Streaming Music Cause Copyright Issues?

Question

First of all, I imagine this isn't the best place to ask this, but I didn't know here else, so here it is.

So, I'm planning on adding a jukebox to my game, where you can put music in a folder and then pick a song or audio file that you put in there, this file would then be turned into a byte array and sent in an RPC to fellow players so they could hear it.

I'm not asking how to do this, as I know how, but I heard on a forum that if you allow users to put their own music in your game where other players can hear it, the developer can run into legal trouble. Is this true?

Yes, the game will most likely be commercial, but these songs will not be in the game by default, I'm saying where players put whatever they want.

Thank you for reading!

Answer 1

First of all, yes, this is the wrong place for legal questions. Also keep in mind that the legal situation might be quite different depending on your country / target countries.

The situation you described doesn't look like there's any problem for the developer. It's the responsibility of the end-user to only provide content to others they have the rights to do so. To be honest such a feature seems a bit strange to me. It's common to enable a user to use his own music but not to share it with others, If you really want to implement such a feature you may include a warning to inform the user about potential copyright issues and that they should only share content they are allowed to.

Sharing software is not illegal but using it to share content you are not allowed to, is. For example BitTorrent is a complete legal software and you can share things you are allowed to. So either things that you own or things you have a sharing right (like most open source licenses). What most people don't know, when you buy music, you don't own the music. You only have the right to use it for personal use. That's why the person who shares content they are not allowed to are in trouble and not the developer of a software which allows it.

Once again this is not a legal advice as we aren't lawyers. As long as you don't ship any content with your game you aren't allowed to, you should be pretty safe. Though your game should make it obvious for the end user that certain actions might get them in trouble.

Answer 2

Answer by Zitoox · Oct 24, 2016 at 03:54 AM

I don't know much about music copyrights, but i am almost sure that yes, you can get into legal trouble. The problem here isn't that you are using other's songs, but that you are MAKING IT POSSIBLE for players to do it.

BUT you wouldn't have any problem if you just didn't allowed players to share their music, i guess. You could just make it possibly for them to customize the soundtrack, but only for them. There is no problem in doing that as it fits in "personal use license".

I personally contact everyone before using their content, and i read and talk with content owners a lot so i know a lot about licenses, but as i said, i am not that good when talking about music. The thing you wanna do is too delicate because it covers ALL the songs on earth, and each compositor has his own judgement, but if you isn't allowing players to share their music, you will not get in trouble with most compositors.

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Bunny83 · Oct 24, 2016 at 04:30 AM 0

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"Making it possible" in a passive way usually never gets you in trouble. Otherwise all weapon manufacturers would have huge problems as they make it possible that people kill other people. Software and protocols which allow file sharing aren't illegal at all.

As soon as you have a voice chat feature in your game a user could stream music over the voice chat. It's only the users problem and not the problem of the developer.

Answer 3

Answer by Cynikal · Oct 24, 2016 at 03:58 AM

Technically, you'd need a stream license.

However, since you wouldn't be doing the streaming, and depending on HOW it's streamed, you can get away from any (major) liability by adding the disclaimers of "Do not stream files that you do not have ownership to" or something along those lines.

I can not speak from your lawyers standpoint, as my knowledge on law does not apply to streaming audio.

I highly suggest you contact a lawyer and ask them for a consult, and then run the question by them. You might want to look specifically into music industry lawyers, and at minimum IT based lawyers.

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Streaming Music Cause Copyright Issues?

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