Questions tagged [fair-use]
An exception to the limitations that can be imposed by a copyright owner. A similar concept in the U.K. and other commonwealth jurisdictions is called "fair dealing."
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Can "Dumb Starbucks" be legally considered Fair Use as satire or parody?
About a year ago, a new, familiar-looking coffee shop opened in LA. Their reasoning for this was, basically, that it's making fun of the popular coffeehouse chain and is thus fair use:
Naturally, it ...
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Is it legal to download and run pirated abandonware because I'm curious about the software?
Is downloading Windows 95 and running it just because I'm curious about it legal?
Purpose and character of the use: it's noncommercial, and I am doing it to learn about the software, but I'm not sure ...
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Is it illegal for a firm to train an AI model on a CC BY-SA 4.0 corpus and make a commercial use of it without distributing the model under CC BY-SA?
https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/388551/178179 mentions that SE will force some firms to pay to be allowed to train an AI model on the SE data dump (CC BY-SA licensed) and make a commercial use of it ...
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Is WINE illegal?
Is WINE (WINE Is Not an Emulator) illegal?
Given that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has held in Oracle v. Google that APIs are copyrightable, is WINE (which reproduces the Windows ...
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Can a wiki for a video game be created without authorization from the game creator?
Consider someone wants to create a wiki (user-editable community site) for Heroes of the Storm. The creator of a wiki site is not necessarily the author of any substantive content on the site, but ...
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In the US, when is fair use a defense to copyright infringement?
What is fair use in the US? When would it be a successful defense to copyright infringement?
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D&D Monsters and Copyright
We are making a college board game, and would like to know if we can use a few monsters from dnd to make our game. We don't use the same name as you do, just the images from online and the books.
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Fair Use and DMCA [closed]
My project (EditVideoBot) is an automated 'Twitter bot' program that allows users to edit videos within Twitter (they can add music to the video, or their own text, etc). My first account I ran this ...
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Fair Use of Photos as a Derivative Work
This question comes specifically from a particular example. Within Ethics for the Information Age (Quinn), 5th Edition, there is a chapter on Intellectual Property, and while most of it is well-...
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Fair use of text snippets in a dictionary
If a dictionary (about the use of scientific terminology) includes snippets from several sources, would an authorization be needed from each copyright holder?
Each entry in the dictionary would ...
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Is there a fair use exception for trademarks?
The copyright law has the famous fair-use exception, where you can legally use some parts of copyrighted works without having to pay any royalties to, or ask any permission from, the copyright holder.
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Do search engines need permission to start searching?
I was talking to my friends a few days ago about search engines and we started discussing whether or not they need permission from websites to crawl them. I looked this one up and it said on Quora ...
user17346
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Can humming a bar of music be considered copyright infringement?
I recently saw a tweet claiming a video got a DMCA claim based on humming a part of a song.
Can uploading a (monetized) video of humming a bar or two of copyrighted music be considered as copyright ...
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Is this copyright infringement? Is it fair use? What if I don't make any money off it?
If someone were hypothetically working on a project that required them to incorporate copies of a copyrighted work (music, movies, books, etc.), how would they know if it would be considered fair use? ...
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Can I release someone else's work under creative commons or some other license, if its fair use?
Okay, let's say a website has some content. You can take a small amount, what would usually constitute fair use, and incorporate into a larger work. You know put this under a creative commons license ...
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Is it legal include an image from Wikipedia into a lead-generating e-book?
I'm writing an e-book, which is supposed to generate leads in the following way:
People visit my landing page.
There, they see a text like "Enter your e-mail address and get this e-book for free".
...
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What is the equivalent to "fair use" in Europe?
I'm preparing to publish an open source library.
In order to research local law, I wanted to know if there is an equivalent term for the USA "fair use" in European law?
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Who owns copyright of video gameplay captures?
There are many videos on Youtube and it doesn't seem they are being removed, so one might conclude that they do not infringe copyright of the game publisher. But it could also be that for copyright ...
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Can I sell my notes on a book without copyright infringment?
I read a machine learning book. I invested a lot of time to make extensive and clear notes. Some concepts required a lot of research to understand. I have explained some concepts in my own way. ...
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Is the source important for fair use?
So let's say I am a game developer, and somehow the game I was working on was leaked on the internet.
Since nobody can legally obtain a copy of my game, can all the review of the leaked material be ...
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Is it "fair use" to summarize a movie?
Could I take about, say, 15 minutes of clips from a movie to use as a visual (and perhaps using some audio) along with my originally written and voiced movie summary? Would the resulting work be ...
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Can a song be used in a presentation for work?
Does it fall under that Fair Use Act of 1976 to include a song as the intro to a presentation for work if the presentation is being given for educational/teaching purposes?
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Can I share a copy of Adobe Standalone Flash Player?
As you all know by now, Flash is dead. However, people still want to play flash games. People used to be able to download the standalone adobe flash player to keep playing games flash games, but ...
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Can I use modified version of Apple, Android, Windows, and Blackberry logos in commercial advertising to show compatibility?
I am making and commercially reproducing a script that would show textual advertisements based on a user's device.
I want to, beside the text, have an icon showing the device in order to show ...
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Is it legal to republish lyrics?
Can a lyrics web site be legal, assuming there are no special agreements with the artists?
Is publishing song lyrics considered "fair use?"
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Is taking screenshots and printing pages out considered fair use, in most cases?
Making a copy of anything could be considered copyright infringement, but what if it is for personal use rather than for distribution? Suppose I print out or take a screenshot of a webpage or a ...
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Could I infringe a copyright if I use content available for free online?
I made a video and uploaded it to YouTube. I created the video, but I attached an audio track I found online for free.
How do I know if I am allowed to use this audio in this way?
If I pay for ...
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Why does Japanese entertainment make such backhanded references to brands (e.g. WcDonalds instead of McDonalds)?
There's tons of examples. To name a few:
MgRonald's and Sentucky Fried Chicken (instead of McDonald's and KFC) in Hataraku Maou-sama
Attack Family (instead of Smash Brothers) in Jaku Kyara Tomozaki-...
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Is "cheating" in offline, single-player games illegal?
I understand there are laws like the Circumvention of Technological Measure (CTM), Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). According to these laws it's considered ...
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Is it illegal in the EU / in Germany to download a scientific e-book?
Suppose there's a scientific monograph I really want to read but don't want to buy. I find an e-book on some website (where it is accessible to the public without restrictions) and download it. I don'...
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Is using font on a business card considered commercial use?
I'm currently designing a business card for a client and looking for an applicable font. A lot of these fonts are marked with some sort of payment required for commercial use. While I don't plan to ...
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Would I be violating copyright by transcribing music that was written over 100 years ago, but published in 1992?
A particular set of piano rolls were recorded before 1913, but to my knowledge were not published until 1989. The recordings are piano transcriptions of symphonic works, performed by their composer/...
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Would reproducing a game for a school class fall within fair use?
For a game development/software engineering course that I am designing (in the public schools), I would like the final course activity to involve creating a game as a whole class over a long period. ...
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Is it fair use to discuss a fictional work on a webpage?
On my for-profit website, users can rate and comment on works of literature, film, and music, most of which are copyrighted. The only information I include is:
1.) Title
2.) Release date
3.) MPAA ...
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Personal copying of source code from a programming book
Many books on computer programming publish source code listings and example programs as part of the printed book to demonstrate some aspect of the language. When I'm learning from such books, I ...
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May I write a novel based on another novel?
Like if I want to write a book series about Harry Potter character Rita Skeeter's life, may I do it? I always hear that this isn't allowed. But as far as I know some people have written a book about ...
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What is the practical difference between "fair use" and "fair dealing" in Copyright law?
In the united-states, fair-use is a defence to copyright infringement.
In other jurisdictions, particularly members or ex-members of the British Commonwealth such as united-kingdom and australia ...
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Is it legal to duplicate illegally distributed materials, if being used for fair use purposes?
Suppose I wish to use copyrighted printed materials under fair use, and let's assume for the sake of argument that it is completely obvious that my usage correctly falls under fair use guidelines.
As ...
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Can I use copyrighted media for strictly personal use?
I know copyright / author's rights definition. I read bunch of texts about them and I am also aware that, for example, there are a kind of tolerance on YouTube about uses of copyrighted media (ex: ...
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Is it legal to sell a 3d scan of a car in the USA?
Suppose someone were to provide high quality 3D scans of vehicles for the off-road industry. Would it be legal to sell these scans via an online marketplace? They would be either component, chassis, ...
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Is it allowed to sell 3D models of existing brands?
Case: I make 3D models for architecture. Now I made a bundle of IKEA furniture to use in my interior scenes. I do this for clients to give them a visual representation of what a room can be.
Because ...
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Trading Card Database - Copyright Infringement or Fair Use?
I would like to create a text-only database for collectible trading card games. The database would contain card names, ability text, flavor text, etc. Images would not be included. This project would ...
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Is it legal for a company to require an extra software license for a backup?
I work for a company that has purchased a software license for software that is needed to make our company run smoothly. We'd like to create a backup of the server in case of hardware failure, however ...
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Is it legal to use Youtube thumbnails on another website?
Let's say I have a website where each page has an embedded Youtube video, and there are also a list of this web pages, can this list display those video thumbnails as the image of the link to the page ...
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Does musical satire really require permission from the copyright holder?
I was reading this article on American art-rock/new-wave band Devo in The New Yorker and came across this claim that puzzles me:
It’s a little unclear why Warner, once they learned that Devo wanted ...
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Can you reuse the text of a contract you've signed with one party with another party?
Relations between individuals and business entities are governed by law; what's not specified in the law, can be specified by a mutually-executed contract. Generally, one party provides the actual ...
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Could a webpage about a fictional character, that reveals no detail about said character, be considered fair use?
It is my understanding that since fictional characters generally belong to copyrighted works, revealing details about a fictional character on a for-profit website falls outside of fair use and makes ...
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copyright question (constructs and presentations)
I got a threatening email from someone today alleging copyright infringement on a website that I built as a personal project back in 2013 to crowdsource the latest trail data from the long-distance ...
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Is taking notes copyright infringement?
If I'm taking notes on a book I'm studying would I technically be infringing copyright if I didn't properly cite the source on the piece of paper the notes are on? I got curious because I was watching ...
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Is it legal to post GIFs/videos of NFL plays online?
On some blogs I see GIFs or videos of certain plays from NFL games. Is it legal to create these and post them online? You always hear the disclaimer on TV about using the footage, but I see this stuff ...
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