A friendly warning

Indeed. Exceptions would be games where the copyright has expired or even better, the platform itself doesn't exist anymore.

A good example of that is C64 music. There's even a complete scene to remix these kinds of songs and its not illegal, cus the copyright expired and the C64 platform kind of doesn't exist anymore either.

Old dos games might have the same, and the company could no longer exist too. In such case, you could do it.

Fangames is no exception to this, but if you add that its a fan game, you most likelly get permission as long as you make the reference clear. (its like additional commercials for them)

The music in games is generally copyrighted too, so the same thing applies there as for commercial artists.

Indeed. Exceptions would be games where the copyright has expired or even better, the platform itself doesn't exist anymore.

*facepalm*

How many times do people need to be reminded of this?  And LPChip, of all people?  No copyrights on video games have expired!  Video games haven't even been around long enough!
Nearly all countries in the world that even have a copyright law have a minimum expiration term of at least 50 years after the last surviving author's death.

Unless you live in Afghanistan or something, it's totally illegal to use music from another game in your level without permission.  I'd say it's much worse than using a big commercial song like What is Love?, because people likely won't know what the music is from.

That said, if you want music in your level, put some effort into actually finding decent ambient music available under Creative Commons (or a similar attribution license) instead of just pulling it out of a random game, because I'm sick of hearing music that doesn't fit anyway, and now it's actually forbidden.  Or better yet, make your own music, though obviously not everyone is capable of that.

I wasn't saying that it expires that quickly, I only mentioned it as a fact because otherwise people will ask: but what if it expires?

Oh.  You implied there was music that could be used now.  Okay then, nevermind.

Oh.  You implied there was music that could be used now.  Okay then, nevermind.

Music from C64 games can be used, yes. Its impossible to contact the companies that made the music because everything related to C64 kind of doesn't exist anymore. Hench the fact that there's a huge community around remixing C64 tunes.

Thats gonna start a whole new arrgument! 

Don't want to say it, but i told you so!  sorry couldn't help myself
but LPChip is quite right

Music from C64 games can be used, yes. Its impossible to contact the companies that made the music because everything related to C64 kind of doesn't exist anymore. Hench the fact that there's a huge community around remixing C64 tunes.

That's why it's tolerated, but those C64 tunes are still under copyright.
To quote : http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-duration.html :
"As a general rule, for works created after January 1, 1978, copyright protection lasts for the life of the author plus an additional 70 years. For an anonymous work, a pseudonymous work, or a work made for hire, the copyright endures for a term of 95 years from the year of its first publication or a term of 120 years from the year of its creation, whichever expires first."

The C64 was released in 82, so all C64 tunes were made after this law, and therefore are bound by it.

That means that the earliest the C64 music copyrights will expire is 2052 (assuming someone wrote a tune on a C64 just as it came out, then died immediately after).

So if you really want to be safe, don't use anything made by anyone else in the past century. In the mean time, let's get things moving, because copyright might be intended to protect the artist, but it's killing derivative work, and is obviously stupid, because no-one can argue that 70 years after the death of an author the piece still has economical value (at least in the general case, where all the money is made in the first five years. Waiting five years to make a remix isn't that bad after all)

I've done my research, and I also found that, but there's one thing that people miss here.

Copyright is about spreading the source.

A C64 game itself cannot be spread, but that should be impossible anyway because thats the part that has died. There's no support on the hardware to run it, and old 5.25" discs are hard to find too. The music from the C64 cannot be copied like that. It has to be recorded. Recording something goes about the artist right, not the copyright.

I've done my research, and I also found that, but there's one thing that people miss here.

Copyright is about spreading the source.

A C64 game itself cannot be spread, but that should be impossible anyway because thats the part that has died. There's no support on the hardware to run it, and old 5.25" discs are hard to find too. The music from the C64 cannot be copied like that. It has to be recorded. Recording something goes about the artist right, not the copyright.

If that's true, then it's not copyright that's being breached when someone seeds a movie over the net, since the original data isn't what's being sent, but only the conversion of a recording.

Quote from: LPChip on April 06, 2009, 21:45:50

Copyright is about spreading the source.

If that's true, then it's not copyright that's being breached when someone seeds a movie over the net, since the original data isn't what's being sent, but only the conversion of a recording.

You don't get my point.

If you were to share the entire C64 game, it was a copyriht infriction. But people only rip the music, which is against the authors right.

See it as having a book. If someone wrote a book, and you sell it against their knowledge, you're breaching the copyright. If you create your own book, but you copy text from his book and optionally alter the words a little bit, you're breaching the authors right.

Do note that breaching the authors right, is still illegal.

(Also, of the newer levels, the recent environmental hit, "Knytt on the Moon", uses music from a commercial film without permission. The music itself is not copyrighted, but the recording used in the level is.)

I realize this is incredibly late, but I just stumbled across it.
You said the music is in a commercial game and used without permission, but I must argue this, because the 2 of the audios used are made by Kevin Macleod, one titled "Frost Waltz" and the other "Fairytale Waltz". Everything Kevin Macleod makes is free to the public to use, therefore it isn't infringing copyright, and the third audio is some age old classical music in public domain...

I got your back, Imaddo.

the third audio is some age old classical music in public domain...

The music itself is not copyrighted, but the recording used in the level is.

(The music is more than a hundred years old, but the recording is only about forty.)

Quote from: JC Grim the 'crete reaper on April 30, 2009, 01:08:48

the third audio is some age old classical music in public domain...

Quote from: Bolshevik on March 28, 2009, 14:00:03

The music itself is not copyrighted, but the recording used in the level is.

(The music is more than a hundred years old, but the recording is only about forty.)

Do we who made that recording, and whether it's free to use, just like Fairytale/Frost Waltz?
It could have a Creative Commons license.

It's an excerpt of the recording of Also sprach Zarathustra used in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was made in 1959 by Herbert von Karajan and the Vienna Philharmonic. It is most definitely not under a CC license.