Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Hi everyone. I wanted to get some feedback on an idea I have, and this seems like a good place.
So the idea is, I want to make a website for storing video game soundtrack archives in FLAC (and MP3/OGG/something for regular consumption). The idea behind it is to have archives that are 100% tested, verified to be correct and without glitches, and as high quality as possible, with all correct ID tags. And in FLAC/MP3 just so everyone can play the files on all hardware (as opposed to PSF/SPC/NSF/etc files). So basically, an authoritative vg music archive. I don't think something like this exists yet.
We'd have a forum on which most discussion takes place and where people can "reserve" a game that they want to rip (just to prevent people from accidentally working on the same thing), and where errors in existing packs can be discussed.
In addition to that it seems like a cool idea to also offer flac versions of remixes of and (modplug) tributes to vg music, in separate packages. But that's pretty optional, I don't know if it's interesting enough to do.
Storage would probably be through torrents, although I do have an online ~5TB storage unit at my disposal. A lot of details still have to be worked out (and there's no name yet), but just generally I'm curious what people here think and whether you have any ideas to offer.
edit: oh yeah, and I just wanted to add: while a lot of soundtracks for SNES, NES, PSX, etc. are readily available, I sorta wanted to focus particularly on PC game soundtracks, and then particularly older ones that aren't so easily ripped. Even though any vg soundtrack will be accepted. I've already ripped a whole bunch of games.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
I don't suppose it'll be much of a problem. VG soundtracks are already readily available everywhere. In some cases we might get takedown requests and we'll honor them, most likely only from the largest studios and latest games. I suppose most of our soundtracks will be from older games—I actually think we should limit ourselves chiefly to tracker/midi-based music.
And there are indie game soundtracks that the devs are selling by themselves, we should avoid those just because it's not cool towards them.
VG soundtracks are already readily available everywhere.
Availability does not somehow nullify or lessen copyright. Copyright is not like trademarking.
In some cases we might get takedown requests and we'll honor them, most likely only from the largest studios and latest games.
In theory they could go even further than that. I don't think there's any law anywhere that says that they must give you a chance to take it down before they take legal action.
(And I'm not saying this because I agree with copyright being so totalitarian. I'm just stating facts as they are.)
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Warp wrote:
Dada wrote:
VG soundtracks are already readily available everywhere.
Availability does not somehow nullify or lessen copyright. Copyright is not like trademarking.
Since other places don't have much of a problem, there's no reason to expect this site would in particular.
Warp wrote:
In some cases we might get takedown requests and we'll honor them, most likely only from the largest studios and latest games.
In theory they could go even further than that. I don't think there's any law anywhere that says that they must give you a chance to take it down before they take legal action.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Two disclaimers: IANAL, and I don't know about copyright laws in the netherlands.
But as far as I know, takedown notices only apply to server hosters that have no knowledge about the illegal content on the servers, i.e. the guys with a few hundred server racks. They're not accountable for the infringement until they know about it.
If you're the webmaster of a site explicitely designed to distribute music ripped from commercial, copyrighted games, you might have lost that right. Copyright holders will consider you accountable for the infringement, and that's where the fun starts.
In germany, you'd get an "Abmahnung" ("written warning"), which contains:
a) details about the copyright infringement you did and an order to desist within a certain deadline.
b) a bill for their lawyer (fees are regulated by law, but not cheap)
c) an "Unterlassungserklärung", a contract they need you to sign. It basically says "I acknowledge that I infringed on their copyright and will never do it a gain, or I'll pay 19827483€ in contract penalties".
If you don't pay the bill, they'll take you to court over the bill.
If you don't sign the contract, they'll take you to court to get a court order telling you to do what the contract said.
If you don't remove the content within the deadline, court it is.
Going to court when not being innocent is always expensive. If you lose, you'll have to pay their lawyers (quite a bit more than the original sum), your own lawyers and the court. Even if you get a partial win, it's still expensive.
You can go to court, trying to argue that you had no knowledge of your user's deeds and thus aren't accountable. But how would you argue that?
The easiest way out is to desist, sign the contract and pay the bill. But signing the contract may result in them trying to force license fees out of you. You've signed this thing saying that you're guilty, right?
You can pay your own lawyer to design a different contract to get around that issue, but unless the other party agrees with that contract, court it is.
And contract or court order, both are obviously timebombs. One of your users uploads the same music again? You're in trouble.
There's also no limit to the amount of "Abmahnungen" (and thus lawyer's bills) you can receive, and the deadlines pretty much prohibit you from taking longer vacations. Generally, anything more than one letter per lawyer/client-combination might be considered abusive, but again, you'd have to go to court to prove that.
What I'm saying is: don't bet your financial existence on the assumption that "it'll never happen". Find a local copyright lawyer, discuss the legal backgrounds and worst-case-scenarios with him. He may charge 200€, but that's a good investment. And if it isn't viable in your country of residence, then don't do it, but leave it to someone in a country with different copyright laws.
Also, never underestimate the psychological effect that a big company threatening you with legal action can have. People easily dismiss it and don't think about it, with a feeling of "if it happens, I'll just deal with it." However, if it does happen, it can be quite frightening and cause lots of anxiety, even if you ultimately get out of it with no or only a minor sanction.
(This is actually often abused as a dirty tactic by many companies and even many individuals who work for a company or other entity: If they want to scare you or get something from you, they will threaten you with a lawsuit, and the threat will often be of the form "either you pay me X money now, or I'll sue you for X*100 money." That kind of threat can be surprisingly effective, especially if it's a company or a person with a strong labor union or the like behind him.)
There's also http://www.vgmpf.com/
I'm aware of the fact that these already exist and that flac soundtracks get posted on various places, but there's no good central archive where you can find all of them, all in one place, in flac, with proper tags and easily downloadable. Take gh.ffshrine.org—you can't even download all the files at once. And most of them are in MP3 anyway.
The reason I'm thinking about making this site is because the soundtracks do exist, but they're scattered and half the time you can't be sure of the quality or of the tags being proper.
Tub wrote:
Two disclaimers: IANAL, and I don't know about copyright laws in the netherlands.
But as far as I know, takedown notices only apply to server hosters that have no knowledge about the illegal content on the servers, i.e. the guys with a few hundred server racks.
There's the "safe harbor" provision of the DMCA (it's called the "mere conduit" provision in Europe). It also applies to situations where the administrator of the website didn't personally sign off on some file upload to the site, so if the upload happened through an automatic process without site staff verifying the content prior to its online publication.
Tub wrote:
What I'm saying is: don't bet your financial existence on the assumption that "it'll never happen". Find a local copyright lawyer, discuss the legal backgrounds and worst-case-scenarios with him. He may charge 200€, but that's a good investment. And if it isn't viable in your country of residence, then don't do it, but leave it to someone in a country with different copyright laws.
This is sound advice—actually, one of the things I've been thinking about is limiting the site to soundtracks that were not separately released (and thus are very unlikely to have people looking for them).
Still, I think it's safe enough to offer other soundtracks as well, if we're only offering flac-rendered versions of tracked music (e.g. psf/spc/etc), since these seem to already exist in various other places with impunity. Obviously there can't be any certainty—but the same applies to this website's videos (to a lesser degree, but still).
It also applies to situations where the administrator of the website didn't personally sign off on some file upload to the site, so if the upload happened through an automatic process without site staff verifying the content prior to its online publication.
Yeah, that argument worked very well for rapidshare and other file hosters, didn't it?
Hosting a forum for squirrel lovers and some user posted a copyrighted image of a squirrel? Not a problem for the hoster.
Hosing a site designed to distribute copyrighted works and most users are posting copyrighted files? Well..
The thing is: if the copyright holders don't agree with your stance on that, they'll take you to court. And that court may decide either way. It may also require you to implement far-reaching mechanisms to prevent further uploads of unlicensed files. Can you do that?
In fact, can you do that before you start the service?
For example, wikipedia requires every upload to be tagged with a proper license. Unlicensed uploads require a small justification on why the use is considered fair use or otherwise legal. That puts them in a pretty strong position to show that they (as a provider) do everything they can to care about copyrights, thus it's likely they wouldn't be accountable for the occasional user error.
If such a tagging system would result in most of your files being tagged with "unknown, probably illegal", that's a problem. If you'll tag them with "nobody seems to care", that's still a problem. If you can tag them with "distibution allowed by netherlands law §42", go ahead.
Dada wrote:
one of the things I've been thinking about is limiting the site to soundtracks that were not separately released (and thus are very unlikely to have people looking for them).
Do the netherlands have a "fair use" clause, or any clauses about abandoned works, or anything else that might justify releasing them legally?
Under US fair use law, the fact that they're not separately released is good for you, since the copyright holder will have trouble citing damages. But that's just one of the four factors to be considered, and I doubt you'll pass the others.
Dada wrote:
Obviously there can't be any certainty—but the same applies to this website's videos (to a lesser degree, but still).
Indeed it does, but tasvideos is showing derivative works of the video games instead of just copying a part of them. And that's the central point of this site's position:
http://tasvideos.org/Nach/FairUse.html
Also, US law seems to apply for tasvideos (which is registered to adelikat under an US adress). I wouldn't dare running such a site in germany, where even posting a screenshot on a website is - strictly speaking - copyright infringement as long as the screenshot contains copyrighted elements. Like a video game character or an elaborate background texture or...
tasvideos is showing derivative works of the video games instead of just copying a part of them.
Derivative works are usually also protected by the same copyright that protects the original.
(Technically speaking, for example fanfiction of copyrighted work is copyright infringement, even though the majority of IP owners turn a blind eye on it. Not always, though. For example Square/Enix is infamous for shutting down fan derivative works of their property.)
If you want to argue for the legality of TAS videos, you could go through the "fair use" route (which in most countries protects commentaries, reviews and parodies), but even that's stretching it.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Tub wrote:
Dada wrote:
It also applies to situations where the administrator of the website didn't personally sign off on some file upload to the site, so if the upload happened through an automatic process without site staff verifying the content prior to its online publication.
Yeah, that argument worked very well for rapidshare and other file hosters, didn't it?
I'm not gonna be Rapidshare. C'mon man.
I very much appreciate the concern regarding copyright, but let's put that aside for the moment. I don't foresee many problems—direct lawsuits sans warning are virtually unheard of when it comes to websites like this. Here in the Netherlands, even The Pirate Bay received warning upon warning upon warning before action was finally undertaken against them. For now I want to focus on how to actually build this website, how the processes are going to work, et cetera.
erokky wrote:
Dada wrote:
And there are indie game soundtracks that the devs are selling by themselves, we should avoid those just because it's not cool towards them.
What hypocrisy.
There's a difference between the two. For an indie dev this could be a very big deal, but not so for large studios. I don't really care if you think it's hypocrisy.
There's a difference between the two. For an indie dev this could be a very big deal, but not so for large studios. I don't really care if you think it's hypocrisy.
And who exactly decides what counts as "indie" and what as "large studio"? Where do you draw the line for a "large studio"? Total revenue per year? Number of employees? What?
It is arbitrary, and therefore hypocritical.
Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil
"Large studios" are comprised of people whose jobs depend on the income these "large studios" get. This kind of anarchist thinking needs to stop. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for indie (see my avatar), but I really don't like this hate "large companies" get. If you don't like their games don't buy them, but to think you have the right to steal just because they are faceless things is wrong.
Also, on topic, why would FLAC be better than having the original music rom like nsf, spc, vgm, psf etc? Would you record it from real hardware?
