about music copyright

[Lycaon]

Is it very important not to use unauthorized copyrighted music in wads? say I want to put some old videogame and movies (newest is from mid 90's) in their original form, but have no way to call Carpenter and tell him "hey, can you let me use Escape from new york's theme for a doom map?", can I still use it? Are wads containing copyrighted music allowed in IDgames archive?

[Memfis]

Most authors do this and people don't complain. Previous archive maintainer never rejected files because of the music, dunno if the policy changed recently when new people replaced Ty Halderman.

[Lycaon]

Thanks god. The prime concept of the wad i'm making is that each map, miniboss and boss has a wink to an old game or movie and has music from it

[Aliotroph?]

MIDI covers of songs are already unauthorized, copyrighted music. Nobody seems to care about those either. Meh.

[DeathMetalAccountant]

It's much easier to defend using MIDI covers of commercial songs because they pass most of the tests for fair use (use different from originally intended, no discernible effect on the original work or it's author, etc.) When you alter the MIDI even further so that it is clearly based on the original work but at the same time less than "substantially similar" to it, the case is even stronger. I assume this was part of Bobby Prince's legalistic rationale. But when you're talking about ripping actual soundtrack tunes in more or less their original form, most of these defenses are no longer valid. You're probably left to hope (what is very likely) that the original copyright holder just doesn't care anymore.

[Yuki Senmatsu]

I've used something like that on TekBase0.wad so, yeah.

Basically it's the title screen music.

[Enderkevin13]

What About Converting To OGG Vorbis?
Btw, Has Much Higher Quality Sound.

[Aliotroph?]

You don't magically get higher quality sound by converting things to Ogg Vorbis. If you start with a high-quality recording you might be able to maintain a higher fidelity in your file for a lower size, but if you start with crap you end with crap.

[Jon]

It's against the rules as written - read the NEWSTUFF FAQ. Nobody really cares about MIDI versions of other songs. I think embedding a bunch of MP3s or OGGs will be frowned upon.

[Da Werecat]

I know enough popular wads that use OGG/MP3 music. Cacoward winners even. They're on /idgames. And I highly doubt that their authors asked the copyright owners for permission.

Still, this shouldn't be encouraged (even though I did just that right now).

[Lycaon]

I get what you mean, I don't worry a lot about this myself. I mean, here in argentina, music piracy is taken for granted, but i'm aware people is more strict about it in the US, so i didn't wanna screw up.