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Just stumbled across this new SFX site SOUNDFX. It's by a guy called Zach King aka Final Cut King, and there is quite an extensive range of sounds.

Knows anyone if it's legit? It sounds pretty good, like other library SFX, but I'm a little cautious when these much is made available for free.

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I'm certain it's a scam, and advise running the other direction immediately:

  • The website name alone is very suspect

  • "blog" posts on his site about his gear and DSLR shooting, are just a series of copy-pasted technical data with no opinionated and articulated details (e.g. not "taking the talk")

  • Zach King has no IMDb listing (especially so with how much bravado the website exhibits for it's offerings - you'd think it was the next coming of John Fasal or Rob Nokes, but with blowout "free" deals on everything)

  • Can't fool my photographic memory - I immediately recognized the splash image stolen from this film... so how much else is stolen?

  • A Star Trek collection is offered. I don't care if it's from the old series, it's not public domain content. ----> sold CD... see the catelog in the bottom right, that's in the Soundminer Ripper catalog, so this is is the true library.

  • His FAQ states commercial usage is appropriate, which would certainly make the preceding discovery one of copyright infringement

  • The business of sound effects is an actual business, which some make secondary income, and for others its primary. There is a demands for sound effects from reputable sources, and people are certainly willing (and EXPECT) to pay for them. I don't care who you are (I'm also in this sound effects business), people don't just freely offer all sound effects, especially in some of those categories where it requires a lot of logistics and money to make happen. This is of prime suspect.

I'm very much toying this inquiring this site owner further and find out what I can. It hurts all of us by lowering the consumers cost expectation (Free!), thus diluting the ability to maintain thriving businesses over time.

Thanks for sharing the info! It's good to know about these things.

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  • Fully agree with your assessment Steve. I'm wondering if it's someone who just doesn't know any better yet or is just outright spitting into the face of copyright. Might just be a matter of time until some major sends a swarm of lawyers to descend on this poor fella.
    – André Engelhardt
    Dec 1, 2013 at 19:51
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    Already in process of carefully finding out :)
    – Stavrosound
    Dec 1, 2013 at 20:46
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    Thanks for the detailed response. It gives a lot of cause to just drop this ball. I was thinking of letting my students onto this but instilling the value of copyright is more important than giving them SFX from questionable sources.
    – user6513
    Dec 1, 2013 at 23:52
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    Sure thing! i can't be 100% certain until my dialogue with them continues, but I'm 99% certain its in the wrong, whether purposefully or naively.
    – Stavrosound
    Dec 2, 2013 at 1:46
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It might be "legit", but it's pretty obviously not (copyright-)free for others than some sort of non-profit hobbyists.

The net is full of sites with "Free SFX" and this site might be a collection of those, aimed at some hobbyist movie makers. The licenses for these "Free SFX" are generally for non-profit use only and the maintainer usually does not take any responsibility over the copyright of the sounds. So they're made available to be used "at your own risk". Some might be stolen/ripped.

Get sounds only from places where you can verify the copyright holder and how he has licensed the sounds. That's how it's legal/legit.

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