[Scourge of Ages]

What's the policy on using other people's music?

Ideally, I'm sure, it would be best to contact the copyright owner of every song we use, but I get the feeling it would only work for original stuff like from newgrounds.

What if we want to use a widely released song/piece in a mission? For example, "Disco Inferno" in JAD, or if I wanted to put in a bit of Jimi Hendrix in a mission. Is that governed by free use or what? Do we do it and hope that nobody minds?

Along those lines, would it be illegal to use FS2 music in a stand-alone total conversion mod?

Oh, also, is there some sort of list of free-to-use user created music for this sort of thing, similar to the list of user created ships on the wiki?

[Rga_Noris]

Well, as far as copyright goes, I'm quite certain you would need to contact the copyright owners for permission to use. This would include commercial music and retail FS2 music. You would be distributing someone elses music whenever you uploaded your MOD, and as such you would need permission to do so.

However, I do believe that small clips under a certain time length are legal. I have no source for this, nor can I really recall where I heard it, so research before you leap.

What confused me is whenever I hear remixes of commercial songs being distributed by people who I am certain did not contact the copyright holders... I'm not sure if there is some agreement or license that allows for this.

As for free-to-use music, search for "royalty-free" music. Good Luck!

Oh, and I'm preparing for this thread to be reduced into an arguement about copyright laws, whose right or wrong, along with plenty of people acting like they are legal gurus.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Bah, just give credits to the original composer. People won't complain, since you're not using it for commercial purposes (not making any money with it).

No, there's no list of user-created music around anywhere - but Blue Planet has most of them, I think.

[The E]

In BP, we have a policy of only using music that is older then 2 years. There are some exceptions for true awesomeness, but by and large, that's what we're going with.

[Dragon]

Or you may try soundtrack by Blackhole.
He's a community member and his music is both free and awesome.
I think you'd quickly find something that suits your needs on his website.

[MatthTheGeek]

Open-source music do exist, and some are quite good. Try Jamendo, they have a lot of freely-distributable music.