Enforcing Sound Library Copyrights

Gohanto

Gohanto

Veteran
Does anyone know how sound effects copyrights are actually enforced?

Obviously something like the Wilhelm scream sticks out in a mix, but what about using "City Wind #5" as a background among 9 other backgrounds playing with it? Or a door slam re-edited and pitch shifted?

Does Hollywood mostly just work on the honor code? Or are there actual checks on this type of thing? (This idea came up in a class and no one seemed to know how it could ever be really enforced)
 
The big boys with the deep pockets have a lot to lose if they cheat, so they have an incentive to properly license everything.

Seems likely that there is some cheating at the bottom end, and perhaps some is caught by accident. But it doesn't seem likely that the content owners have much incentive to go looking for pirates because it is a difficult thing (as you properly observe) and there probably isn't much payoff except maybe legal decisions that scare the other pirates. Not nearly as easy as the RIAA picking off pirates.
 
Gohanto said:
Does anyone know how sound effects copyrights are actually enforced?

Obviously something like the Wilhelm scream sticks out in a mix, but what about using "City Wind #5" as a background among 9 other backgrounds playing with it? Or a door slam re-edited and pitch shifted?

Does Hollywood mostly just work on the honor code? Or are there actual checks on this type of thing? (This idea came up in a class and no one seemed to know how it could ever be really enforced)
Click to expand...

Sigint is becoming more capable of identifying 'sound'. However, unless there's a specific 'watermark' embedded in the audio sample, I don't know if spectrum/sonogram analysis is good enough to identify unequivocally that a sample is copyright holder Y's sample.

In the case of music, given the spectrum has a much more structured signature, there are search engines doing just that for music. But a 'natural sound'... wind, car door, glass shattering, police siren, etc. probably not...
 
For that matter, I'm pretty sure the Wilhelm scream itself is copyrighted - should be owned by Warner Bros. Despite that, it's being regularly used by other studios, evidently without permission. I suspect for such simple sounds, probably no one really cares if they're borrowed - kind of like low level music sampling?

I suspect this falls under the "does not concern itself with trifles" sort of deal, de minimus. Especially if a single "borrowed" sound was submerged with other effects.

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202427144837

http://cases.justia.com/us-court-of-appeals/F3/126/70/497885/
 
Jim H said:
For that matter, I'm pretty sure the Wilhelm scream itself is copyrighted - should be owned by Warner Bros. Despite that, it's being regularly used by other studios, evidently without permission. I suspect for such simple sounds, probably no one really cares if they're borrowed - kind of like low level music sampling?

I suspect this falls under the "does not concern itself with trifles" sort of deal, de minimus. Especially if a single "borrowed" sound was submerged with other effects.

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202427144837

http://cases.justia.com/us-court-of-appeals/F3/126/70/497885/
Click to expand...

The problem is that 'not concerned with trifles' doctrine has been erroded over the past few years, such that it may be problematic if some lawyer wanted to make their mark in the world.

What has happened is that many have become 'lawyer shy', and so, if there is a hint of doubt, they often will tend to 'it must be licensed'.

In the area of 'patents' many companies will just pay the license, rather than fight the claim of infringement, because that's 'cheaper'.

The only time large companies seem to go toe to toe on 'copyright infringement', in the sense of defending against... is when they want to assert their own copyright claims on all or a portion of the material...
 
Yes and no. It's very complicated because of the huge grey area of ownership. Sound is treated legally the same as music and is copyrighted. But the copyright belongs to the "artist" unless there is specific paperwork to the contrary. On many films editors do a lot of recordings, I think this is more of a norcal thing than a socal but??? Anyway I have only worked one place that had me sign paperwork giving all rights to everything to the studio. So technically anything I have recorded I own the copyright on and the studio only has the right to use it in THAT production. The reality is that "commercial" sounds folks try to be pretty good about and most facilities own a large collection of them anyway. Personal libraries are just that and every editor worth hiring has a personal library than is sometimes huge. Editors swap sounds with each other all the time. So for instance when I needed some musket shots, something I was surprised to find not covered at all in commercial libraries, I posted a request in the DUC (ProTools forum) post section and had an email from a guy in Canada that had just done a bunch of coverage of a reenactment and had a lot of musket shots. He sent me a link to a folder and I had a very nice collection about two hours after I posted. Locally on various shows I have gotten recordings from a lot of supervisors libraries when needed by asking. But it has to go two ways. I have also sent people all kinds of sounds and even whole ProTools sessions for their projects.

Then there are the various facilities private libraries. Skywalker has a nice one and I'm sure pretty much every place does. You can't use those except on a film at that facility and they tend to be much more dogged in protecting that property. Skywalker has sued people (and won) for using sounds out of the library with out permission. And I think they were sued once and lost for using someone else's sound with out permission.

I doubt that technology will get to the point (in my lifetime) where it can pull apart a mixed sound track and identify where everything came from. For one thing much of the sounds used professionally are altered. Very few library sounds are just dropped on a track. But sound editors are very intimate with their libraries and they can often recognize a sound of theirs (or some library they are very familiar with) in the midst of a mix. I think that is probably how the suites I mentioned originated, some editor going "hey I know that sound".

Now if you modify a sound then that is a new sound that you now own the copyright on, unless of course the sound you modified you didn't have the right to use..... But then is anyone going to be able to tell??? Probably not but you never can tell.

It gets VERY complicated. Things like Wilhelm were recorded when nobody thought any of this was very useful and editors would keep spools of sounds they liked as there personal stash. Exactly who owns it is probably very vague. If you take any sound off a FX CD, even if the source of the sound is PD, you are probably violating the agreement and the copyright because the remastered version on the CD is a "new" work because of the remastering.

So legally just like anything else if you don't have the rights you shouldn't use it.
Practically, a lot of stuff from commercial libraries is also sitting in some modified (or not) state in a lot of personal libraries. Editors as a rule have some way of identifying sounds in their library that they have limited use for and don't "lend" them out. I for instance won't send anyone a commercial sound unless I have modified it in some way that has made it a new sound, and I mean a really new sound not just "remastered". And I might not even send that out if I really know it's from some library. I also have a bunch of sounds from people that I can use but the understanding is that I'm not going to spread them out there. Those sound I might give to a friend with the same proviso but I won't send off on a general call. If I were doing work at Skywalker again and had access to their library, those sounds would be a total nono to send to anybody for any reason period. If some wrong headed person sent me something like that I would trash it to avoid temptation. Those private libraries are just too dangerous to own. They WILL go after you if they find you have used something with out permission and that is bad news for future employment. Ironically I probably have some sounds that have ended up in their library, but they started with me and were loaned to them so... The problem is that when you have large libraries it is really hard to keep track of it all. If a large film "borrows" a sound from me with the understanding that it is for that film only, it is very possible for it to drift into wider circulation. An editor say who doesn't know that sound X has special status gets asked by an editor next door if they have anything that sounds just like "soundX". Editor 1 hands off SOUND X to Editor 2 because it's all in the facility it must be in the library... And now it's in another show. When the librarians start pulling the "new" sounds out of the show tracks to go into the facility library they catch SOUND X in the first show because the supervisor has flagged it, but the version of SOUND X in the second show has been renamed SOUND Y to match it's use in that show so it ends up in the library as SOUND Y. Now it starts showing up in all kinds of shows. Also in show 1 one editor pitched SOUND X down and played with it with some plugin and now that version is SOUND XZ, that is of course a "new" sound so that is in the library also.

It's just messy. So it is largely on the honor system because everyone knows that their own libraries are probably polluted with questionable sounds. Anything obvious or blatant will be prosecuted but mostly everyone tries to do the right thing because it's much healthier for the industry.
 
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