Sharing Copyrighted songs via simfiles?

Is there any way you can get in trouble for doing this?

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I don't think so seeing how there's no profit being made with them. I don't know the full details and how it falls under fair use but everything should be fine. If someone like Konami wanted to stop simfiles because of the DDR songs, they would have done it by now. That's how I look at it anyway.

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Well is there a way to "license" the song for a pack, so there would be no way of anything happening? My dad says I can't upload any songs because he doesn't want to get sued for a million dollars.

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It's only illegal if the simfile artist makes money for the simfile. If he makes any money from the simfile through paid advertising, sales, etc. without permission or consent of the copyright owner, then it is illegal.

Well I did some research myself and it does say it is illegal without the company's permission. So...

How can you make a simfile pack and upload it completely legally?

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It probably doesn't fall under fair use.


So it's probably illegal, but you won't have any record companies banging on your door.

EDIT: If you're looking for a way to upload them legally, that's probably impossible unless you're really good at finding loopholes in the legal system.

I guess it is illegal, but nothing has been done about it. It's not like this site or similar sites have been issued a cease & desist letter because of hosting simfiles (feel free to show me if they have, i'm genuinely curious). If we're talking about breaking the law, doesn't your signature infringe on KONAMI's copyright (using SABER WING graphics)? You're still here and haven't been taken down or sued, so... Ultimately, it's your decision on whether or not you want to upload the music files (with the steps and other things) but it's not like the government is spying on you and watching your every move, waiting to break in your house and slap you with a lawsuit. Effectively, to "legally" use any of the music along with the .sm files with which they are distributed, you have to own the music, have permission from the author to use it, etc. But this hasn't stopped people from downloading files. To anyone who cares, it's technically illegal. I personally don't see anything wrong with it because hopefully nobody is making a profit from simfiles. Also I honestly don't think a bunch of lawyers want to deal with some silly stuff dedicated to a dead dancing simulation game, but that's just my opinion again.

Well I might just actually take the time to contact each and every publishing company so I have permission. I am concerned about this because my dad would be responsible for anything that happens. But I have no idea how that will work.

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It's probably difficult to get their approval, from my understanding. And if they don't approve... then this site could face some pretty serious backlash. Hmmph.

But honestly, ZIV is listed as the 515572nd most popular site in the world according to Alexa. I wouldn't worry about getting their approval too much.

I doubt they would disapprove it because it definitely helps make their music more popular.

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It's not all that black and white. I'm sure that many other issues go into it.

Let's just be thankful that SOPA didn't happen.

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Record companies won't want their music to be distributed for free, no matter the justification.

Even if they were to approve then be totally prepared to pay out the ass as royalty fees could range from hundreds to thousands of dollars.

So if you are really, really worried and concerned about it, then I highly suggest not going though with it.

I know that I'm not worried about it as I have absolutely no interest in making money off of this. It is very helpful to actually own the DDR games to cover your butt.

The only way this technically legal is if you already own the song you are downloading/uploading. You should upload having at least some faith that the people downloading already own the song. You are just providing the cut necessary to the audio file as well as the other content necessary to use it in the way you need.

If the song was altered in some way that would fall under transformation, stepcharts included with the original edit of the song does not fall under this jurisdiction or any other rule considered "fair use". Any royalty free music or non commercially licensed audio would fall under fair use.

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It's not as easy. At least in Poland the law says that you can download pretty much anything from movies or music (as it was shared) but you can't upload or build upon not yours materials. Simmakers (at least from the view of Polish law) are pirates - deal with it. The thing is thought that we don't do much harm. We don't upload whole albums, most of times we don't even upload whole songs. And here I will be talking from my experience but I never ripped song from CD or anywhere else - I have been always using resources that are floating on net.

I haven't heard about any simmaker being chased because of simfiles. But I did heard some positive words from music makers to the stepmakers. Overall I would say that simmaking is illegal... but safe. They have much bigger fish to catch.

If you want be 100% sure about your legal issues then search for songs on proper licences. Read about http://creativecommons.org/ , read about other licenses that allow modification of source in your own projects. And where to grab the songs? Search portals like newgrounds or soundcloud for songs with fitting licenses.

The simfile community is so niche compared to the general music listening public that no one would realistically care enough to hunt down people in this community for it

Unless you're twitch and are extremely paranoid about people DLing streams of Grand Theft Auto to grab music

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Well no one has ever been in trouble on this site for this, and even if someone did, all that they would do is have to take their simfiles down. No suing nessecary. So what I think I'm going to do is include a link on the page where I have the simfile to buy the full song.

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It does fall under Fair Use. The piece being uploaded to the internet is a complete work, which is 25% copyrighted music, 25% self-developed code and 50% artistic illustration. Even the 25% copyrighted music is often transformed.

It would be really hard for anyone to argue that you haven't incorporated the music into your own, original work of art, and nobody is going to track down and sue someone for constructive use of music, when they have millions of people sitting on bittorrent, sharing full albums with unobstructed IP addresses.

Tyma is right.

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