Hollywood Soundbank

[OrbWeaver 664]

The question is, wether we count for a regular PC game, as we want to release this as open source. Which means that everybody, who downloads this mod, can use the stuff. I doubt that some company would include such a usage.

 

Precisely. Once they are released as Open Source, the owners would basically lose all ability to sell them elsewhere, since the clients could just take them from the freely-available mod and use them in their own projects.

 

You could make that argument about any copyrighted assets, "if we modify them enough, no one will notice." I don't think it's a good idea though, and feel pretty strongly about it, just like when we talked about using Facegen faces. If we do follow that strategy for sounds, we might as well steal other people's textures, models, etc. and modify them as well. I'd rather not risk the whole mod on the gamble that "probably no one will recognize the original."

 

I would tend to agree. If you are producing an open source project, the last thing you want is a Dark Secret in the middle of it concerning the ownership of some of its copyrights.

[Springheel 4678]

You could make that argument about any copyrighted assets, "if we modify them enough, no one will notice." I don't think it's a good idea though, and feel pretty strongly about it, just like when we talked about using Facegen faces. If we do follow that strategy for sounds, we might as well steal other people's textures,

 

We're already using photoreferences for most of our models, textures, etc. Technically, photographs are copyright. How is this different?

[SneaksieDave 40]

I would assume photographs in use are either being grabbed with permission/in free domain, or taken by the texture author... right, texture authors?

 

Mine have only been from free sites or myself.

[OrbWeaver 664]

Of course, the sound guys could take these sounds and use them as inspiration for a set of similar sounds.

 

They could come back with something that is very similar, or even essentially indistinguishable from the originals, however they would be royalty-free.

 

Not that we can check, of course, but when the sound guys present a royalty-free equivalent set of sounds, I will certainly trust that they are totally above-board.

[sophisticatedZombie 0]

Having worked for companies that have seen patent and trademark lawsuits, this is not a small deal. If anyone with a lawyer thinks they can convince a jury in the US that their copyright was infringed, they will bring a suit to garnish wages from whomever of us have jobs. There are district courts in Texas that are very amenable to such cases, and they will be filed there. Note that all they have to do is convince a jury that their revenues may have been diminished... not that the party breaking copyright actually made any revenue. Also keep in mind that if any materials or planning related to copyright infringement were hosted on a service, such as these forums, they could go after them as well, so long as the country they are in has a copyright treaty with the US, which most countries do. Basically they will go after whomever has the deepest pockets. Please be careful about this as I don't want to have to drop off of the project for legal reasons.

 

Yes, usually this just begins as a cease and desist letter, but you never know where it will go from there. What I would reccommend doing is using the collections of sounds as a basis for getting ideas on what types of things can be recorded. Sometimes you can listen to a sound effect and say.. ah, they are hitting a slinky with a ruler! (not that the sound is good if you do that).

 

Also, as many of the people here do, I've got considerable experience with making sounds using combinations of synthesizers, trackers, filters, and effects in Buzz. If there are particular sounds we want, I may be able to make some using some simple samples and a bunch of effects.

[sophisticatedZombie 0]

Just as a note, here is a link to a website trying to create a bank of common creative license sound effects. We may qualify for usage of some of the sounds. Also, the creators are attributed so we could track them down. Also, the forums have tons of discussions on the issues we are talking about here, with input from copyright attorneys etc...

 

http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/

[Darkness_Falls 73]

I agree with SZ. Let's not use them if there's any risk of copyright infringement. Sounds are easy to remember and pinpoint when you've heard them before. There's an alarm sound in an N64 game that I swear I've now heard in about 3 different commercials and 2 different movies. Other sounds I've heard (even tiny ones... like little *clinks* or *rattles*) from other games seem to pop up in other media, as well.

 

Well, we're talking about clicks here...is anyone going to notice and/or care, especially if they've been modified? I don't think too many hollywood execs are going to be playing TDM.

Hollywood execs might not play TDM, but some of our players will definitely watch Hollywood movies. And our players might think it's weird if they heard a TDM sound be very close to or exactly like a Hollywood sound. Even shifting octaves or applying filters wouldn't be enough to "hide" the sound in many cases. Would hate for them to report to Hollywood people they know or otherwise 'investigate.'

[Crispy 8]

I agree as well.

 

I've expressed this before but it's worth repeating: Please be careful about copyright. Please do not use these sounds. I really do not want to see this project sunk by a pack of rabid lawyers (or even one, perfectly sane lawyer).

[OrbWeaver 664]

I concur.

 

Look at the SCO lawsuit against IBM, where SCO accused IBM of illegally infringing SCO's copyright and contributing it to Linux. Imagine what would have happened if they had found this to be true -- both IBM and Linux would be sunk.

[Springheel 4678]

We defintely are going to need some SFX help then. Can someone in the sound dept check out the help wanted thread? Someone's willing to record some fx for us, but I can't really give them any guidance.

[New Horizon 539]

I'm waiting to hear back from some of the T2X guys. I spoke to Duncan and he said he would be happy to help us out, he just has to ask around before he can ok anything. Basically, we might be able to make use of any sounds that still exist in their original uncompressed format. I asked specifically about the player footsteps, since they were created from scratch for T2X and sounded pretty good to me.

[Springheel 4678]

That would be extremely useful.

 

We still could use impact sounds though, especially if we want to have different sounds for things hitting different surfaces (the code is already implemented but we don't have any fx for it).

[New Horizon 539]

That would be extremely useful.

 

We still could use impact sounds though, especially if we want to have different sounds for things hitting different surfaces (the code is already implemented but we don't have any fx for it).

 

If the T2X guys decide they want to donate, I'll see what they have. I don't think they created new impact sounds...but you never know.

[pakmannen 1]

Hello. I'm getting settled in over here, so I might be able to take a look at this over the weekend.

[Darkness_Falls 73]

I so want to do sound effects. It's killing me that I don't have the right hardware.