As usual, I grabbed some free sounds off of freesound.org. These are Creative Commons-licensed and typically require attribution. I don’t mind giving attribution at all. It’s the least I can do!
- Crash by Sparrer, Acclivity, and Sageturtle for two crashes by Flotilla. Yes, I used the same crash twice, and that was a little lazy.
- Door Knock by XxBirdoxX for the wood shed door knocking.
- Door Open and Close by nawerwohl02 for the wood shed door opening and closing. I love how the door catches on the jamb as it opens.
I made a brand new sound for the show that I call “Angry Packing”. It’s for when Erik is grumbling about all the 90’s crap in his cubicle that he can’t get rid of. I contributed it back to freesound.
I have to say that a few things bug me about CC licensing from freesound. First thing is that there’s no real identity information associated with the samples. So technically, the little CC icon associated with the sample is not a legally binding contract as Lawrence Lessig intended, but just a weak indication of the author’s wishes. In my opinion, this doesn’t offer much protection to the people licensing the sounds. What does it mean when “XxBirdoxX” makes a sample available for use under a Creative Commons license? It’s quite possible for somebody to balk at usage of a sample in one of my episodes. They might say, “I don’t want my gravel crunch sound effect to be associated with toe-sucking!” for example. And what can I do but take down/redo the episode to not use their sound? Depending on how I’ve distributed an episode, it could get more complicated than that.
Plus, it’s a bit sad to give attribution to somebody’s login handle. Its just a crap way to call out someone’s good work.
The other issue with freesound, much as I do love their site, is that it’s entirely possible for people to upload sound effects without understanding authorship and licensing. So, for example, the above sound “Crash by Sparrer,” is a sample uploaded by “Sparrer,” which uses two other samples from Acclivity” and “Sageturtle”. Sparrer was responsible enough to attribute the two other folks she borrowed from. But she licensed her work under a more permissive license (CC-Attribution) than Acclivity (CC-Attribution-NonCommercial). And “Sageturtle” I cannot find on freesound anywhere. I would guess that many people don’t bother to credit authors of other samples used in their work. And for those that do, the paper trail is so frail, that all kinds of errors can creep in.
This is not to single out freesound. They’ve got a scrupulous volunteer moderating system and are much more principled than other sites offering free sound effect files. I think that Internet culture favors a more casual approach to sharing media, and their site is in line with that. The way I want CC files to be attributed and shared would no doubt make freesound a less popular site than it is.
So all this means that I’ll be switching to a slightly more organized way of using samples in the future. I’m not sure exactly what yet. It might just be contacting some of the authors on freesound before downloading and using their stuff. Or maybe I’ll just buy some collections and leave no question about clearing rights to the sounds.