Re: how far have we really taken these rules on the forum!
I'd like to post in here one more time and then forget about this topic. As someone who relys heavily on sound and generally invests a ton of time on audio production and sound design and someone who has the community's best interest in mind, my aim in this particular post is now to settle this debate once and for all. I know there will always and forever be skeptics, but studdying over the past week or so that this topic has been going has left me with no doubt that what I'm about to write is in fact the only way forward and will in essence get the ball rolling in the right direction again. I couldn't be absolutely certain when I first began writing on here, which is why I tried to shift the conversation to one of how copyright law is broken; it is. That having been said, the terms in licensing, are not; If you are a mod/admin for ag net, a developer who wants to hopefully have his or her games included on ag net or somewhere in between I urge you to please read this post carefully and pass its information around if necessary. Nocturnal post Copyright Saturday, may 23rd, 2020, all rights rejected. Redistribution of the information in this post is proactively encouraged and yada yada yada, blah blah.
So, lets get some technical crud out of the way in this section concerning copyright. It does exist and is supposed to protect from people profiting from other people's work. In essence and in the scope of this particular discussion, the idea here is that if you create/ produce/record a sound for wider consumption or broadcasting purposes someone else should not be able to take credit for it or unfairly profit from it.
Notice I said unfairly profit? Awhile back on this particular topic the concept of fair use was brought up, and that raised the question of what precisely fair use was and how it applies to this discussion, if in fact it applies at all. In order to get into that particular aspect of this discussion, though, we're going to have to get into something called licensing, a separate concept altogether from copyright.
Licenses are important to understand. when you purchase/download individual sounds or sound libraries what you are actually doing is buying/obtaining the ability to use them; you do not own them. Licenses vary from one company to another, so it would be in your best interest to understand the terms by which you are bound when purchasing/downloading sound effects. Overall, however, there are basics that apply across the board owing to similarities in how the licenses are written.
1. Practically all sound design companies allow syncronization rights. What this means is that if you use sounds in a sound sequence you are in fact using the sounds as they should be used. If, for example, you have three sounds and you have in mind that those three sounds should be used in a sound sequence, provided that none of those sounds are isolated in such a way that they could then be redistributed as single sounds, you're in the clear.
2. Licenses for sound effects are generally granted for perpetual use, meaning that they can be used and reused and reused and reused infinitely provided you have access to them and have obtained them by legal means.
without further payment.
3. In addition, provided that you have obtained sounds and or sound libraries legally, you are also free to store them as necessary for backup purposes.
4. Redistribution of sounds or sound libraries is generally not allowed as it deprives the copyright holder fair profit from their product. Others should have to download or otherwise legally obtain the sound.
5. Network sharing and or transfer is generally prohibited and frowned down upon.
6. In many instances attribution is required. Wherever it is possible, particularly as it pertains to royalty free music and sound effects it is necessary or at the very least courteous to mension composers, audio producers and sound designers so that credit is given where credit is do.
All of this is important because as stated previously, many sounds have been used and reused throughout the blind community, mostly by audio games. Whether free or paid, titles include but are not limited to, Swamp, Lunimals, Rs-Games, QuentinC's playroom, Super Liam, Judgment Day, Shades of Doom, Tank Commander, Time of Conflict, q9, Jungle, Alien outback, the Alter Aeon mush-z soundpack, the miriani soundpack used for VIP-mud, audioquake, all spoonbill games, all kitchensink games, light Cars, Light Locater, and on and on we could go probably throughout the entirety of the database. In at least two of the instances I've mentioned, the sounds are readily available for anyone who downloads the games in their own folder. Whether this was an oversight of the developer or flat out intentional is beyond me and I honestly don't care, nor do I believe has anyone else, until now. The issue is now being discussed because as it currently stands, if we're going to try and follow copyright to the letter we're going to have to put practically all of ag net on the chopping block, scrap the entirety of the database and start over from scratch, screening every game as it comes in and somehow finding a system by which we can determine who legally owns the sounds and who doesn't.
But it gets even more ridiculous when you happen to know that many if not most of the sounds currently being used are available for free download. Yes, those are legally free sounds, provided that you do not use them in a profitable atempt. Many of them, of course, are available as part of larger packages belonging to either Hollywood Edge or Sound Ideas. What I am in fact saying is that it would be hard to know if sounds were legally or illegally obtained unless we started monitoring people off the forum, which is something I think we can all agree goes far beyond the scope of this site and its moderation/administration panel. You can't, fully, absolutely, know, who obtained all of these sounds and how they obtained them and what right they did or did not have to use them or how they were used. this should, then, I believe, place the responsibility of sounds and sound design on those who are developing games and not on the moderation/administration panel of audiogames.net
Obviously we are bound to legalities ourselves, meaning that if we do become aware that a game is doing something it should not be doing we should try and act upon it, but until we know for sure that this is the case it should not be a knee-jerk reaction, as such would actually fall under the concept of character assassination given what I've outlined in post 79. To briefly summarize for anyone who didn't read it or can't be bothered scrolling up because pages, the section I'm refering to in particular states that either we assume that those using sounds are legally using them, or we lable everyone who uses an iconic sound a pirate from the get-go. This puts just as much of the blame on people who have developed paid games since, as I stated above, at least two instances of commercial games have stock sounds in them that can freely be copied by anyone with an ounce of computer knowledge.
This is where the concept of fair use comes into play. What it boils down to is that as long as the soundsare not being used for any kind of comercial gain and are not being left isolated for the general consumer to simply snag for themselves one is free to take overall sound and use it. CrazyParty falls under this umbrella as, A, it encrypts sounds, B, overlays music in such a way that it cannot be completely turned off and therefor does not allow sounds to truly be isolated and, C, does not profit commercially in any respects. Incidentally, it is worth mentioning that to my knowledge the only sound I know of that has a nintendo trademark associated with it at present is the Mario Coin sound effect, which I do not believe is being used in CP. This in essence means that, and I'm paraphrasing Nintendo's terms of service more or less across their sites, all content they own rights to, be it articles, artwork, screen shots, graphics, logos, digital downloads and other files, may not be used on any other web site, in any publications, in public performances, in connection with any product or service that is not Nintendo's, in any manner that is likely to cause confusion among customers, in any manner that disparages or discredits Nintendo, or in any manner that is otherwise exploitative for any commercial purpose or that otherwise infringes Nintendo's intellectual property rights. CP is not such a product.
and with that, I take my leave. I plead with you all to read and reread this post carefully and sincerely hope it helps to extinguish some of the flames. the best thing that can be done at present is for the CP developer to include, if he hasn't already, a section that details that most if not all of the sounds currently available on the game do not belong to him or his team and where possible, include who they do belong to. Until Nintendo or other such entities whom may be responsible for particular sounds along with companies like Hollywood Edge or Sound ideas begin pursuing individuals and start asking for takedowns, I do not believe it would be in the best interest of ag net and its administration panel to flex its muscles and start slamming the ban hammer on games or devs. Place the responsibility on the devs and sound designers and not on yourselves. It does not fall upon us to police the whole of the net. Even if it did, we couldn't do it as there are far too many variables at play here. Thank you all for your attention.
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