Custom songs legal?

[ThisCatStreams]

I've ordered Rocksmith 2014 to purely learn my bass guitar after seeing that a good amount of the tracks listed aren't to my taste or stuff that I listened to when I was a child I felt that the game wouldn't hold my interest. As the advertisers said. People like to learn songs they enjoy.

I heard that the are developers working on tools to manulaly add files to the game so you can learn your favourite tracks from bands you like.

My only question is this legal? From what I am aware the files are provide in good faith that you do own the song.

But in saying that I doubt I'll be seeing any Parkway Drive, Bury Tomorrow or Bleed From Within DLC any time soon.

[wraith7201]

There's nothing illegal about custom DLC, per se. Although, it might violate the terms of service with the game to reverse engineer game files and post that information publicly.

What is most likely illegal with custom DLC is the distribution of the chart with the original song files, since you're not paying the proper licensing fee to the major media organizations for the song.

[ThisCatStreams]

Originally posted by Rogue203:

There's nothing illegal about custom DLC, per se. Although, it might violate the terms of service with the game to reverse engineer game files and post that information publicly.

What is most likely illegal with custom DLC is the distribution of the chart with the original song files, since you're not paying the proper licensing fee to the major media organizations for the song.

Well I won't lie I am very much tempted since these guys have a stong community offering the files to learn a lot of music I listen to and want to learn to play. Rocksmith seems to be pretty much behind on a lot of recent music and they aren't doing any better with DLC for someone of my taste. I understand they want clean music with not a lot of cursing or mature lyrics. Hopefully one day they will have the tech to do importing. But I think that's a long way off.

I'll see if Rocksmith is all that it is cracked up to be.

I haven't played my bass in years so I'm pretty much back to basics anyway so I can't complain too much.

[wraith7201]

I tried some of the custom songs, but frankly didn't find many of them charted very well, so I stick with the DLC and on disc songs.

I doubt Ubisoft is going to track people down for using or distributing custom songs. the RIAA on the other hand may eventually decide to crack down on the distribution of the songs. I don't know if they could claim copyright on the note tracks themselves, like they've tried with community tab.

[ThisCatStreams]

Well the songs I've been looking at were ones I was previously learning years ago and never got around to even getting good at let alone matering.

I heard that Rocksmith 2014 might not even be compatible with the current .dat format so I might not even bother with it.

But yes my only concern is the music its self. Of course I don't see my self commiting any offence aslong as I own the legit song. But I will look over it since I don't want to find myself in any situation I may walk into by mistake.

[wraith7201]

Currently custom songs do not work with 2014, so if that's your criteria, then don't spend the money right now.

[Justice]

I'm a bass player with the exact same issue, other than the blues/folk stuff I'm just not that interested in the track list. You will find a bunch of Jamiroquai out there that I created to funk up my RS1 client, I will be converting all of them to RS2014 format when the tools are available.

I ran CDLC's on my RS1 on Steam since release, never took it offline and never had an issue.

[jacobvandy]

Regardless of legality, I guarantee you custom tracks are against the Rocksmith ToS because they are in the business of selling you additional tracks as DLC. However it happens that they find out you were using them, altering your game files to make them compatible and etc., don't be surprised if your Uplay account is banned or something. Just so you know the risk.

[905]

Originally posted by jacobvandy:

Regardless of legality, I guarantee you custom tracks are against the Rocksmith ToS because they are in the business of selling you additional tracks as DLC. However it happens that they find out you were using them, altering your game files to make them compatible and etc., don't be surprised if your Uplay account is banned or something. Just so you know the risk.

For RS 1, no altering of game files was needed. You just had to put the songs you downloaded into the right folder and make sure the custom song has the same app id as a song you already own legally. All customs are, is a way to share lessions/information about how you think a song is played. Also, the site I go to always removes a CDLC if Ubi comes out with an official version. There is no desire to compete with Rocksmith, it is about supplimenting our learning.

[Justice]

Originally posted by jacobvandy:

Regardless of legality, I guarantee you custom tracks are against the Rocksmith ToS because they are in the business of selling you additional tracks as DLC. However it happens that they find out you were using them, altering your game files to make them compatible and etc., don't be surprised if your Uplay account is banned or something. Just so you know the risk.

I guarantee you I have used customs on my RS1 client since I originally purchased it, I make my own customs and use customs created by others, and I have never had any issues.

[Justice]

Originally posted by I.R. Dianetics:

RS1 was not integrated into Uplay though.
RS2014 is integrated with Uplay which means they can check the integtrity of your installation.
There are obviously ways around this, but I wont discuss them on public forums.

Customs are already somewhat functional in RS2014 with none of the testers experiencing uplay issues. It's in their interest to leave this functionality, as they can only put out so much DLC, whereas the community can put out a much larger selection, making the game appeal to a wider audience. Sure they won't say that openly, but they know it's true.

[Justice]

Originally posted by I.R. Dianetics:

Your right, they are not compatible with the current dat format.
RS1 songs were charted using XML charts, this is gone in RS2014. The files are now pure binary, and the guys at Smithy Anvil are working to reverse engineer it.

If anything Ubi made it easier to implement customs as they no longer require encryption, they are just flat files.

Originally posted by I.R. Dianetics:

They have had some progress, but they still have not yet figured out many parts of note recognition.

Smithy is a community forum, the actual developers are on a google project group.