How would copyright infringement apply in this case? After seeing that a lot of manga reader websites are making advertisement money out of other people's copyrighted works, I was wondering how would it be to make a similar site, but where the advertisement income would be sent back to its appropriate owner. The transactions would be stated in a transparent way to show that I am not the one making money off those works. Since I would not be able to get the permission to publish their work, it would be clearly a purposeful copyright infringement. However, if people were to ask for a take down since they are being published elsewhere, I would willingly take them down and leave a link to their site. Now, I have two questions: Would they ask for a take down for any other reason, when various other manga reader websites are making money off them? Considering that myself is not going to be making any money off their work, does this still fall into the category of criminal act? If so, are there more than take down notices that can happen? (C&amp;D? financial punishment? imprisoning?)
Would they ask for a take down for any other reason, when various other manga reader websites are making money off them? Merely looking at the fact that the other sites have not been taken down is not a good metric to decide if you will face an infringement suit for your own site. Consider the following possibilities: The manga on those sites may be published by a different publisher than the manga you want to host, and that publisher of your desired manga is more litigious. The manga publisher may not have been actively pursuing infringement for the last several years, but they may suddenly decide this fiscal year it's a financially good idea to start aggressively pursuing infringement. They will go after the other sites and your site at the same time. Because you plan to give them money, you are actively drawing attention to your infringing site. While they may not find it worth their while to seek out whatever new infringing sites pop up every week, in this case, they don't have to come looking for you. You show up to them, actively telling them that you're infringing their copyright. Of course, they might not care. They might love your idea. Regardless, the legally sound way to do this is to ask for permission before you do it, rather than forgiveness afterward. If you don't, you are certainly vulnerable to a lawsuit (whether or not the publisher will pursue the opportunity to sue you is a question left to the discretion of the publisher). Considering that myself is not going to be making any money off their work, does this still fall into the category of criminal act? If so, are there more than take down notices that can happen? (C&amp;D? financial punishment? imprisoning?) Having your infringing site taken down is the minimum that could happen. If you commit copyright infringement, the copyright holder is fully entitled to file a lawsuit against you at once. It's possible that they could just file a DMCA takedown notice to your ISP to have the content taken down, but they are entitled to sue you for damages as well. Maybe they won't sue you because it's not worth their while. If not: lucky you! So, ask yourself: do you feel lucky? Copyright infringement is typically a civil offense and only punished with fines. It can only qualify as a criminal offense under 17 U.S.C. §506 when the infringement is &quot;willful&quot; and meets one of the following criteria: (A) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain; (B) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000; or (C) by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if such person knew or should have known that the work was intended for commercial distribution. As long as you don't violate any of those conditions, your infringement is not criminal. Condition B seems most likely, if I am reading it correctly: if your site serves a $10 book one hundred times, then you've met the $1000 threshold. The threshold of what makes an infringement &quot;willful&quot; versus &quot;ordinary&quot; is somewhat nebulous; see Wikipedia's article on Criminal Copyright Law in the United States.
The reason is 17 USC 106: the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following... (2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work The original picture is the underlying protected work. The ASCII reproduction is a derivative work. If you get permission to make the derivative work, it is okay. Otherwise, it is copyright infringement. There is an escape clause, "fair use", which amounts to taking a chance that you won't be sued and then arguing that you didn't do them any prohibited harm. If you make any money off of the game, you have a major strike against you. I suggest reading the fair use FAQ; basically, it is really hard to know how a fair use defense will fare, but based on prior cases, I'd say it's infringement, not fair use.
It's questionable, because if you design your own visual interpretation of the T-Shirt then it isn't necessarily the one from the book and thus your art has it's own copyright. However, if the current Copyright Holder and Possible Trademark owner is selling the shirt it could be an issue because yours is not official but being sold as one. If you're making it for non-sale and just cosplay, than you have a better arguement.
20th Century Fox have a trademark on "Simpsons." They have trademarks on "Bart Simpson", on "D'oh", on "Duff Beer". I would assume that they take their trademarks seriously. What you can't do is to use someone else's trademark to make people believe your commercial product is related to theirs. It's quite reasonable to assume that someone seeing your book in a store would think it is written by the makers of The Simpsons show and therefore buy it. Even if you say that isn't your intention, it is what would happen. I'd try coming up with some different titles, maybe "How to write animated TV shows" with "Example: The Simpsons" (well, you are the writer so you should come up with something better), and take them to a lawyer. And then contact the makers of the show (again asking the lawyer for advice how to do this) because even if your lawyer says the title is fine, that doesn't mean you can't be sued.
I've found Google's filtering based on licence to not be very reliable, at least not reliable enough to trust from a practical legal perspective. Using a photo that you don't own the copyright to is a risk. You may be infringing copyright by doing so. The owner may eventually ask you to stop, or they may sue you for damages. Further, some copyright infringement is criminal 17 USC 506. In my opinion, it would be unwise to use a work commercially that you don't affirmatively know you have permission to use.
Is it ok to copy the game concept and even with mostly similar content like "fighting", "building houses" etc ? Yes, but ... I should also mention that pretty much my whole User Interface is based on the User Interface from "Parallel Kingdoms" Is copyright violation. Ideas are not protected by IP law. The tangible representation of those ideas (art, words, layout, format etc.) is protected.
The answer depends in part what venue you're talking about, e.g. Reddit, Facebook etc. The details are revealed somewhere in the Terms of Service for that venue. The general pattern is that you are allowed to use that venue, provides you grant permission for the service to do what they do with your content. You cannot legally send them a take-down notice for your stuff, because a take-down notice requires you to say that the stuff was posted without your permission (and that is false – and you can be punished for making that statement). There could be a venue where they do not hold you to an irrevocable license, in which case you could revoke that permission (but not Reddit: you granted them a "royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, unrestricted, worldwide license to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies, perform, or publicly display your user content in any medium and for any purpose, including commercial purposes, and to authorize others to do so"). I've seen a site that actually asserts ownership of user-contributed content (I don't know if their TOS ended up being litigated) – if is not at all hard to write a TOS that includes transfer of copyright, rather than granting of a license. The only hard parts are (1) figuring out what you want in terms of permission to use and (2) whether your answer to (1) means nobody will use your service. SE and Reddit TOS probably are as close as you need to get for what you describe.
I would argue that no, there is no copyright for the restored work. Independent copyright is only possible for any original material added, as previously discussed on this site. In this case, the added work was a technical process rather than a creative process, and technical processes cannot be protected by copyright. Copyright licenses would therefore be ineffective. However, I believe one could still impose a license based on owning the copy as opposed to the copyright (contract might be a better term in this case). However, if a third party managed to obtain a copy through some other avenue, any such contract would not be binding on them and nothing could be enforced against them unlike with copyright laws. Another way a license might be imposed is through patent protections, as technical processes can be protected via patents. However, I'm not as familiar with patent law, and this doesn't appear to be the claim being made.