If you create something by following a YouTube tutorial, who owns it?

Question

There are many videos on YouTube that teach you how to program. If you search "HTML/JavaScript/Python/[insert any programming language here] tutorial" you will find them. Some of these tutorials culminate in a "final project" with a fully functioning app that does something fun or useful. If someone followed these tutorials, who would own the end product? This is assuming no files were downloaded but lines of code were copied from the screen. What if the person didn't follow the video exactly (either intentionally or unintentionally)?

Even without a license, the learner would be free to use the project for personal use, right? Could the resulting code be made public, for example published on GitHub?

TL;DR if you followed a YouTube video where the author teaches you how to make a computer program, and you followed the steps (including copying certain lines verbatim) can you share the resulting program that you typed?

Answer 1

Copyright by its very nature protects works that involve some level of creative expression. For example, a recipe by itself is not copyrightable because it's a mere recital of steps to create a dish. However, creative expressions that involve a particular recipe is copyrightable.

Examples of creative expressions that involve a recipe:

1. Compiling recipes and presenting them into a cookbook. The layout, photographs, comments, font selection, color scheme, and any creative expressions within the cookbook are copyrightable elements.
2. Creating a youtube video of yourself creating the dish based on the recipe. This includes narratives, footage, music selection, and other creative expressions of the creator of the video.
3. Selling the food you make from the recipe, however, is not a copyrightable act. There is nothing stopping you from opening a restaurant using a recipe you follow from YouTube.

I'm going to present a scenario where following the tutorial might actually be infringing on a copyright: suppose you are following a tutorial made by a famous art forger by the name of Neal Caffrey, and you just created a perfect replica of a famous artist's painting that is known to be a registered, copyrighted art masterpiece.

If you use it to learn the artist's art style, and use it merely for your personal educational benefit, you still technically infringe the artist's copyright. However, you can raise the fair use defense and have a good chance of winning a copyright infringement suit.

On the other hand, if you use the tutorial to create de facto forgeries of the art piece, and sell it on the black market, not only are you committing copyright infringement, but you are also committing potential fraud by selling an imitation of someone else's work of art.

Extreme examples aside, just look at what are you planning to do with the tutorial code. Review the license carefully. Most professionally made tutorial code base have clear cut licensing terms, and as long as you're not literally copy pasting the code for commercial use, you should be fine.

Ethically and professionally speaking, it is always best to create your own implementation of a given code, applying what you learned from the other code. In my experience, writing your own code actually will not only make you a better programmer, but you might discover unintentional errors or limitations that you would not otherwise discovered had you not written the code yourself.

Answer 2

If the instruction relates to code that had never manifested in any tangible form and is not a derivative work of art of any other work of art, the first to create it would be the copyright owner. However, once it is video recorded, a work of art is created and depending on the complexity of the code explained and the level of abstraction used in the instructions, it may permit for protection for derivative works based on the instructions in the video.

However, recreating the code instructed may still be permitted for educational purposes as fair use where such exceptions apply.