| I used to wonder why studios had their own foley sound stage, musicians, photography and concept artists... Then one takes a trip down the deep rabbit hole of modern copyright liabilities. Finds a web marketplace filled with potential copyright submarine lawsuits, DMCA take-downs waiting to happen (youtube contentID will eventually flag the work of that cheap asset pack off Unity marketplace), and draconian EULA. People are often unaware resale/transfer of many production Asset licenses is prohibited even if you buy the old CD/DVD media sets, "royalty free" can also mean hidden per-user seat-fees and can't cover public performances of sheet-music that must be cleared with local performing arts organizations to make sure the original rights holders get paid. What this means, is even if you pay for something 3rd party... you don't own the primary rights to the content. And there is usually a bunch of per-file legal conditions that are impossible to keep track of in a production environment. Ultimately, even CC0 may not necessarily protect you if the source makes the wrong judgement call on the original primary work. There is a similar argument about ML generated works as algorithms cannot own IP, and therefore cannot be transferred or licensed properly... This is one of the primary reasons I financially support OSS related projects that do procedural textures/shaders that can be baked in 4k later. It really sucks the fun out of building anything aesthetically beautiful for cheap... as your budget ends up mired in licensing fees even before 1 line of code is written.. I supported Polyhaven as they curated a truly unrestricted library of CC0 content, and offer it without any hidden fees/subscription BS for everyone. Remember to have fun, =) |