Mod Music Legality Question

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Silentdarkness12
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Mod Music Legality Question

Post by Silentdarkness12 »

I've been working on a custom version of Jimmy's Jukebox mod, and putting in ambient and video game music from various artists. I have a full credits list that i intend to include with the mod, naturally.

Wondering about the legal feasibility of this sort of thing, if I decided I want to upload it.(which I may not, honestly, it's a rather large file and it'd be a pain to upload.)
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wildweasel
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Re: Mod Music Legality Question

Post by wildweasel »

Music taken directly from other games is a bit of a legally shaky ground, though our community has already kind of set a precedent that it's "okay" to do without any serious repercussions. Stuff downloaded from ModArchive, though, probably fine since it's largely in the public domain or lacks any meaningful artist credits to begin with.

Without knowing exactly what's in the thing, though, I don't think I can give much more advice than this.
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Silentdarkness12
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Re: Mod Music Legality Question

Post by Silentdarkness12 »

wildweasel wrote:Music taken directly from other games is a bit of a legally shaky ground, though our community has already kind of set a precedent that it's "okay" to do without any serious repercussions. Stuff downloaded from ModArchive, though, probably fine since it's largely in the public domain or lacks any meaningful artist credits to begin with.

Without knowing exactly what's in the thing, though, I don't think I can give much more advice than this.
Spoiler:
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insightguy
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Re: Mod Music Legality Question

Post by insightguy »

Some of these seem to non-videogame ripped, whatever the legality of videogame music, I'm not sure that applies to musics part of albums that are being still sold
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Re: Mod Music Legality Question

Post by Silentdarkness12 »

The stuff that isn't from videogames, is either from Terminus's "Now That's What I Call Midi", which is actually all midi recreations, or ambient music from various artists. I think the midi stuff is probably okay from a legal point of view.
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insightguy
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Re: Mod Music Legality Question

Post by insightguy »

I have to assume tracks like "Halgrath-Your Soul Is Just A Particle of Stars" is not midified right? If so, that's not really legal to my knowledge, especialy the fact that the artist still selling it

Topic about midified tracks
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Re: Mod Music Legality Question

Post by wildweasel »

The Aubrey Hodges songs are right-out - he sells the stuff on his Bandcamp page these days.
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Silentdarkness12
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Re: Mod Music Legality Question

Post by Silentdarkness12 »

Alright, so that's gonna be a big fat no. Gotcha.

That being said, it seems like proper ambient spook-sound tracks that are free-use are going to be a little bit tricky to get my hands on. I suppose i'd have to make a personal version, and then a non-infringerino one. I'll end my inquiries by asking around about public domain ambient drone tracks, and the like. ModArchive doesn't really have much ambient drone stuff going for it.
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Chris
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Re: Mod Music Legality Question

Post by Chris »

Silentdarkness12 wrote:I think the midi stuff is probably okay from a legal point of view.
MIDI songs are just as much copyrightable as anything else. The copyright holder may be different (it's the composer rather than the performer/publisher, unless the composer sold the rights to the publisher then it's still the publisher), but being MIDI doesn't make it public domain.
wildweasel wrote:The Aubrey Hodges songs are right-out - he sells the stuff on his Bandcamp page these days.
What does that mean then for the PSXDoom and Doom64 TCs, which contains his music?
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Silentdarkness12
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Re: Mod Music Legality Question

Post by Silentdarkness12 »

Yeah. This sort of raises the question about those TCs.

Also @Chris what about Term's midi-pack for Demonsteele then?
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Reactor
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Re: Mod Music Legality Question

Post by Reactor »

Techically, if you remix them or make a cover out of them, the result will be your product and you can use your version for whatever purpose you desire, but you're not allowed to sell it.
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Chris
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Re: Mod Music Legality Question

Post by Chris »

Reactor wrote:Techically, if you remix them or make a cover out of them, the result will be your product and you can use your version for whatever purpose you desire, but you're not allowed to sell it.
Like was mentioned in the other thread, selling doesn't matter. If it's truly yours you can sell it if you want, and if it's not yours, you can't sell it or give it away or anything without permission.

A remix or cover tends to result in a derivative work because of how similar it is to the original composition. A derivative work is essentially something that is copyright to both you and the original creator/composer. You still need permission from them for you to do anything with your version, and they need permission from you for them to do anything with it too, which can effectively put it into limbo where no one can do anything with it.

A work has to be substantially (practically unrecognizably) different to be considered transformative, which breaks from the original copyright. With a transformative work, it is wholly yours for you to do as you wish, including selling it.

IANAL. Noone here is. This guy is, though.
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Reactor
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Re: Mod Music Legality Question

Post by Reactor »

Well, you need permission to sell it of course (except if it's something classic, like a Christmas carol or such), but apart from that, you can use it for whatever you wish, as long as it's your own work. The artistic freedom allows that. Much like you cannot claim the original Wolfenstein 3D or Doom as your own, but you can claim a mod, or a TC as yours.
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Silentdarkness12
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Re: Mod Music Legality Question

Post by Silentdarkness12 »

The question is more or less answered for me. I have to go looking for public domain stuff to use.

I do have MAGIX Music Maker. I may just have to try and make my own ambient tracks, and release that in a jukebox instead, alongside any other public domain or free-to-use items.
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Chris
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Re: Mod Music Legality Question

Post by Chris »

Reactor wrote:Much like you cannot claim the original Wolfenstein 3D or Doom as your own, but you can claim a mod, or a TC as yours.
Only if the mod doesn't contain any of their work. If you make a mod that simply rearranges existing rooms and modifies the type of items (like a song remix), id will have copyright on your mod. Same as if you make a close replica of their original level (like a song cover), it's still their designs and they'll have copyright on your mod.
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