[Flak]

Pirates? I always think we are ninjas

[Dark Hunter]

This is a silly and pointless discussion.

Look, guys, if you really think this is a problem and have some fully legal music tracks that you can offer as replacements, by all means, do so.

Otherwise, bringing this up accomplishes nothing.

[Flashblade]

Ok sry about the credit thing, you did do that actually. I wanted to make clear that I made no demands of you guys and that this was an opinion piece as stated in the first sentence.

As for ideas, I guess I would look for music that is a little more niche than from other tripple a games or a little more "generic". As I viewed your credits I noticed that I could have recognized a great many more tracks but didn't because the music just wasn't that memorable and I think that is a good road to travel all in all. If you take music from known sources don't use the super recognizable stuff. I do understand that this is quite subjective as well, best I have to offer I am afraid.

Like taking music from Hans Zimmer. The only problem with this is that, while all of his music basically sounds the same, his style is soo recognizable, so an unknown Hans Zimmer. 

[swashmebuckle]

I think the issue here is consent, not how well known the particular pieces are within BP's target demographic.

[Flashblade]

Well if you look at it from that direction then there wouldn't be much choice and Bellisarius would really have to step up his game or find another contributor to the soundtrack or simply pull everything that is third party and replace it with fs2 music. I wouldn't mind that SOO much because FS2 music has well Freespace feel, but BP would loose a lot of its unique flavour. I doubt many would be okay with that.

[swashmebuckle]

I'm not suggesting that they rip out the unoriginal music, and you're absolutely right that doing it on the up and up involves significantly more effort and/or money than using temp tracks. Ultimately though I think it's much better for the modders, the musicians, the end product, and the community. Like most things worth doing, it's just hard

[Fury]

Music has to fit the mission, scenario and the very specific event it is used in, mission events and music often are synchronized to some degree. This is particularly noticeable in scripted parts of the missions, including but not limited to cutscenes. Dynamic events are handled by the game engine. Unless replacement music has nearly identical pacing it may be required to redesign these scripted parts of the missions, which may not be a trivial task. Replacing music is not as simple as just switching the audio file with another.

It has been mentioned already but BP team has only one composer, Belisarius. He's already doing his best to create new music for missions that are under development and to replace existing music with similar compositions of his own. There's only so much one man can do on his free time.

So this leaves the BP team with two options. Either use stock FS2 music which is simply insufficient, or scour the internet to find suitable music. Of course free-to-use music is preferred, but it comes to down what is suitable in the particular mission, scenario and event the mission designer wants to use the music in. It was the design decision from the beginning to bring movie-like atmosphere to WiH and that places rather strict requirements to music.

BP team has been aware of these legality issues from day one and continues to be aware of them. The BP team does not want to use any assets that are subject to DMCA notices, music or otherwise but sometimes you have to make best of the poor situation. Of course this leads to moments when you hear music you know well, perhaps too well even. Most people are not bothered by this and I am sorry to hear it bothers you. But if anything, that's a good reason to lend a helping hand.

If you can compose music, then by all means contribute by composing suitable replacements to copyrighted music. The BP team would be more than happy to use them, given they retain the pace and feel of the original.

If you can't compose, you can still help by finding free-to-use music that fits the same bill. Even though BP staffers have scoured the tubes to find such music, they can't very well spend entire days and weeks on that task alone, otherwise nothing else would ever get done.

[Luis Dias]

The only soundtrack that pulled me off as much as Flashblade was is Icarus from the starting cinematics of Tenebra. But that is a particular discussion long gone (and my only issue with it was the pulling off, not the copyright).

Phantom's attempts to sidetrack this into a copyrights issue is an annoying distraction IMHO*. I agree with the interpretation of "fair use" and the assets are sufficiently well protected under the vp files. If you know how to take them out of vp files you also know how to take files from youtube or other sites, etc. I am also sufficiently pleased by the BP team having been for years now (it's not only now they discuss this issue) how they much preferred to use only in-house soundtracks, but this is not a for-profits thing, there are really next to zero resources to pull a full independent soundtrack here  - Belisarius was amazing in his tracks, but he is only one man!

*If I were a bit less generous here, I could think it was a bit of an attempt at mutiny in HLP in order to take down HLP's stance on piracy, rather than trying to solve BP's issues. This is not the way to go, IMHO.

[Snarks]

Out of curiosity, are there any plans to replace the menu track for BP AoA? That track sounded so fitting that I was surprised to find it wasn't composed for anything Freespace related. It was reminiscent of the intro track from FS2.

[Black Wolf]

*If I were a bit less generous here, I could think it was a bit of an attempt at mutiny in HLP in order to take down HLP's stance on piracy, rather than trying to solve BP's issues. This is not the way to go, IMHO.

HLP's copyright stance isn't going to be changed by one user, "mutiny" or not, so we can probably give PH the benefit of the doubt here. He's expressed his opinion, let's leave it at that.

In terms of the original posts topic, I think that it's always going to be difficult (nigh impossible) for campaign makers to find non-original tracks that none of their user base will recognize. That said, that is something for other FREDders to consider when selecting music - similar topics to this have come up many times in the past.

[Luis Dias]

I think there's a ****ton of freeware or otherwise more "obscure" music lurking in the internet nowadays, with bit internet sites willingly sharing them for free, etc., so the excuses are getting slimmer and slimmer for those problems to arise, although I agree this creates a need for the developers to get more knowledgeable about these venues, interesting soundtracks and other music bits that are, again, obscure.

I understand wholeheartedly the difficulties this press. If some track is obscure to a listener, good chance it is also to the developer! And the amount of time and patience one needs to have to wrestle through so much bull****ty music or just inappropriate for the purposes of the campaigns, etc. is just too much. Better to just plug "that amazing soundtrack that can't get out of my head, I fking must just put that in my gameeeee 1!!!1one!!".

[T-Man]

It's definitely a grey area (can understand those against using them), but I've never massively minded in cases like BP (and imagine the team safe in the end from Harvey Specter appearing... beyond his being fiction ) because BP isn't making money from it. I will go and buy songs I hear and like anyhow (coz I'm sad like that ) so always felt it's null point in my case. I do recall some of the songs (The 'Delenda Est' music for one) are remixes (done I assume by Darius who IIRC does music remixes, he did have some up on another site for a while but the site closed; a pity as they were darn good), and I assume (though don't know if) the law is different for those since you get so many musicians doing rehashes or remixes of songs without getting sued.

OTing slightly for a bit, i do think it a pity the industry is so protective (mostly due, I'd argue frankly, to those obsessed with getting anything they want for free, but I concede they're not solely to blame). I've always loved the idea of more deals where musicians allow tracks to be used in return for exposure; so like having BP use Icarus and then saying 'like this? Go say thanks to Mcann by buying this Album!'.

In fact I'd propose the best thing BP fans could do (beyond making BP some music, which I sadly can't do due to being cack at it ) is go and do just the above. I know you can get Icarus (Deus Ex Soundtrack), the GiTS song ('Fish~Silent Cruise' by Yoko Kanno), and the Immediate Music songs ('Preliator' and 'Spiritus Khayyam', in album 'Epicon' under band name 'Globus') from iTunes at least since I own them (for like peanuts; £0.99p-isha song/ £9-ish an album usually), and I assume the others would be too if anyone knows the names/albums. Heck we might even get musicians interested in freeing songs if they see game/mod cameos driving sales instead of destroying them.

[Droid803]

What you get from mods is like, some ****ty ogg-compression-raped lossy version which is the way it is because it has to be distributed/loaded/played in-game and over the pew pew lasers and beam cannons you don't notice, much like youtube music is lossy but acceptable (for mobile purposes/just looking something up because someone was talking about it somewhere)

If you had any standards for music you wouldn't listen to those files outside of where you had to (ie. outside the game), since you know - you can get it lossless and whatnot, or at the very least at a higher bitrate. So really, it's more like you're getting the low-quality preview even if you extract the files - you still have to buy (or actually pirate) the 'real' version in the end.

Of course this is making some fairly easily satisfied assumptions - that people actually have standards for what quality of music they listen to but I can make that one fairly safely...right? (And if they didn't care they could just use a tape recorder or whatever recording device, and record it off whenever they hear it and play it back when they want to - how are you going to stop that?)

[Luis Dias]

That's the poorest argument ever droid. Just because it's a ****ty way to get your "pirated things", doesn't mean it becomes suddenly a valid one. I think I like T-Man's reasoning (and the whole BP team's) explanation better. After all, these are just fan works done and distributed for free that really have zero impact in the rest of the economy (well I'm not this naive, I do have an ideological nasty thought about this one, but let's just pretend for a second), and should be read exactly like that.

If the BP team were to suddenly start asking for money or whatsoever, then the soundtracks issue would even be the least of their problems.

[Flak]

We all know people used to 'pirate' music (and movies) by bootlegging in concerts back then. Quality wasn't so important back then.

Again, if it is hard for you to find 'free' music, it is just as hard as any mod devs here. Still, you can still see tons of AMVs in Youtube today and the copyright holders just leave them be, with the exception of the few aggressive ones. It is safe to assume that the one the mods uses has the same license as youtube. Until there is such warnings, we should leave them be, especially Freespace mods aren't the only modded games around with fan made contents available. If that happens, the news should go widespread on the internet.

I am personally not satisfied with low quality music files (these nice speakers made me feel the difference). I always rip them from CDs at the highest possible quality.

[AdmiralRalwood]

What you get from mods is like, some ****ty ogg-compression-raped lossy version which is the way it is because it has to be distributed/loaded/played in-game and over the pew pew lasers and beam cannons you don't notice, much like youtube music is lossy but acceptable (for mobile purposes/just looking something up because someone was talking about it somewhere)

Anyone know the bitrate of the music in BP offhand? Speaking personally, I haven't noticed anything in BP being "ogg-compression-raped" (don't have any of it in front of me to actually check, ATM)... for that matter, YouTube music being "lossy but acceptable" sounds like an outdated generalization, especially since the addition of HD video.

[Phantom Hoover]

Yeah seriously, maybe I'm not enough of an audiophile to notice but the BP music seems perfectly high-quality to me. Certainly enough that using it as an excuse to ignore copyright law is as flimsy as all the other rationalisations in this thread. Look, copyright law is utter bull****. What BP's doing is clearly ethically acceptable, and criminalising it is utterly ridiculous. But a lot of people on this site, including the powers that be, seem to hold this weird double standard, where they try to construct some moral line which legitimatises the behaviour of BP (and many other mods) under some spurious interpretation of 'fair use' while still condemning piracy of, say, FS2 as 'stealing' when the two are identical in any meaningful sense.

[Fury]

If that is how you're feeling, you're barking up the wrong tree. BP doesn't make policies on HLP. I'm sure you already knew that, so why are you bringing it up here instead of barking it up in appropriate places?

[The E]

Yeah seriously, maybe I'm not enough of an audiophile to notice but the BP music seems perfectly high-quality to me. Certainly enough that using it as an excuse to ignore copyright law is as flimsy as all the other rationalisations in this thread. Look, copyright law is utter bull****. What BP's doing is clearly ethically acceptable, and criminalising it is utterly ridiculous. But a lot of people on this site, including the powers that be, seem to hold this weird double standard, where they try to construct some moral line which legitimatises the behaviour of BP (and many other mods) under some spurious interpretation of 'fair use' while still condemning piracy of, say, FS2 as 'stealing' when the two are identical in any meaningful sense.

Yeah, right, "spurious".

Here's the dividing line: If you straight-up link to an unlicensed download? That's prohibited. If you use some copyrighted material as part of a greater, transformative work? That's not. You equating the use of some tracks as part of a mod with someone just spewing links to an album torrent, that's the spurious thing in this thread.

[Luis Dias]

Well... I'd agree the lines aren't that well blackednwhited.

Because your new definition "If you use some copyrighted material as part of a greater, transformative work" is not only bull****, it would allow for instance for BP to be released for free and without any need to buy FS2 in the first place. Like, say, Diaspora.

Thing is, it has been long established that this should not be the case. That all mods or campaigns that use FS2 assets and IP (story, etc.) should be obligated to work as "mods" of FS2, and not as standalones. So either the policy goes or your definition goes.