Chrono Trigger - Wind Scene

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Aneon
Posts: 7

Post by Aneon »

And here is a complete arrangement of Chrono Trigger - Wind Scene, composed by Yasunori Mitsuda.
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Chrono Trigger - Wind Scene.mid
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Seanpek
Posts: 66

Post by Seanpek »

Shouldn't this post be under Song Request?
Aneon
Posts: 7

Post by Aneon »

Well, this isn't a song request, and there was no forum for posting new custom songs, so I thought this was the best place for it. In Song Requests it would've been perceived as a request and not a new song. Hopefully, they'll create a "Custom Songs" or "Share Songs" forum or similar in the future.
Seanpek
Posts: 66

Post by Seanpek »

Just go to the song request section, you find some people who share songs there. From browsing the forum I can tell that Nicholas does not wants this place to be a Midi Warehouse and thus did not create a sharing song section. (Tell me if I'm wrong)
Aneon
Posts: 7

Post by Aneon »

Still feels weird posting a new song to a request forum. I'm sure many will make the same decision as me and post here instead. At least until a new forum is made, or "Song Requests" is turned into a general song sharing forum.

I'm not sure I understand why Nicholas wouldn't want to facilitate midi sharing, as it only nurtures the community and could even help him improve the official song pack, which would increase the user base and the number of sales.

And there are really no copyright worries worth mentioning regarding midi:s. I've never ever seen a midi site or link go down because of copyright issues and most of it is original and legal work. And if he ever gets complaints he could simply delete the illegal posts.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Aneon wrote:I'm not sure I understand why Nicholas wouldn't want to facilitate midi sharing...
Copyright worries.
Aneon wrote:And there are really no copyright worries worth mentioning regarding midi:s...
Lack of action on a copyright holder's part doesn't make it legal.
Aneon wrote:...if he ever gets complaints he could simply delete the illegal posts.
Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer to remain legal up front. You could say I'm squarely in the "ask first, do later" camp vs. the "do first, apologize later" group.

While the game MIDIs that Synthesia ships with are probably a little questionable (even though they're probably in the grayest of gray areas being new piano-only arrangements by arrangers that I acquired permission from) I'm not especially eager to introduce even more questionable stuff. In fact, at some point I should probably drop the game music.
Aneon
Posts: 7

Post by Aneon »

First of all, thank you for all your work with Synthesia, it's an awesome app!

I understand that this is a sensitive subject considering the unbelievably restrictive nature of current copyright laws, even for non-commercial use. Hopefully the laws will change in the future, but I understand your worries considering Synthesia is a commercial project.

Of course, the first step is to not support illegal midis officially, and this should be written clearly. If you're really picky you could even disable forum attachments of those kinds, forcing people to host their midi files externally.

But why have a "Song Requests" rather than a "Custom Songs" forum? You'll surely see a lot more copyright infringements in the first compared to the latter. People are a lot less eager to upload a copyrighted midi file and calling it "custom" than they are uploading it as an answer to someone's request.

I'm just sad to see that there's no good place for custom songs, when those have the least amount of copyright infringement risks compared to other shared midi files.

Files that clearly are original work could easily be included in the official song pack by asking the creator for permission, which would retain the same level of legality as those currently in there.

Sorry for starting this discussion here, but I find it too important to let go of, considering the songs are the heart of the program, and the community needs clear guidelines to avoid future discussions like the one in the beginning of this thread.

Changing "Song Requests" into "Custom Songs" is a good step to encourage the spread of legal midi files and minimize copyright worries, which I believe is exactly what you want.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Certainly don't be sorry for starting the discussion. It's a very good discussion to have.

I also agree that something like "custom songs" has quite a bit more value than "song requests".

The only reason song requests exists is because it was happening anyway -- all over the place -- and I decided that rather than allowing the decreased signal-to-noise ratio to go on in the other forums that I'd at least like to centralize it.

I guess I didn't really make it explicit enough there, but the idea was that it'd be more about linking to the types of sites that had the songs people were looking for than it would be to attach them right to the post. It's not as easy as turning off attachments because now there are people *creating* the (unfortunately copyrighted) songs to fulfill the requests.

So... if Song Requests exists, why doesn't Custom Songs?

Well, the first was reactionary. The second I want to do right. Once I start officially hosting MIDI files there at least need to be stronger controls on the content. Submitters will have to check a box that says something along the lines of "this is either public domain or an original work that I'm submitting under cc-by" (or something like that).

And, because there will be that tiny bit of extra process in place, it opens the door to collecting a little bit more metadata about the work including things like suggested difficulty level or liner notes.

Finally, that type of integration will allow users to do things like rate songs or browse the "online library" right from inside Synthesia.

It's all very exciting and it's definitely one of my higher priorities. (I'll have to check, but I think I have most of that scheduled inside this big 6-month development push that I started at the beginning of June.)
Choul
Posts: 487

Post by Choul »

Nicholas wrote: Well, the first was reactionary. The second I want to do right. Once I start officially hosting MIDI files there at least need to be stronger controls on the content. Submitters will have to check a box that says something along the lines of "this is either public domain or an original work that I'm submitting under cc-by" (or something like that).
I'm sorry to say but I don't have the impression that people really know what 'public domain' is. And what do you mean with original work? Even if it contains parts of a copyrighted piece it's still is copyrighted. How do you want people to decide for themselves if something is public domain or an original work when they talk/think about it like above? How do you want to add stronger controls on the content? It will not happen if you just let people let click on it by saying it is cc-by as long as they don't really understand what it is. And how do you want to control it further. Otherwise it's something in the line as 'click on yes if you're older than 18' and I'm not but I want to get in, so I click on it. Nobody knows. :o

And maybe I'm harsh now saying this to you Nicholas, but you opened that group with Song Requests, you agreed by not saying anything than a soft 'I don't want to get involved' but you did allow it to happen. For me that's the same as saying 'I agree' or 'I don't want to say no'. I can understand that when you don't make it clear it will never be clear and questions like this will come back again and again.

Here are some nice links regarding copyrights on midi files:
http://www.midiloops.com/copyrit1.htm
http://www.shockwave-sound.com/Articles ... Myths.html
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Choul wrote:Otherwise it's something in the line as 'click on yes if you're older than 18' and I'm not but I want to get in, so I click on it. Nobody knows. :o
This is an unsolvable problem. Governments have realized that. The checkbox (or in really extreme cases "typing your name here constitutes your legal digital signature") is the best we've got. So long as some action is taken by the user, my due diligence has been done and now they are accountable. After that, I switch into the mode of taking down infringing works if someone lodges a complaint, YouTube-style.

I will do my best to provide a clear description of "public domain" and "original work" (most likely in large, red text). From a legal stand-point, I can claim "if they didn't know what it meant, they shouldn't have clicked the box that said they did".

Now, there will absolutely be easy-to-pick-out cases. If someone says a Celine Dion song is public domain, I'm going to build in some one-click tool to not only remove it but issue them a warning at the same time. (With any luck, I'll ask a handful of the most-responsible people here if they would also like some sort of moderator privileges to do the same.)

With a nice mix of big warnings up front, actively policing the obvious cases, and taking down anything that people complain about, I feel like I'll be doing my part to the best of my ability.
Choul wrote:And maybe I'm harsh now saying this to you Nicholas...
Harsh is fine if it's true. I will agree I haven't been doing enough there. I might turn file attachments off in that forum and put some kind of instructions in the pink box that describes the "point them there, don't post it here" intent.

Also, those are really good links. I like the reminder that there are actually two separate copyrights: the work and the recording(/arrangement).
Choul
Posts: 487

Post by Choul »

Nicholas wrote:
Choul wrote:Otherwise it's something in the line as 'click on yes if you're older than 18' and I'm not but I want to get in, so I click on it. Nobody knows. :o
This is an unsolvable problem. Governments have realized that. The checkbox (or in really extreme cases "typing your name here constitutes your legal digital signature") is the best we've got. So long as some action is taken by the user, my due diligence has been done and now they are accountable. After that, I switch into the mode of taking down infringing works if someone lodges a complaint, YouTube-style.
Doesn't YouTube delete copyrighted stuff too if they notice themselves is copyrighted? Just ask you because I don't know, never post anything there.
Nicholas wrote: Now, there will absolutely be easy-to-pick-out cases. If someone says a Celine Dion song is public domain, I'm going to build in some one-click tool to not only remove it but issue them a warning at the same time. (With any luck, I'll ask a handful of the most-responsible people here if they would also like some sort of moderator privileges to do the same.)
I especially like the reviewers option, feels more safe for my own files too if a second or third person checks it.
Nicholas wrote: Also, those are really good links. I like the reminder that there are actually two separate copyrights: the work and the recording(/arrangement).
[/quote]

I don't like it at all, but we have to live with it. :( I wish there were only the two seperate copyrights you needed to take into account, but I already found problems with trademarks, copyright of lyrics or even added forewords which make that you can't use a certain piece of sheet music.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Choul wrote:Doesn't YouTube delete copyrighted stuff too if they notice themselves is copyrighted? Just ask you because I don't know, never post anything there.
If they do, it's probably only with automatic filters that catch words in the title or something. That's just a logistical nightmare. There are literally thousands of videos being posted a minute.

I'd guess there is a full-time team of people just going through the DMCA take-down requests and even then it can take a day or two to get a response back from one. I'm sure they don't have time to browse around and look for infringement. Maybe (maybe!) for the top like 1% of most-viewed videos, they could do some policing themselves, but I'm not sure they're legally obligated to.
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