
BBC Sound Effects made available to download for use under RemArc Licence - sohkamyung
http://bbcsfx.acropolis.org.uk/
======
oliwarner
We can leave the whether or not publicly-funded work like this should belong
to the public (no not the Crown) so I understand that this is _theirs_ to
license how they see fit... but this license stinks.

It's non-commercial. It has huge moral use clauses. It basically limits your
use to the same standards the BBC is required to keep at broadcast.

And you have to give a credit. And you can't use too much of it (lest somebody
think you're sponsored by the BBC). And you cannot denature the collection or
remove tracking or branding from it.

AAAAAnd you have to remove files from your copy when they ask. This is a
revocable license.

------
optimuspaul
Wow! Decades ago when I was a theatre sound designer I had those on vinyl and
used them all the time. This brings back memories.

~~~
ryan-allen
I wonder if there's a mass download of all these sounds?

I'm just lazy. These are epic!

EDIT: Working on a one liner :)

EDIT: I'm sure it's like some curl and xargs and sed, it's been a while...

EDIT: Oh yeah, I win at internet:

curl
[http://bbcsfx.acropolis.org.uk/assets/BBCSoundEffects.csv](http://bbcsfx.acropolis.org.uk/assets/BBCSoundEffects.csv)
| grep -Eow "[0-9]+.wav" | xargs -I % curl
[http://bbcsfx.acropolis.org.uk/assets/%>%](http://bbcsfx.acropolis.org.uk/assets/%>%)

EDIT: Wait I suck that doesn't work. This does:

curl
[http://bbcsfx.acropolis.org.uk/assets/BBCSoundEffects.csv](http://bbcsfx.acropolis.org.uk/assets/BBCSoundEffects.csv)
| grep -Eow "[0-9]+.wav" | xargs -I % curl -O
[http://bbcsfx.acropolis.org.uk/assets/%](http://bbcsfx.acropolis.org.uk/assets/%)

-O for dOwnlOad

~~~
jungletek
Thanks, seems to be chugging along fine in an MSYS2 terminal on Windows.

Now to give them better names than the numbers used by BBC. Any
solutions/suggestions?

~~~
jungletek
Actually, some of those transfers ended up timing out, and I have no way to
know which files are incomplete.

Ended up using Notepad++ and a simple regex in the find/replace dialog to
prepend ########.wav with the URL, then chucked it into JDownloader's link
grabber. 283.83GB, BTW. I may end up compressing these with FLAC to save the
space. If anyone is curious, the regex I used was: (([0-9])+.wav) and replaced
with
[http://bbcsfx.acropolis.org.uk/assets/$&](http://bbcsfx.acropolis.org.uk/assets/$&)

Now for the naming and splitting by CD name...

------
rambojazz
What a weird license... it's not a free one though.

~~~
jobigoud
I don't think this license makes sense at all for a sound effect library.

> 4.a Not removing content from your device or systems when we ask you to.

Use sound effect in a short film, BBC take down the sound effect library, your
film is now illegal.

> 4.b Don't use our content for (…) promoting (…) tobacco (…) anything that
> would harm the BBC reputation (…) social campaigning purposes or
> fundraising.

Also no ads next to or over the content.

Also, from paragraph 4.h you are not allowed to share the content.

~~~
HenryBemis
Real scenario: a friend was asking me a few weeks back if I had any audio
clips for the theatrical show in his kid's school. Not much, just a clock
ticking, a car honk. The show was of course free (parents were acting for
their kids to enjoy). All non-profit. That library would be helpful (and will
be helpful next year when they'll have to perform again).

And oh how I miss GetRight. I remember it was able to jump-around and download
from linked web-pages. While IDM doesn't seem to be able to crawl like this
(or at least I haven't found a way).

Edit: _snap_ if you got an Android/iOS app and want to add some sounds (e.g.
"Lion roaring (inside cage)") then you fall under '8\. a) for commercial
purposes – to make a profit' you need permission, which sensibly one can
obtain without jumping through too many hoops.

~~~
keithpeter
freesound.org would be safer for the school show I think

~~~
tomc1985
Another vote for freesound. FS' licensing is also much more reasonable

------
vadansky
I wonder if the monster disc is missing?

------
delibes
That licence is written in some very nice plain English. Congratulations to
the people that did it.

~~~
Digital-Citizen
The RemArc license
[https://github.com/bbcarchdev/Remarc/raw/master/doc/2016.09....](https://github.com/bbcarchdev/Remarc/raw/master/doc/2016.09.27_RemArc_Content%20licence_Terms%20of%20Use_final.pdf)
clearly attempts to appear friendly and aimed at being understood by non-
lawyers but what the license says is not nice at all. This license purports to
cover software (among other things) and it is clearly non-free (and a clear
illustration of how open source is not free software). That's bad enough to
reject the license and all covered works in itself. But the license is worse
for using unclear and rights-limiting language.

Open source and software freedom are not the same thing:

This license claims to cover many types of "content" (see
[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-
avoid.html#Content](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-
avoid.html#Content) for why that's a bad idea) including "Technical stuff such
as metadata and open-source code (please see point 7)". The Open Source
Initiative started over a decade after the free software movement began and
promotes a 10-point development methodology built to reject the ethical
underpinning of the free software movement. The Open Source Definition is not
at all the same as software freedom (the freedom to run, inspect, share, and
modify published software). Open source advocates sometimes reject that
10-point methodology altogether and adopt whatever proprietary work is
available if that work is sufficiently attractive (see
[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-
point....](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html)
for more on this). The RemArc license is an example of papering over the
limitations of proprietary control by using a term people think they
understand.

The RemArc license is highly prejudiced against commercial and educational
use. Section 7 tells us RemArc-covered works are "only for non-commercial,
personal or research purposes". Using the covered work "substantially to do
your job – as an employee, contractor or consultant" might require you to pay
a fee not listed in this license. And that personal or research use (however
that is meant to be interpreted) is further limited to "formal education
purposes while you are a student or a member of staff of a school, college or
university". So if you're doing your own research/education work or if you're
home-schooling, you are not licensed to use the covered work. I can't say if
this qualifies as "open source" as the license says, but these restrictions
absolutely disqualify this license from being a free software license.

RemArc license is very unclear:

"Don't mess with our content" seems to mean let the copyright holders dictate
when you must remove the work upon request. So you are being kept from keeping
a copy of the work thus censoring you.

"Don’t use our content for harmful or offensive purposes" is defined using
vague and undefined terms such as being "insulting", "promoting pornography"
(precisely what pornography is or what 'promotes' pornography is doubly-
unclear), "putting children at risk" (of what? They don't say), "anything
illegal. Like using hate speech" (which, is not defined in the US and not
defined in this license, and would not survive 1st Amendment scrutiny in the
US if used by a state-funded institution akin to coming from the state-funded
BBC). Also one is not licensed to use the work in a "harmful or offensive" way
such as "Using our content for political or social campaigning purposes". Not
only is that unclear it could include doing things I don't find offensive,
harmful, insulting, or illegal such as educating children about software
freedom.

RemArc license is referred to as a contract ("This is a contract between you
and us.") and also a license (2nd line). I don't know how English law defines
these terms or what the consequences of those terms are, but in American law
they don't mean exactly the same thing.

It makes real a myth propagated by anti-software freedom campaigners:

"You have to [u]se the latest version of the content and, where we have it,
don’t remove any tagging or tracking" so if they change something, they demand
you change your work that includes theirs (presumably without notice). This
implements a myth used to argue against strongly-copylefted software covered
under the GNU GPL. Ironically, the GPL allows anyone with a copy of the
covered code to edit out anything they don't like, so there's no obligation to
pass along "tagging or tracking" nor is there any obligation to keep up with
changes made in other copies of the same work. But the RemArc license requires
you be a bolster for privacy-busting tactics such as tracking. Hardly a nice
way to treat people!

It's remarkably restrictive:

"English law governs these terms, and only English courts can make judgments
about them." Why would anyone outside this court system want to have their
rights determined by English law?

It makes no sense why BBC fee payers would want to be compelled to pay to have
taxpayer-funded workers to make works which are so restrictively licensed.

I suspect this license might be someone's well-meaning but poorly chosen
attempt at being approachable by non-lawyers. I cringe at the thought of that
just as I do when I hear non-technical people describe computer-related
problems and say things that make no sense leaving me to try to guess at what
they really meant ("I put the floppy disk in the hard drive and switched the
monitor on but the game didn't play." which might mean they put something in
their computer and only turned on the monitor but not the computer therefore
no program ran).

This license and everything covered under it should be avoided.

------
softgrow
Really interesting to scroll through and play random sounds. Seems very
comprehensive, although it is a bit UK centric (not surprisingly). A good
source for a project I've been contemplating to deconstruct sounds in the same
way a picture can be represented by SVG.

~~~
mavendependency
Yep, don't go searching for elevator when what you really need is the lift.

------
petecox
One can hardly make a good ringtone if search results for "tardis", "sonic
screwdriver" and "dalek" yielded nothing.

------
monkeynotes
jQuery and a 2MB CSV, gets the job done I guess. Makes batch downloading the
whole library trivial too :)

~~~
ryan-allen
If you gots bash you can do this in the dir you wanna download 'em all too,
for education:

curl
[http://bbcsfx.acropolis.org.uk/assets/BBCSoundEffects.csv](http://bbcsfx.acropolis.org.uk/assets/BBCSoundEffects.csv)
| grep -Eow "[0-9]+.wav" | xargs -I % curl -O
[http://bbcsfx.acropolis.org.uk/assets/%](http://bbcsfx.acropolis.org.uk/assets/%)

------
plouffy
Quite relaxing listening to the atmosphere ones.

~~~
ryan-allen
If you're looking for more things to listen that are atmospheric I recommend
checking out this site: [http://mynoise.net](http://mynoise.net)

The author and sound designer has had a long history of making patches for
famous Roland instruments, and he designed his own microphones for a lot of
these recordings. They are top notch.

I listen to Rain on a Tin Roof and Steel Mill at work as white noise. Very
good for focus!

~~~
hansthehorse
Love this site, been a supporter for some time now.

