Newgrounds.com — Everything, By Everyone.

At 11/14/09 06:16 PM, MaestroRage wrote: then by your logic Newgrounds owes a lot of money to a lot of people.

Newgrounds has set up a revenue sharing system.

Even if you make fifty cents in a month, they're still making the effort to reimburse artists.

Rather than using someone's music without even crediting them.

the ad rev is a recent thing introduced early 2008. Has NG been breaking the law then since it's conception? The website does not directly make money off the songs, at no point does it charge the user. When you have your own site, blog or whatever, does having a song with CC license automatically mean you are breaking the law against yourself because you are making money, no matter how tiny against yourself?

No.

If the song WAS TAKEN from Newgrounds, and put into a product, game, even paid webcast what have you, then it is breaking the law.

Just because IGN paid some guy to put together a video, which makes the video a commission, does not automagically make it a commercial product. There are loads of people who are paid to create open source material.

If NG removed it's rev share program today, just like how it was before the rev share, it would not be breaking the law.

At 11/14/09 07:33 PM, MaestroRage wrote: If NG removed it's rev share program today, just like how it was before the rev share, it would not be breaking the law.

NG isn't failing to abide by the creative commons license either.

That video doesn't credit the original author, meaning at the very least he's owed an apology.

I'm not saying he should sue and get lots of money, there's kind of obviously no lost revenue in this situation, but I am saying there should be some accountability for failure to abide by licensing restrictions.

At 11/14/09 07:33 PM, MaestroRage wrote: the ad rev is a recent thing introduced early 2008. Has NG been breaking the law then since it's conception? The website does not directly make money off the songs, at no point does it charge the user. When you have your own site, blog or whatever, does having a song with CC license automatically mean you are breaking the law against yourself because you are making money, no matter how tiny against yourself?

No.

If the song WAS TAKEN from Newgrounds, and put into a product, game, even paid webcast what have you, then it is breaking the law.

Just because IGN paid some guy to put together a video, which makes the video a commission, does not automagically make it a commercial product. There are loads of people who are paid to create open source material.

If NG removed it's rev share program today, just like how it was before the rev share, it would not be breaking the law.

This looks like an example of a person not thinking correctly, because it should be obvious that
a. they didn't give credit, and
b.Newgrounds doesn't need to give a share of the ad revenue because they are giving specific permission to Newgrounds to make money off of the ads on the songs main page by uploading it, as it is a known fact , at least for those who have posted music alot, that ads are used on it that are not giving the composer money, and as such it is licensed by context.

At 11/14/09 08:07 PM, mikkim wrote: stuff

c. the user has chosen to have their music uploaded to newgrounds. this is probably the most important part. Even if it's then released under a CC license, the mere fact that the user opted to host it on NG's servers means they've kind of implicitly accepted whatever use newgrounds makes of the music.

there was no such understood agreement with IGN.

i'm not arguing that IGN owes a big apology here, they do. But IGN does not owe him money. Let's not start derailing the topic, we should all go write fuming letters to IGN and who knows, maybe they'll feel so embarassed they'll give a good sum of cash.

At 11/14/09 08:38 PM, MaestroRage wrote: i'm not arguing that IGN owes a big apology here, they do. But IGN does not owe him money. Let's not start derailing the topic, we should all go write fuming letters to IGN and who knows, maybe they'll feel so embarassed they'll give a good sum of cash.

Whoa.... arguments.

Getting a nip of their revenue would be nice. Certainly would at least buy me a lunch. But honestly.... I don't care at all about the money. And I wrote this in my email to them also.
For me, music is more than about the money. Sure, I might be a foolish idealist who thinks they can just write music for the love of it with no care for the money, but that's what I do. The song, monetary-wise, is rather insignificant. I don't care about that. I do care that my work is being used without crediting me, and that people are making daily impressions of my song as being part of the Halo soundtrack. Honored as I would love to be, they're not thinking it's me. So... not quite as honored.

And the only thing I asked from them is that they add credits. No removing of videos, no paying me back. Should I be asking more?

At 11/15/09 12:23 AM, HalcyonicFalconX wrote: And the only thing I asked from them is that they add credits. No removing of videos, no paying me back. Should I be asking more?

Probably not, no.

If I was in your place, I'd be pretty livid. Your work has been exposed to a very wide audience, but they have no idea who you are.

At 11/14/09 06:16 PM, MaestroRage wrote:

At 11/14/09 12:52 PM, Back-From-Purgatory wrote: IGN yoinking music from newgrounds? Sounds like you might be entitled to a lot of cash there buddy. They make money running that website, it's a business, meaning you should be making royalties.

then by your logic Newgrounds owes a lot of money to a lot of people.

Except that NG doesn't produce the videos and then run them on the site with people's music from unrelated sites for very obviously non-flash related usage.

This is really quite different. It's an ign.com 'production' - that's usually what it means when that kind of seamless video of a flashy "ign.com" logo intro/outro is integrated to both ends of the clip...it's why you don't see videos named "monkey-sex monster mash hoe-down golf party" on ign.com - it's a completely different and controlled non-public video arena.

And that's why it's a big no-no. NG also isn't subsidized by a huge media mogul.

In other words...what if the clip appears on a FOX-based channel during a game-related segment/show? Unlikely? I think not.

At 11/14/09 08:10 PM, loansindi wrote:

At 11/14/09 08:07 PM, mikkim wrote: stuff

c. the user has chosen to have their music uploaded to newgrounds. this is probably the most important part. Even if it's then released under a CC license, the mere fact that the user opted to host it on NG's servers means they've kind of implicitly accepted whatever use newgrounds makes of the music.

there was no such understood agreement with IGN.

that is essetially part b, just with adding that IGN hasn't made that agreement, which I guess adds 1% more accuracy, but they are the same thing.