Freesound Forums

I would like to contribute samples to the "Eternal Lands" community:

http://www.eternal-lands.com/index.php

but i am not shure if this works under legal aspects. Who can give me advice?

thanks
Erdie

In my opinon,

If it stays strictly non profit you are probably in the clear. That means things might change or have to be renegotiated if this game suddenly decides to go for profit.

If your using the samples in a musically creative way(like creating your own musical piece to contribute to the game),you should be entirely in the clear unless.(as long as that sample is clearly only part of the piece and not the meat of it) (of course you also have to give attribute credit to the sample)

Here's the legal code of the license on FreeSound:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/legalcode

In any case I always recommend contacting the creator of the sound, just to confirm that you can use the sound in the way you intend. Asking to freely use the sound in a non commercial way will probably be agreeable for a lot of people.(with credit to them of course) If you're uncomfortable with the Sampling license maybe you can ask if its ok to use the sounds instead under the Creative Commons Non Commercial Attribution License.(which would also be agreeable to most people) Its also useful to ask users how something was created or where they got it from. Some things are single shots taken from synths and their legality is questionable. Even worse if the sounds were put up by a user and taken off a sampler cd.(Definitely illegal to use). If someone is lying about the source from where they got the sound you at least have an email of them blatantly lying to you about it, which will at least show good faith on your part.(whatever that's worth...)

I recently found out that it´t not completly free - you have to pay for starting with certain characters. Someone from the development told me that the use this money for the costs of servers etc. I
understand this way but it makes it more complicated so will got and just contribute my own samples to them.

-Erdie

The commercial nature is inconsequential by the terms of the Sampling+ license. The only commercial use which is prohibited is the use of Sampling+ licensed sounds in advertising for an unrelated product, i.e. a car ad or something.

However, proper attribution, as always, is required.

Now, there is sort of a distinction between PRIVATE and PUBLIC (published) use. For private use, I can make a remix using Sampling+ licensed sounds for myself without having to go into lengthy attributions, etc. This is an unregulated use/fair use, where the license is not in effect. However, if I want to publish my remix (selling it or releasing it for free), I MUST properly attribute the sample if I want to use it under the terms of the Sampling+ license. Otherwise, I must either successfuly claim fair use or risk breaking copyright law.

I think Halleck might be right about just using sound effects anyway but its a little murky with the sampling 1.0 license. If you use a single sound as an effect and its considered an insubstantial part of something in the game like say birds chirping in the background, you should be able to use it anyway...

However, the whole problem is the argument of whether that sound is really considered a substantial part of the work or not.(It can be argued either way) Some may say its just birds for effect, someone else might say those birds completely change the tone of the game.(however ridiculous that sounds)

That's why I think it would be best to ask the creator of the sound.

For quite a few people, using the sound under a more clear seeming creative commons license like this one at the link:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/

will be pretty agreeable. Maybe about 20-35% of the creators on here might not like to release it to you under that license, but there are a lot who probably would. Explaining what the sound is for might help too...

That is true soundhead, and is one of the reasons why a license switch is under discussion. However, there is still no distinction between commercial and non-commercial applications in this case; the only real difference is how much the sound creator is likely to care about misuse. (Misuse is never good, but I think most people would consider it more serious in a commercial work.)