Copyright issues to note when publishing on Unity Store

So you've made some really good audio samples, so good in fact that you would want to show the world and possibly get a side income from your main job. Firstly you will need to check the legality of the assets that you publish otherwise you might get a cease and desist letter or worse a letter from a lawyer.

I made this post to show how I make sure that any of my projects are screened and checked before I release them to be monetized on platforms online platforms such as the Unity Store.

What is Unity Store?

Unity Store is an online assets store that sell literally almost any asset that can be imported to the Unity game development engine. Game developers and level designers will almost always use prefabs and standard sound library within their projects. This helps them to speed up development time and to quickly get an idea of the final product. Once the final revision is to be made, better quality assets are then either made in-house, outsourced or bought to finish the project.

Guidelines

("Submission Guidelines - Unity", 2019)

The most relevant sections regarding the legal obligations can be read from on the Unity Store guidelines page, but in a nutshell as a content creator you just need to focus on 1.1 Legal Restrictions, 1.1.1 Licenses in your products, 1.2 General and 4.5 Audio. ("Submission Guidelines - Unity", 2019)

Specific Audio formats

(Technologies, 2019)

I ensure that all my assets when it comes to bounce out that they should all conform to the following formats before I submit.

Ensure your content is yours!

You must ensure that you originally created all of the music asset or own the full usage rights of the asset you bring onto the Unity platform. You automatically own the copyright of any original material that you create, copyright protection of audio assets is outlined on the Australian Copyright Council's web page. Relevant information can be found here.

Relevant links for song writers, Foley artists and publishers can be found below.

AMPAL Working with music publishers related information in Australia

APRA/AMCOS Find out how to get paid in royalties when businesses play your music or live artists covers your songs

PPCA These guys issue the licenses to establishments who play your music in their venues. They work hand in hand with APRA

Creative Commons Australia Creating shareable content and how to ensure proper referenced materials

ACC Australian Copyright Council, a non-for profit organisation that is government funded to help all Australian creatives access legal advise regarding copyright

Licenses?

For audio asset creators who want to publish their work on the assets store one must understand the type of license you are granting people when they download your work. Unity does not hold any licenses of the material that you upload and also will not check if you are infringing upon others. You as the creator hold the all responsibility of making sure that the assets you post up are genuine and free from plagiarism. Also when you sell your assets via the Unity store effectively Unity acts as your legal agent and retains a commission for selling the asset on their platform. End users a granted a "license to use" and is "non-exclusive" meaning that your assets are fine to be used on other games developers can buy the same sounds and sound packs that you make available via the store.

("Asset Store Terms of Service and EULA - Unity", 2018)

Breaches of copyright and how to deal with copycats!

As much as we like to think that the world is full of righteous and people with a moral compass. Sadly if this was universally true then there would not be a need for copyright laws. If we find that there is a some people who have used your content on the Unity platform then you can first notify Unity through their channels here

If the assets was used on another website other than Unity's asset store you may have to step it up a notch and contact Digital Millennium Copyright Act to do a take down of online and beyond to remove content. They are a business that specializes in enforcing copyright online and taking corporations and individuals to court of their respective country if the infringement is not removed.

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References

Submission Guidelines - Unity. (2019). Retrieved from https://unity3d.com/asset-store/sell-assets/submission-guidelines

Technologies, U. (2019). Unity - Manual: Audio files. Retrieved from https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/AudioFiles.html?_ga=2.216572050.500877324.1556674752-1863838276.1556674752

Asset Store Terms of Service and EULA - Unity. (2018). Retrieved from https://unity3d.com/legal/as_terms