Music Copyright and Fair Use

[Moonbo]

As I've built my level, I taken inspiration from the Thief FM community and have been using custom ambient loops where I couldn't find an appropriate track in the vanilla TDM package. I did this (like Thief FMs) by taking snippets from existing ambient music tracks and turning them into loops. Now, the original tracks are not public domain and were about 8 minutes long, of which I've taken ~45 second clips to use for my loop. In one case I'm using a 10 second snippet of a track that's 30 minutes long.

 

I know from earlier threads (which I read with a sinking feeling in my stomach) that using copyrighted music is basically verboten if you want to be hosted on the official TDM mirrors, but I was wondering if there is some possible exception for relatively small snippets under some concept of Fair Use. What do you guys think? Do I just have to scrap those tracks?

Edited August 9, 2013 by Moonbo

[grayman]

demagogue will have an opinion on this.

[jaxa]

It's a complicated area of law and the Thief/TDM communities have usually played it safe. I tried to get someone to do some ambient music for the mod but he got burnt out because of other stuff. When he was creating some examples he used some sound from T2 that I immediately recognized, since I've heard all the sound a billion times, and I asked him to take it out. I may try my hand at ambient myself. I'd just advise against using derivative loops. If I attempt to make some music, I would avoid it, although I barely have an idea of where to start with creating some of my own loops/noises from scratch (weird ambient noises, not instruments).

Edited August 9, 2013 by jaxa

[ERH+]

I guess starting point will be some music software, or rather choosing from available freeware or, other, programs from higher shelf. There you have prefabricated settings to start of, and you can mess with pitch ,speed, falloff, reverb and hundred of other parameters. Some haunting bells will be easy to start, then filling gaps with other random effects you will find interesting.

[stumpy]

unless you can get written permission without a fee from the maker of the non public to use that music clip, then you'll probably have to make your own music with something like a sequencer, music companies and musicians have nasty lawyers that you don't want to tangle with, some of them will take offense if even a 4 bar rift sounds the same as a rift written by them even if its in a different key and the timing is slightly different.

[Sotha]

Just don't take IP protected stuff into your FM in any form!

 

Just don't.Really! Why risk it? We cannot risk any intervention from any IP holders. None of your snippets are worth the risk.

 

Just keep away IP stuff and you will live a nice mapper career with less worries.

[Bikerdude]

yeah but if thos snippits were from music that was not part of the thief IP but rather custom added by the fm author that wouldnt that music be IP free etc.,.?

[Briareos H]

Most websites including Wikipedia limit fair use to either 30s or 10% of the original length, whichever is more restrictive. Anyway, a TDM FM is a non-profit entertainment use, so it may be seen in a negative light because it's neither educative nor transformative (parody) even though you don't make profit out of it. As a consequence, I would think that fair use cannot apply here, but rather the less obvious mess of legal issues about music sampling. You'd be better off asking for permission or dropping those altogether and, in any case, 45s samples will probably be too long to stand on legal ground.

 

In practice, if you can change the samples (stretch, cut, reverse, etc.) enough so that they're not recognisable in the loop, no one's going to come at you for using them.

 

P.S. I am not a lawyer

Edited August 9, 2013 by Briareos H

[grayman]

Don't include any snippets from other composers until you've heard from demagogue. I suggest you PM him, since he hasn't shown up here yet. He's our liaison to a firm that handles copyright issues, and which has basically defined for us what we can use and what we can't, under the terms of "fair use", etc.

[Tr00pertj]

All audio I used in my first mission was TDM stock. I am putting some of my own music in my next mission and plan to in future.

 

Any music files included with my missions that I compose are free to use for anyone. I may make some files and submit them for inclusion in the TDM assets files at some stage.

 

What every one should remember is laws are different from state to state. As such including a 5-10 second extract from one copyrighted material may be fine in one state but not in another. Also remember that because it is being used in a digital format it will be replicated many times and under some laws these can be prosecuted as individual infringements. If it's not public domain and/or under some sort of GNU license agreement for non profit use then it is almost certainly copy protected and would need permission for use by you from the copyright holder.

[simplen00b]

Dunno if this is relevant, but I'm pretty sure the outside party area in Lady Rowena's Seven Sisters T2 FM has a loop from a Velvet Underground track playing on the gramophone (Venus in Furs, IIRC).

 

I'd be interested in hearing the ambient loops you're using and seeing if I could recreate something similar on my synth. Not sure how to do that (Soundcloud?), and anyway, as things currently stand I probably wouldn't be able to put any time into it till September.

[Jesps]

Just don't take IP protected stuff into your FM in any form!

 

Just don't.Really! Why risk it? We cannot risk any intervention from any IP holders. None of your snippets are worth the risk.

 

Just keep away IP stuff and you will live a nice mapper career with less worries.

 

Pretty much this.

Besides the 'fair use' is an American thing as far as I understand, so you cannot expect it to apply outside of the US.

[Moonbo]

Ah well...guess I'd better start knocking around the Free Music Archive for some replacements :-(. I have a composer friend I might ask too.

[demagogue]

Well just to add what I know, the NMR people that helped us with going standalone said that sound & music files have the least latitude for fair use, since it doesn't really fit any of the categories (like for review purposes or parody, etc), although there is more latitude if you are reproducing a song from scratch on your own equipment.

 

My FM uses a few custom tracks. What I did was surf YouTube because people upload their tracks there a lot, and I'd just PM the person that made it and ask for permission directly. An author's permission is always going to give you a license.

 

Whatever you do, always give credit & a link to the author in your readme of course.