Legal Questions regarding Sound-Files / Voices

[urabi]

I already asked that question over there at nexus but, unlike the dl-pages, the boards there seem pretty quite.
 

I stumbled upon https://www.nexusmod...tion/mods/11993 and looked up for some voice pack, however, couldnt find any i'd see fit for my playthrough.

So i made one for myself based on Sylvanas Windrunner with 

https://www.wowhead....ounds/name:sylv

https://www.wowhead....anas-windrunner

https://heroesofthes...Sylvanas/Quotes
 

...as a source (+some selfmade, cutted from Quests and edited with Audacity) soley for personal use, so i thougt.


Question is, because some friends already asked, can i just distribute the voice pack legally? (Wether sending it to friends directly or even here on nexus)
I feel like i may hit copyright (?) issues with a voice used in Blizzard games. 
I just saw a bunch of voice packs that seemed to be from different games (or are from other games) and that made me curious

If someone knows more - or where i could educate myself regarding that - i'd aprecciate that. Thanks in advance.

[Karkhel]

If you are asking whether blizzard is gonna send you cease and desist letter, no. Could they technically do it? ?‍♂️Intellectual property shit is such a mess who the fuck knows. But no one cares about stuff like this. Now if you make this part of a paid mod, either through patreon or other means, and you use voice pack made from copyrighted stuff, character itself being copyrighted as well. Now you could very feasibly get something IF you got bigger spotlight on your shit. Don't treat any of this as legal counsel, I'm just basing this off how blizzard and some other game companies have protected their IPs so far. Blizzard only goes after private servers if they promote them in public spaces or in some other ways become famous or infamous, there is a private serwer that had around 10k players online total like 2 years ago, was fine for years, never got taken down to my knowledge.
But every now and then blizzard needs to defend their copyrights or it basically becomes public domain if you don't (thats like insanely big simplification, but you gotta aggressively defend your copyrights when its basically competition is the point to my knowledge, don't remember if its a result of US or EU copyright laws but either way it forces blizzard to take actions for some things, mods for skyrim are not a competition to blizzard).
Mods have always been a grey area, they are chuck full of copyrighted material, but usually even asshats like Games workshop know better not to go after modders as long as they don't try to sell that. I mean hell Bethesda is even OK with people remaking morrowind in a new engine with the stipulation that they don't advertise that it can be played on mobile.

Maybe there is like a lawyer discord or subreddit you could find with people having flairs if they are legit lawyers and could give you more legit legal advice.

My uneducated guess based on how I've seen fan projects handled in the past is generally no one gives a fuck, its prob not technically legal, but those laws are super old, too old for internet stuff in general let alone AI voice trained on intellectual property. That being said as soon as its tied to porn, it becomes way more likely someone will take a stance, just mentioning this since I know there are porn addons to this mod idk if you just did SFW stuff for this. Like nintendo striking down on a fan porn game. But this is assuming this blows up somehow and also blizzard as out of touch as they are they are not as bad as nintendo in that regard (and also they have different demographic, its rather obvious why nintendo would have a problem with a porn game that has very very similar title to an actual game I might add).

[urabi]

1 hour ago, Karkhel said:

If you are asking whether blizzard is gonna send you cease and desist letter, no. Could they technically do it? ?‍♂️Intellectual property shit is such a mess who the fuck knows. But no one cares about stuff like this. Now if you make this part of a paid mod, either through patreon or other means, and you use voice pack made from copyrighted stuff, character itself being copyrighted as well. Now you could very feasibly get something IF you got bigger spotlight on your shit. Don't treat any of this as legal counsel, I'm just basing this off how blizzard and some other game companies have protected their IPs so far. Blizzard only goes after private servers if they promote them in public spaces or in some other ways become famous or infamous, there is a private serwer that had around 10k players online total like 2 years ago, was fine for years, never got taken down to my knowledge.
But every now and then blizzard needs to defend their copyrights or it basically becomes public domain if you don't (thats like insanely big simplification, but you gotta aggressively defend your copyrights when its basically competition is the point to my knowledge, don't remember if its a result of US or EU copyright laws but either way it forces blizzard to take actions for some things, mods for skyrim are not a competition to blizzard).
Mods have always been a grey area, they are chuck full of copyrighted material, but usually even asshats like Games workshop know better not to go after modders as long as they don't try to sell that. I mean hell Bethesda is even OK with people remaking morrowind in a new engine with the stipulation that they don't advertise that it can be played on mobile.

Maybe there is like a lawyer discord or subreddit you could find with people having flairs if they are legit lawyers and could give you more legit legal advice.

My uneducated guess based on how I've seen fan projects handled in the past is generally no one gives a fuck, its prob not technically legal, but those laws are super old, too old for internet stuff in general let alone AI voice trained on intellectual property. That being said as soon as its tied to porn, it becomes way more likely someone will take a stance, just mentioning this since I know there are porn addons to this mod idk if you just did SFW stuff for this. Like nintendo striking down on a fan porn game. But this is assuming this blows up somehow and also blizzard as out of touch as they are they are not as bad as nintendo in that regard (and also they have different demographic, its rather obvious why nintendo would have a problem with a porn game that has very very similar title to an actual game I might add).

 

 

Yea, i guessed as much. After all there's numerous private server that potentially hit that copyright in a way bigger scale than a simple player voice mod and there lawyer, perhaps, couldnt care less. But i really wanna make sure because the last thing i need is some problems because of that. 

Especially when i upload it to pages such as loverslab or nexus. I see a lot of player voices beeing uploaded and "ripped" directly from a different game/franchise which made me wonder if this is some sort of "not legal but its fine" thing. After all its some sort of advertisment if the assets used are displayed in a positive way towards the franchise.

 

 

Anyways, i tryna dig a bit around to see if i get any answer. I dont want to upload it if there could be trouble to it. Its just, i spent some time on it, cutting, compressing etc and like to share it for free for anybody who is a fan of that particular voice but unsure if i can upload it just like that.

 

 

Edited March 6, 2023 by urabi