74
votes
Accepted
Is it illegal to infringe copyright if your boss or your client ordered you to do it?
There are two parts to copyright liability: civil and criminal. TL;DR: both cases are criminal offences, and it is illegal to break the law even when you are paid to do it.
In the USA criminal ...
- 13k
65
votes
Accepted
If I add a copyright disclaimer to my app, am I exempt of charges?
Imagine if the answer was a simple yes: adding a disclaimer was enough to exempt you from any and all copyright and trademark law suits. If that was the case, there would be no point in copyright or ...
- 818
63
votes
Accepted
How Can NASA Images/Videos Not Be Copyrighted?
There is a special exception in 17 USC 105:
Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of
the United States Government, but the United States Government is not
...
- 210k
63
votes
Accepted
Can I use my own Stack Exchange answer in a book?
Yes, that’s allowed. Under the Stack Exchange terms of service, content you upload is licensed to Stack Exchange Inc. on a non-exclusive basis under CC-BY-SA 4.0. The terms of service do not give ...
- 23.6k
61
votes
Accepted
Can you host a version of Wikipedia on your own domain and charge for it?
It's allowed by the Creative Commons Attribution -ShareAlike license, and intentionally so. The Wikimedia Foundation wants things like this to be possible; that is part of the goal of open content. (...
- 13.9k
59
votes
Who owns copyright on works found in a storage unit/attic?
Note: this answer refers to US copyright law. Other jurisdictions may differ, though the Berne Convention means that the general rules are largely the same. See chx's answer for more details.
...
- 6,549
57
votes
Accepted
Is it illegal to backup your hard drive if you have copyrighted software on it?
You're allowed to make backups of copyrighted software, as long as you are authorized to use the software, the backups are not distributed, and they are destroyed when/if you are no longer authorized ...
- 2,025
57
votes
Are computer programs copyrightable work?
All computer programs are not just copyrightable, they are protected by copyright as soon as they are put into fixed form (for example, as soon as I type it on my computer which will save it as a file ...
- 32.9k
56
votes
Accepted
Why register a logo as trademark if copyright protects it?
Copyrights protect the mark as is, and derivatives of it, but does not protect the brand from look a likes or from new trademarks that would be confusing.
Consider the Pepsi logo:
I could easily ...
- 2,316
54
votes
How can saying a song's name be a copyright violation?
The name can not be copyrighted, but they don't own the rights to the songs and they are telling you they will perform them.
They don't want to put it in writing that they are performing songs they ...
- 3,964
54
votes
Accepted
Why does Disney omit the year in their copyright notices?
For works released after 1989, Copyright notices don't have any legal consequences in the United States. They are just a friendly reminder of who created the work and that they take their copyrights ...
- 7,336
53
votes
Accepted
Is it illegal to cut out a face from the newspaper?
Those posts are talking about making a modified copy of a copyrighted work. The key word is copy. You are not making a copy. Copyright is not about how a physical embodiment of a copyrighted work is ...
- 12.1k
52
votes
Can you host a version of Wikipedia on your own domain and charge for it?
"they end up ranking higher than Wikipedia itself on Google". That's a highly unlikely scenario, unless you could somehow convince all current users of Wikipedia that switching to a paid ...
- 4,865
50
votes
Other use of profile photos: legality fair-use and permissions
BAD idea
It is one thing to upload the phonebook and associated pictures for use of the owner of the phonebook.
It isn't a fair use of the phonebook pictures - and you might not have a license anyway, ...
- 33.8k
48
votes
Accepted
Do we have to take down the material for 14 days even if the DMCA notice is erroneous?
There is a slight confusion here: The large company sent the DMCA notice to your host, not to you. You are not taking down anything. The host does that.
If the DMCA takedown notice is following all ...
- 32.9k
48
votes
Accepted
Does copyright law protect a translation of an ancient work from being translated into a third language?
The English translation is a copyrighted work
While the original Greek is public domain, the English translation is a new literary work with its own copyright running for 70 years after the author(s) ...
- 198k
47
votes
Accepted
Is one free from legal responsibility if the intellectual property has passed the plagiarism check software?
None of the methods suggested protect Bob from a copyright or trademark infringement claim.
These methods may protect Bob from a claim that Bob is an intentional infringing party, as opposed to being ...
- 195k
44
votes
Bought a book that is in the public domain ... but the T&A of company says I can't redistribute it
The text may be public domain in the United States
It depends on when it was created/published.
The eBook is subject to its own copyright
The eBook itself is a derivative work and subject to its ...
- 198k
43
votes
Accepted
How much of this image do I need to modify in order to avoid copyright violation?
Copyright is for original pieces of work. What you have made, is essentially a derivative work. Copyright is automatic for all things, unless the author has explicitly waived their rights, normally ...
- 2,548
43
votes
Accepted
At what point is uploading a movie with heavy compression not copyright infringement?
A few years ago, there was a trial in the USA about some short sound on some music CD:
One party claimed that one piece of music on the CD contained a sound of less than one second length which is ...
- 832
42
votes
D&D Monsters and Copyright
No. The images are copyrighted, and you are using them in a way that would leave you with virtually no argument for fair use. The factors for fair use are set out in 17 USC 107, and they indicate that ...
- 57.2k
42
votes
Is a list of the most common English words copyrightable under US law?
Depending on your jurisdiction, such lists may be protected, but not by copyright.
For example, in Germany there was a court decision that scanning all the country’s phone books and selling them on ...
- 32.9k
41
votes
Accepted
Copyright a Land Feature?
Who knows. It doesn't matter.
17 USC 102 lists the kinds of things protectable by copyright under US law. These are:
(1) literary works;
(2) musical works, including any accompanying words;
(3) ...
- 113k
40
votes
Accepted
Can an open source licence be revoked if it violates employer's IP?
The Apache 2.0 license purports to be irrevocable, but it also presupposes that the supposed licensor has the right to grant permission to copy. In this case, that is untrue, so there never was a ...
- 210k
40
votes
Lawyer says bumping software’s minor version would cost $2k to “refile” copyright paperwork. Is this typical?
The cost of filing a copyright for an updated filing would generally be the same as the original one. The amount of work isn't much different and there are good reasons why every new version of ...
- 195k
40
votes
Who owns copyright of a photo taken by a camera after the timer is set to 10 seconds?
To the extent that the photograph is an expression of the operator's originality (e.g. framing, subject, angles, camera settings, etc.) it is the operator who has the best claim to copyright. Whether ...
- 43.9k
39
votes
Trademark violation for app?
Disclaimer: I'm from the US and don't claim to know German or Turkish law. So let me discuss some general principles here, but details may well be different in Germany and Turkey.
You're mixing ...
- 1,073
38
votes
Are computer programs copyrightable work?
Except for limited circumstances, all computer programs are protected by copyright (an exception would be a program created by the US government). Therefore, to overcome copyright protection, the ...
- 210k
38
votes
Can freelancers publish code in GitHub and claim it to be theirs?
Provided you are in one of the 170+ countries signatory to the Berne Convention (the current 10 non-signatories are, exhaustively: Eritrea, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, San Marino, Iran, Iraq, ...
- 3,329
38
votes
Accepted
Why is this contract worded like a client is talking to himself?
No, the clause is correct. The reason it is put in is to protect the designer from the client's mistakes (or lies) about whether the material the client wants to use is copyrighted.
To see how this ...
- 8,378
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible