I'm a bit confused about what I can use in my projects. I know about the creative commons license, and I know I can use other Scratcher's art/scripts/etc, but what about stuff outside Scratch? If I take a song that I buy off the internet or from a CD and stick it in a project, is that with or against the rules? If it's okay, doesn't that mean someone could illegally download songs off the website? Even if you give credit to the author, it's being a pirate.

Also, can I use any image I find on the internet? If I find fanart off deviantart, could I plop that down in my project with credit?

I think you could use anything as long as its legal and not copyrighted and if the owner lets you. I think you can.. How do people get music in their games then? If you give the art credit, and post a comment there they might.

As long as you're not stealing, and as long as you give credit, and as long as you don't use anything inappropriate, you should be fine.

Sorry, I kind of want a moderator/owner to help me on this. You may be correct, but I just want to be sure. I had a look at the DMCA, and it said that projects are for educational purposes, so I guess you can get away with anything?

Normo wrote:

Sorry, I kind of want a moderator/owner to help me on this. You may be correct, but I just want to be sure. I had a look at the DMCA, and it said that projects are for educational purposes, so I guess you can get away with anything?

Because Scratch is non-profit and used as an educational tool, most usually claim the use of other people's work in their projects under Fair Use (see the DCMA page). In response to your music question in the first post, the music file is rather downsampled when exported so it's not really fit for pure music listening, per se (this as opposed to sharing a copy of the original music file on a file sharing website).

We do sometimes get DCMA takedown notices. But cases like those are very, very really rare. If we do get a DCMA takedown notice, then we are, unfortunately, forced to censor/unshare a project in that case - but the easy fix for that is to simply replace the content with something else and then reshare the project again (which is very easy to do since Scratch 2.0 is online).

Most of the time, though, if a company reaches out to us about an project that they feel is infringing, we usually end up talking to the company representative explaining about Scratch, and when they find out, they usually understand and let the issue slide. Unless the company is Namco Bandai who think a PacMan project made by a young child is a financial detriment to their business ._.

If you're worried about outside material, we have a list of websites that contain CC or royalty free resources that are absolutely 100% legal to use.

So if I was making a Pacific Rim game (minus everything that isn't PG-13/12A) and I used the soundtrack MP3 files that I legally got from buying it on Amazon would it be OK?

chocolatepenguin wrote:

So if I was making a Pacific Rim game (minus everything that isn't PG-13/12A) and I used the soundtrack MP3 files that I legally got from buying it on Amazon would it be OK?

Id say if the entire song has been posted on Youtube then it's a sign that nobody will get angry.