I have just become aware of a possible new sound effects resource. The BBC has released 16,016 sfx from its archives as individual wav files for download from here. I say possible because an awful lot of them (at first glance anyway) are of modern(ish) sounds and someone needs to double check these terms and conditions. I think that number 7 means that they are fine to use but I am not going to say categorically that it is so. The third reason I say probably is because the search is nearly as bad as on here…
My amateur reading is “use at your own risk” rather than “OK to use”.
In theory they can demand takedown at any time, especially if they consider the work offensive (which, bearing in mind that the BBC is run by the feminist elite, could apply to most gaming applications). In practice, the risk is probably small, as we’re not likely to be on their radar. Of course, blatant breaches of the terms would be still be unethical, and should be discouraged, even if unlikely to be detected.
The sheer volume of material available might be tempting, but there are free sound libraries with open licenses that I’d check first.
I converted several thousand sounds from freesound.org for nwn use and posted a project for it. They are cc licensed. That said I doubt the beeb would even notice us.
I think it’s fine. NWN1 / NWN2 fall pretty fairly under personal project / research.
As long as you are not pay gating anything or making money in some form, or claiming ownership. I wouldn’t worry about it. Feel free to credit BBC if you use their work in anything you release so that a implicit ownership isn’t assumed to be implied.
There is a difference, of course. There’s no permission to use Dr Who content. There’s limited permission to use the media files, but (unlike open content) it isn’t a perpetual license, and is subject to many constraints on making derivative works, including how you’re allowed to edit, and what kind of work it appears in.
Grymlorde’s point is that the BBC does track this stuff, so the risk of using it is higher than I thought.
Actually they didn’t. It was a group of people in the RW that PHoD knew who were pulling a malicious joke/stunt/hoax/whatever on him. PHod went round and sorted it out. If you are prepared to dig through the old forums (or maybe the BSN via wayback machine) you will find the whole saga there.
EDIT
Having done the searching for you I can reveal the whole saga via wayback machine for anybody who didn’t believe me. It plays out over five pages.