[thn-gap]

In the upload form I see the following

> This way, a track originally released as "free" becomes into a "copyrighted" song by a third company, affecting severely our reputation and making impossible to promote any other of your tracks.

How can someone use free music without risking either: a) the music was never free to use, and someone else uploaded the copyrighted music owned by someone else. b) the music is later copyrighted, and you are then infringing the copyright.

Do I understand copyright law wrong? Assuming you make a commercial product with it, you get screwed over this.

[steerablesafe]

IANAL but I don't think that works can become copyrighted. It can be distributed with a license for free use, but then that license can't be revoked after the fact.

The license could be non-transferable and the work can be distributed with a more restrictive license in the future by the copyright holders, or not distributed at all. None of these should affect those that use the work legitimately with the permissive license given to them in the past.

edit: Maybe if a license is revocable or not must be spelled out in the license itself. Many open licenses seem to be explicitly irrevocable.

edit2: More on this topic https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/4012/are-lice...

[comboy]

I think the question was what if the music is stolen.

E.g. imagine clone of a GPL github repo but with MIT slapped on it.

[TaylorAlexander]

The problem is that Content ID systems are tangential to the law. They are private systems developed to cover tech companies collective asses. It is easier for them to take down all content matched in their content ID system than to verify the validity and legal ownership of every track uploaded to their system. The latter is very hard actually. I guess a solution would be for original creators to be able to upload their content to the content ID system and mark that content with the correct license. Then free to use content could be uploaded and scammers could be punished. I don’t know if this is already a feature they support.