Dave000
This whole Sound cloud thing is really an issue... so a person could grab or record a song off SC and use it anyway they want? and there is no recourse?
Pretty much.
Let's say that Mary posts her original composition (words and music) to a song that tells you she has a little lamb. An ISIS operative accesses it on SoundCloud and uses her melody to create a recruiting anthem, "God tells us all to kill Jews and Westerners." Mary objects and takes him to US court, where "moral rights" are limited to visual arts, and the court is told that his use was licensed as a derivative work that he can "otherwise communicate to the public." ISIS has the better case.
Paul Simon thinks the song that he finds posted on SoundCloud is a hit and includes it on his next album offering her a payment of $.0000001 per copy. When Mary objects, his record company says they are already licensed to make an arrangement featuring PS for free anyway. She can sue him and his record company, and she might win on the basis that the contract with SoundCloud is unconscionable and does not provide equitable consideration to both parties, even though the contract language agrees with their position. Or she might not, since courts tend to favor written contract language on the assumption that both parties at least read it. SoundCloud is not in court at all since she licensed it to any users of the platform independently of her license to SoundCloud.
All SoundCloud really needs in order to do what most posters think it should do with their work is a license to stream the original in its unaltered form to individual users accessing the song from SoundCloud.com so long as the poster agrees that it should do so. Everything else in that ridiculously overbroad license is just to make sure they can sell your upload to someone else without requiring any significant commitments from their customers or paying you anything.
https://soundcloud.com/terms-of-use