Being able to upload our own sounds.

With the ability to (in the future) buy more storage space for our Roll20 accounts being confirmed by Eric D , can we also have the ability to upload our own sound files? Using the Jukebox as it is, is very limited when trying to find and use sound effects of certain types. This is not the fault of the search engine Jukebox uses, just that the library it has access to is very limited. The ability to use our own files would alleviate this issue. It would also drive up the sales of buying storage space.

I second this

How? It's not like we're linking a hundred people. No one would know. ut I understand why. That is something no one wants to deal with. However you could let us link directly to music from other sources. If people host it on other sites and the material is indeed infringing on someones copyrights Roll20 can not be held accountable, just the sites hosting it. It would be like trying to hold Apple accountable because someone played a pirated song through iTunes.

Unfortunately uploading music to our servers is opening up the potential for copyright infringement. Presently Soundcloud is the only solution we have for safe and legal direct audio streaming that doesn't threaten Roll20 with a bag full of legality issues. Meanwhile, other virtual tabletops such as iTabletop allows uploading our own music and sounds. It looks to me like they were able to focus the subject from a different angle. OTOH, putting the SoundCloud links straight in the Jukebox search field works, but by doing this users go against SoundCloud policy: the files need to be set as public, even if they are copyrighted pieces.

How could Roll20 be held accountable for something the USER does though? As long as you include a disclaimer like "The User acknowledges that they shouldn't be uploading copyrighted material and accepts full accountability for doing so" I would assume you guys have your asses covered while everyone else is happily clicking "I agree". And then proceed to probably completely ignore the warning when it stops being convenient for them, while not getting arrested or having charges brought against them because how would anyone in a position to bring charges against the users ever find out?

In the legal world, there is no such thing as having your ass 100% covered -- law just doesn't work that way. If they have their server in the U.S., then this is a legitimate concern (in fact, if they have their server anywhere, it's still a concern -- just ask Kim Dotcom). That aside, I would still vote for this feature, if a suitable workaround could be found. Perhaps streaming from a user's local storage?

Being able to link directly in our jukebox would fix that. AND as long as the media is either WebM or Ogg Vorbis most browsers will support it (via HTML5 ).

Being able to link directly in our jukebox would fix that. AND as long as the media is either WebM or Ogg Vorbis most browsers will support it (via HTML5 ). But then how do you stream the sound to everyone else's browser without a central server that again brings legal issues into it. Please trust us when we say we know this is very much desired and if we figure out a way to get it working we will.

Wait, are you telling me that the current jukebox works by making the Roll20 server fetch and cache the songs from Soundcloud instead of just directly streaming from Soundcloud?

It streams directly to each user from sound cloud, so you have a central server streaming to all the clients. If you want to play something from your own computer would require that same central server and that is where the legal questions start coming up. Who knows, maybe WebRTC will allow P2P music streaming but we won't know until that technology better flushed out by the browser makers.

I'm not saying from my own computer. I'm saying from other sites than Soundcloud. I've got a simple web server that I could store my own sounds on. If I could link to that than you guys would not have that potential issue.

How? It's not like we're linking a hundred people. No one would know. The mindset that it's okay to do something that is wrong because people don't know is contrary to the way we'd like to run our business. We'll be examining ways to expand the Jukebox in the future, but in the meantime feel free to upload legal items to SoundCloud (or use the thousands of freely available songs already there). The Digital Millenium Act is draconian and we ALL know it. Don't be afraid to say it.