In response to the 'oof' sound discussion

You can easily check the date of creation under the metadata to determine whether there’s an existing image and through clever sarting algorithms and AI you can determine links that can systematically and efficiently sort comparable images. Let me give an example: Checks similar links between images using colour and mapping, effecively cutting down the possible links dramatically through merge sort. Splitting the search base into sections getting smaller and smaller.

When answering this question i was trying to find a comparable company to explain how this kind of software works quickly and effectively. Now i’m going to compare Youtube but stay with me, I understand they are a company of much greater scale with huge investment in this sector but I feel it’s worth mentioning as if you scale down the size to fit that of roblox the logic still holds up even if Youtube has an abundance of resurces for this kind of computing.

While youtube doesn’t seem to keep track of how many videos are uploaded daily a Quora member made avaliable they keep process roughly 300,000 videos per day amounting to a staggering roughly 80k hours of video for their systems to process and moderate (with a suprisingly accurate hit rate). Now Roblox has to process a very small amount of this and luckily photos take up roughly: 6 MB. This is nothing compared to that of Youtube so you can understand how, while Youtube does have a huge head step here due to their investment and commitment in the area, robloxs task is miniscule in comparison as they don’t have to scan the entire image every time but use smart AI to look for links or common pattens to be saved seperatly to then be compared when using moderation in the future instead of scanning many…many pictures.

If you see any holes in my logic or would like me to expand, please let me know.

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I probably have an unpopular opinion on this whole thing (most people seem to be in support of the Messiah guy), but I think it’s quite pathetic that this guy is suing over this. (sorry if that counts as a ‘personal attack’) This sound is a cultural symbol at this point, it’s a defining part of gen-z humor and culture with all the memes and everything, not to mention the nostalgia for quite a few people and yada yada yada.

I agree that the Messiah guy (probably) does own the sound, but I don’t think he should be allowed to take it away from ROBLOX because ROBLOX has made the OOF sound into one of the most iconic sounds on the planet. I’m not a lawyer; I don’t know much about copyright law, but shouldn’t there be a clause that disallows assets of a certain cultural caliber from being copyrightable?

I recall seeing a headline a few years ago saying that the SCOTUS was considering making ‘Google’ uncopyrightable because it’s basically a word, people say ‘let me google that for you’, ‘I need to google that’, etc, much like people say ‘oof’ to express sympathy to somebody. I feel like that should happen here.

TL;DR: I don’t think you should be able to destroy an important piece of culture over some money.

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If anything, because it’s become a cultural symbol, that gives more reason that the guy should sue. The “oof” meme has undoubtedly had a positive impact on the Roblox community.

The issue with this argument is assuming that if Tommy wins the oof thing (oof), the “oof” meme is gone, which isn’t true. A majority of memes, like “oof” fall under fair use, which is allowed. The issue here is that Roblox has used his sound, now with awareness he owns it, and has benefited from it. If a scientist found the cure to a cancer, but a company swooped in for itself, shouldn’t it’s founder deserve some compensation?

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Are you really comparing the oof sound to a cure to cancer? These kinds of analogies make it impossible to take your argument seriously because you’re comparing a big scientific breakthrough to a sound thats less than a second long.

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If the creator of the sound sold it to the company that licensed it to Roblox then they were already compensated for it.

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I claimed this in a reply to him and got blocked for it. I wouldnt put it past him to do it and pretend he never did.

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I don’t see how they would let such a typo slide, correct me if I’m wrong but I believe they usually do heavy proofreading on legal documents. Plus, assuming I’m correct about the type of document it is supposed to be, that reply by Tommy still doesn’t explain why his image says “Correspondance ID no.” when it should really just be “Correspondence ID” as Place_Reboot has previously stated.

Edit: Tommy claims that his attorney made the document. What I don’t understand is, if the US already provides a layout for these documents, why did his attorney have to make one? And I still find it amazing that a lawyer, somebody probably having gone to law school which requires a bachelor’s degree, would make such a typo. And if a document has been filed out on the United States copyright website, it is in fact a legal document. Tommy’s image looks like it was made in a Paint program in a few minutes.

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In that stream clip, it sounds like Tommy means that he will specifically block people who are rude to him or bringing harmful negativity into his life. Granted, he could still block waves of people and include some whose tweets were misinterpreted by him but weren’t meant to be harassment, but I don’t think Alkan would be rude or negative to Tommy, I would expect them to just simply ask the question in a straightforward way.

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the law may be the law but that doesn’t mean he has to get into this dumb, ignorant argument. he has the right to sue and threaten, but should he over some measly money?

also, if the law is the law, roblox can charge tommy for misconduct (forget the exact terminology) as many people have pointed out on twitter and here…

yes, they have helped roblox positively… roblox isn’t some evil corporation. the website david got the audio off of is responsible for false selling. david is essentially a promoter and entrepreneur as well, he should be able to understand a website made for CHILDREN should keep an iconic sound, and not have to pay money for something that is ultimately not fully their fault. i am saying tommy should show some human decency towards roblox and its huge fan base - and especially not do something so disgusting as to publicize this conflict.

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Apparently there’s a lot of secrecy going around the documents, where proof is hardly supporting. When was typos like that that bad in the past?

CD-ROM was either:

  • Illegally redistributed or
  • Something else

However, the source of the CD-ROM has yet to be stated.


If Tommy does have the original file, comparison should be done and necessary details need to be checked too.

Disappointing that the information we find are poorly accurate. This is some kind of fiasco if you did create such documents with a hefty amount of inconsistencies. It cannot be keyboard errors because the keys are barely close to each other. Grammatical errors, do we find that in previous official documents? We’ll find out.

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With all this over a famous sound effect, I didn’t think that potentially-forged evidence might find its way into this mess. Who knows what’ll happen next at this point.

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Honestly, I believe a lot of what makes this a fiasco is Tommy doing all this just for clout. Nothing so far has made really any sense. All of his moves has just been stirring the pot. If you look through his other tweets that aren’t about the Oof sound, he talks about his company, Intellivision, working on a “console.”

Wouldn’t be surprised if all this storm he’s brewed is his way to get some traction towards that project.

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That could be a possibility. Interesting outlook.

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I still think that it might be on the CD-ROM that A1 Free Sound Effects sold but there’s no way to find out anymore unfortunately. We could contact the guy himself and ask him, I did find his facebook.

Still, this is a strange situation. Tommy doesn’t seem like the guy that would lie and fabricate documents just to bring hate to Roblox. But, then again, he acted very unprofessionally on Twitter and the way he spoke to some members of the community was a bit foul. He shouldn’t have made such a massive deal of it on social media and kept it to himself, letting his lawyers do the work but it seems that he wanted to get additional fame from this and doesn’t really care about the sound.

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I definitly agree it’s part of a cultural movement although i’d disagree this is so much about it’s link to memes, it has certainly picked up traction and made people think back more on large corporations. Which is why I wasn’t suprised to hear roblox needed to respond to it publicly; due to the large public outcry as they’ve let the issue hang, however carelessly they ended up doing so.

Now I don’t believe Roblox used the sound knowlingly knowing they were breaking the law but now it has become more than transparent as to his ownership they should have dealt with it as quickly and fairly as posssibe. His sound, which they had no right to use, has brought roblox a lot of users and embedded them in the landscape and culture.

I’m a huge advecote for roblox and extremely lucky to be on this platform but these and similar public responses they have published within the last week posses somewhat a level of ignorance (such as their response to DevEx testimonys, luckily users on this platform are very forgiving and understanding).

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Agreed somewhat, he’s certainly not innocent in my opinion on the manner of which he’s being using this newfound fame but if you see my response above I don’t think roblox can say they are either. Just my thoughts.

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@Kord_K
I even proved that “copyright office” photo is just completely fake. There are underscores under the red cover up. The typo doesn’t make any sense either. He made a statement (I believe) saying that it was actually sent to the US copyright office (changing his original story). Why then would there be a bunch of ids Tommy produced being sent? That makes no sense. Why would you additionally put underscores there just to cover them up with red? This was clearly meant to be a “real document.” The only reason he had to cover it up was that he never actually submitted anything in the first place (further suggesting that he does not actually own the copyright)

The contract itself is most likely real/unedited based on what what I found, however there’s no proof of it being signed nor is it relevant. If anything it just says Roblox isn’t at fault, it was Shiny (aka Shiney) who licensed out the sound against contract (assuming it’s even valid or in use).

Finally, Roblox still has broken no laws. They didn’t “know” the sound was copyrighted (it may not even be copyrighted considering Tommy’s behavior!) despite what people are saying. Roblox does not need “proof they own the CD.” Tommy can’t even provide actual proof he owns the sound.

My opinion has changed very quickly with what I’ve found out about Tommy. He is outright lying about the situation, blocking people who disagree so they can’t call him out on his bs, and pretending like he’s not doing anything deceptive. I really think Tommy’s trying to stir up controversy in hopes that Roblox will compensate him somehow (e.g. through $$$). His “colleague” is credited in the sound file, however do we even have proof that Tommy is the true owner? Even if he did in fact make the sound, which I’m apt to believe to be fair, how do we know he owned the copyright?

It’s clear to me Tommy knows he’s in the wrong with at least some of what he’s doing. If he thought he’d get money by suing he would have done it by now. But he knows he just won’t.

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Actually even in the law, even if they didn’t know, it’s still breaking the law. Also according to the law, once you make something, it’s copyright protected. Even if it was on a CD that they got from someone who got the sound illegally, it’s still breaking the law. Also the contract states that the stuff him and his colleague made belongs to him (Tommy). Therefore the sound does belong to him. Honestly I’d say both are in the wrong. Even then it doesn’t excuse the fact that we have toxic people in this community sending him death threats. That’s just low.

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True but we have no proof that the contract is valid. I am not trustful of Tommy at this point so I am sort of doubting he truly own the copyright. In this situation it’s unclear to us who owns the copyright.

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There is no proof that people are actually doing this. It is possible that Tommy was lying just so that more people would take his side.

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