Thanks again Tarot_Redhand for your info and helpful ideas.
It’s also OK to use original music that community members have posted on the vault with no restrictive terms.
The key word here, though, is “original”. A few tracks are obviously ripped from commercial sources without attribution. Your media player will probably tell you if it recognizes it.
Last I heard, YouTube allows the use of commercial music in amateur videos, but, on recognizing it, requires the author to make a public acknowledgement. They place the onus on the copyright owner to request takedown, and will not respond to complaints from anyone else.
I know this because I used a track from a free music website, with attribution, in one of my videos, only to be told by YouTube that it was copyright, which of course I was glad to acknowledge. The video is still there.
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I think the CMP’s tracks in question come from Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate II. I believe that they were under the assumption that BioWare was okay with fans using BioWare music in their fan-created modules posted on the old vault (and presumably the new vault as well).
I agree that “…in general, it’s unsafe to use music without permission…”. I think it becomes even more unsafe and riskier when it comes to posting on sites other than this one.
And it almost goes without saying that reusing other assets (portraits, models, etc.) that are not open also carries risks when it comes to posting content.
But since the cat is out of the bag, I feel the need to point out the importance of keeping a low profile when handling risky content. Reusing non-open content is rife within the community, has always been so, and always will be. Hence the need to advise “don’t do it, but if you’re going to do it, obscure it to protect all of us.”