive private messages to/from users.

Sounds and sound-metadata that are posted on the Website are moderated by the community, as regards their quality and appropriateness for the site, but only to the extent described in the moderator's guide. We do not control or supervise contributions made by users and other third parties to the web site, for example sounds, sound metadata, forum posts, user comments, etc., except when required by applicable law or competent court or administrative decision or to remove spam and other irrelevant or harmful content. If users or moderators spot any illegal sounds or sound metadata, or any other content they consider may be illegal or infringe these Terms, they should contact us via the online web form with a description of the issue and the URL of the content, or use the functionalities onsite for flagging content.

All third-party content, announcement, comment, opinion, declaration or recommendation made within the interactive services shall exclusively be attributable to the User/s expressing such points of view. In no circumstances shall such announcements, comments, opinions, declarations or recommendations be attributable to Freesound, which will be held harmless by the User from any claims that may arise in relation to such User using these interactive services for the purposes prohibited in these terms or otherwise by law.

We reserve the right to eliminate at any time any content or contribution that infringes or may infringe these Terms, or prevent the reproduction or public communication of any content/contribution until proof is provided of ownership of the material provided or the legality of the contribution. In particular, and for precautionary purposes, Freesound may eliminate or suspend publication of such content when any contribution is reported to be illegal, infringe third party rights or not be sufficiently documented (without prejudice to Freesound's right to retain and keep on file internally a copy of the content in question while the legal situation is being verified and for the duration that is prescribed by law).

We also reserve the right to exclude any user from the interactive services and to suspend or close his/her account without prior warning should the user breach any of these terms.

Inbound (general content, not sounds nor specifically related sound metadata). Without prejudice to the specific rules for sounds and sound-metadata posted to Freesound set out below, the posting or publication of messages, comments, descriptions, opinions, files or any other content to the website constitutes the grant in UPF’s favor (as operator of Freesound) to use and exploit such content under the terms of the Creative Commons Zero license.

Inbound (Sounds, sound metadata). When a sound item (“sound”) is uploaded or “posted” by a User to Freesound, together with any metadata or descriptive text associated to the sound (“metadata”):

a) the User grants UPF (as operator of Freesound), UPF’s licensees and Freesound’s users the right to use and exploit such sound and metadata in accordance with the Creative Commons license/s indicated by the User. The license applied to a sound applies also to associated metadata.

b) the User warrants to UPF (as operator of Freesound) that he/she has all necessary rights in the sound and metadata to grant such license to UPF and the public and that the posting for publishing does not infringe any third-party rights of any nature.

c) the User will indemnify and hold UPF, UPF’s licensees and users harmless against all loss or damage suffered by either or any of them, directly or indirectly, as a consequence of any breach of the above warranty and/or breach of third-party intellectual property rights, trade secrets, privacy rights or other third party rights, by such posting.

Outbound. The sounds and sound-metadata published by Freesound on the interactive services are distributed under the Creative Commons license indicated for each item and chosen by the author or User. Unless otherwise indicated in this way, all other content on Freesound Site and platform is licensed under the CC-BY 4.0 license.

Claims: Any claims notified to us by users in relation to infringements of intellectual or industrial property rights relating to any of the content contained on this web site must be sent to us via the online web form. In addition, the site includes specific functionalities for flagging content a user considers inappropriate, offending or a breach of these terms (in particular, illegal).

We do not guarantee the user the continued availability of Freesound platform or the supply of information or of the various services offered through it. As a result, users will not hold us liable for any damage or expense in the event of interruptions in the service, delays, malfunctions and, in general, any inconvenience whose origin lies in causes beyond the control of Freesound.

UPF does not assume any liability arising from (a) use made by the user of the content of Freesound's website and services; (b) the content and opinions published by third parties herein; (c) any activity that constitutes breach by the user or third parties of these terms; or (d) for any damages that may be caused to the users' equipment due to possible computer viruses contracted by the user in browsing the website or for any other damages incurred due to their browsing.

The User shall hold Freesound harmless in the event of damages caused to third parties as a result of the user's rightful or wrongful use of the products, services, contents or tools available on the website.

UPF, as operator of Freesound, will only be liable for loss or damages incurred by the user as a consequence of accessing the Website or using the contents or tools on the platform when such damages are attributed to fraud or wilful misconduct on the part of UPF.

In particular, UPF is not responsible for any User Content posted on the Platform, except as provided by applicable law. We do not actively review or moderate this content, but we do check this Content periodically to verify that it complies with our Acceptable Use Rules.

The present Legal Conditions, including the Privacy Policy and the Cookies Policy, shall be governed by Spanish law.

The magistrates and courts of the city of Barcelona will be competent to decide any controversy that may arise between the User and UPF, unless mandatory law establishes otherwise in favor of the Users.