Are game sound effects copyrighted?

[audiodef]

I'm a member of an online electronic music community. I just suggested a project there involving the use of only game sounds and sound effects in compositions (excluding game music).

Someone said there might be copyright issues related to this. Are sounds and sound effects really copyrighted? Does using a Doom 3 imp growl in a composition violate some kind of copyright?

[Nomad]

Yes. They are copyrighted, unless otherwise noted.

Why is it unreasonable to copyright the hard work of someone creating and manipulating sounds? It's no different from manipulating images and copyrighting those.

[eargosedown]

Yep, copyrighted almost always.

[audiodef]

NM.

[EarthQuake]

They're copyrighted in the same sense photographs are copyrighted.

[Gez]

Each and every asset (texture, sound, model, map, etc.) is copyrighted.

Your "shade of red" analogy would be more appropriate for a single sample from a sound, rather than the entire sound. The sound is the whole panel, and the game as a whole is the road network for a large city.

By the way, the copyright of the sounds does not necessarily belong to id software or whoever else you want to plunder. Many sound effects are used under license and belong to someone else. The industry standard is the Series 6000 sound collection from Sound Ideas. Many of the Doom sound effects originates from there. That means that id did buy the license to use them in their programs. You want to do the same? It's just under $1500. See the fine print here.

Note: the Series 6000 is royalty-free. That means that once you've bought the license, you're okay. You don't need to give Sound Ideas a percentage of your profit. Don't interpret "royalty free" as "copyright free", okay?

[Mr. T]

Under US law, if the sound is modified to be unrecognizable from the source, that counts as fair use.

[chungy]

Mr. T said:

Under US law, if the sound is modified to be unrecognizable from the source, that counts as fair use.

Smells like bullshit.

[esselfortium]

Mr. T said:

Under US law, if the sound is modified to be unrecognizable from the source, that counts as fair use.

Not necessarily. I think you're more thinking of "if the sound is modified to really be unrecognizable from the source, the owner of the source won't know you modified their sound and take legal action to begin with". :P

[printz]

Mr. T said:

Under US law, if the sound is modified to be unrecognizable from the source, that counts as fair use.

What Doom sound is this processed from?
http://www.speedyshare.com/files/24836973/DSRXPLOD.wav

Hint: it's not the original "rxplod".