What is the difference between &quot;used by permission&quot; and &quot;used with permission&quot;? Here's a screenshot of credits after a TV broadcast of a Japanese version of a Broadway musical called &quot;A Night with Janis Joplin&quot;. The whole credits were divided into two distinct sections: one in Japanese related to the TV broadcast by WOWOW, the second in English, clearly relating to the live staging by the Broadway Asia, so I strongly believe the problem in my question pertains to the U.S./international law rather than being Japanese-specific (or a simple translation issue). The English subsection MUSIC CREDITS lists all the songs used in the musical with their due credits. After each song, there is a phrase &quot;used by permission&quot; or &quot;used with permission&quot; and sometimes the two are combined (!). Here's a sample screenshot for four songs (one staged as a medley): What is the legal difference between the phrases &quot;used by permission&quot; and &quot;used with permission&quot;?
To the best of my understanding: US copyright law does not have anything in particular to say about credits of this nature, for the most part. The law doesn't even say that you have to credit people at all. It just says you have to get a license (i.e. &quot;permission&quot;) to use the item in question. Even that is only required when the work is not a &quot;work made for hire&quot; (i.e. any work by an employee of the production company, within the scope of their job). There are some weird situations where the law does require a credit (e.g. a compulsory license acquired under 17 USC 115 requires the licensee to preserve metadata identifying the original song and artist), but this is the exception rather than the rule. The exact wording and ordering of film credits (and TV/other credits) is typically the product of extensive negotiations between all of the people credited, the production company, and (in most cases) their respective unions. It is thus subject to contract law rather than copyright law. Copyright licenses usually mandate some sort of credit be given, except for certain specialized types of work such as ghostwriting (where the whole point is that you don't get credited). Some licenses are more flexible on this point than others. For example, Creative Commons licenses set out a specific list of things that must be included, and mandate that it must appear alongside other credits if there are any, but other than that, you can basically word and display the credit in any way that is &quot;reasonable.&quot; However, one-off private licenses will likely be much more specific and restrictive about how the credit is displayed. Speculating: It may be the case that different attorneys drafted different licensing agreements with different credit phrasings wholly by accident, or for no particular reason, simply due to a lack of direct coordination. In other words, nobody was actively trying to make sure all the credits matched, so they didn't.
There is no legal difference, really. There may well be a practical difference. It is much easier to steal a wheelbarrow than it is a 20-foot section of 2-foot wide iron conduit. But doing either is theft, and the legalities are pretty much the same. It is indeed easier to copy a song lyric, or a poem, then the text of a novel, say. But if done without permission, either would be copyright infringement, unless of course an exception to copyright, such as fair use (in the US) or fair dealing (in the UK and some other countries) applies. (Or unless the text is out of copyright. One may lawfully copy Shakespeare, for example. Or Mark Twain.)
In united-states copyright law, anything that is of one of the broad general categories that can be protected by copyright is said to be a &quot;work&quot; whether or not it has been &quot;fixed in a tangible form&quot;. If a person sings a song, never having written it down or recorded it, the song is a &quot;work&quot; but has not been fixed, and is therefore not protected by copyright. The same would apply to a speech or a poem that has been recited but never written down or recorded, or a dance performed but never notated or recorded. They are all works, but none have (yet) been fixed, and so there is no copyright protection. All this will also be true in any country that adheres to the Berne Copyright convention, although the word &quot;work&quot; might be translated into another language. If someone later writes the work down, or records it, then it will have been &quot;fixed&quot;, and copyright protection will be available provided the other conditions are met. Whether a work is original is a separate issue from whether a work has been fixed. If person A makes up a song and sings it without recording it, it is original but not fixed. If person B hears it and writes it down, it is now fixed, but not original to B. A will then have the copyright. In copyright law &quot;originality&quot; usually means that a work is the separate creation of a person, not copied from the work of some other person. Note that a work may quote or imitate previous works, or use portions of them in some way, and still be sufficiently original for copyright protection. However the term &quot;original&quot; is sometimes used to mean &quot;creative&quot;. A mere list of numbers in numerical order is not creative, and will not be protected by copyright (in the US and countries with similar laws). A list of all the names of people in a given town or area, in alphabetical order, is not creative enough to be protected by copyright (see Feist vs Rural). Courts and other writers on copyright sometimes express this by saying the work is not &quot;original&quot;. Similarly, a simple geometric design, such as a white square on a black background, is not creative enough for protection, and again this is sometimes expressed by saying that it is not original. A work must be both original and creative to be protected by copyright, although it need not be very creative nor totally original. The rules on originality and creativity vary by country. I am here following US law, but the law of quite a few other countries is similar on these points. The term to look for what is counted as original and protectable is often referred to as threshold of originality. This is what I have referred to as &quot;creativity&quot; above. This is related to the question and answer at Is a work copyrighted on fixation or publication? What&#39;s the difference? How is it proved? recently posted.
Software qua property is protected by copyright *perhaps patent, in some jurisdiction). The general rule is that whoever creates the thing (book, song, software) has the exclusive right to the thing. If an employee of Company 1 writes software for Company 2, that employee might (rarely) hold the copyright, but typically that scenario would involve a "work for hire", where the employee is hired by Company 1 to do such tasks as part of his duties with Company 1 (which might then be given to Company 2). This would then be a work for hire, and the copyright is held by Company 1. If the actual author was an independent contractor, he would hold the copyright – see Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Reed for analysis of the subtle nuances in making that determination. The concept "work for hire" which crucially involves the "employee" relationship would not be applicable to Company 2 paying Company 1 for a product, and as long as the actual author is an employee of C1, C1 has not created a "work for hire" in the legal sense. Without some explicit disposition of copyright, Company 2 is in a sketchy position. Since C1 holds copyright, they must grant a license to C2 so that C2 can legally use it; or, C1 must transfer copyright to C2. This does not happen automatically, and (if C1 does not want to remedy the situation after the fact) C2 would need to take C1 to court to force a resolution to the situation. At that point, the issue would be what C1 implicitly promised, even though they didn't put it in writing. It is likely that the initial exchange was along the lines "Can you make us a program that will do X?", and the answer was "Sure, that will cost Y", and then "Okay, go ahead, looking forward to the product". The courts would not simply say "Well, you didn't explicitly require a license, so you don't get to actually use the software that you paid for". However, it's a somewhat open question whether the court would order a license (of what nature?) or a transfer of copyright. The disposition would depend heavily on the facts of the case (what was said, what C1 actually did, what kind of business they are, what did creating the work involve...).
The length of a literary work doesn't determine if its use is fair use. Copyright does not cover names, titles of works, catchwords/catchphrases/advertising slogans etc. or lists of ingredients (like in a recipe or chemical instructions), however, the procedure can be copyright. The work must also be original. If the tweet copies something that already exists then there is no copyright in the tweet - if the thing that is copied has copyright protection then the tweet itself may be a violation. That said, assuming that the Tweet enjoys copyright protection, the owner will be the author: presumably the owner of the Twitter account. For anyone else to legally use it, the use must be either: Licensed by the copyright owner Fair use (USA) or Fair Dealing (most everywhere else in the English speaking world) For Item 1, the Twitter terms of service say: You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed). In case you don't know what that means, Twitter gives you this plain English summary: Tip: This license is you authorizing us to make your Tweets on the Twitter Services available to the rest of the world and to let others do the same. So, you can get permission from the copyright holder or from Twitter. Well, Twitter has given permission: Except as permitted through the Twitter Services, these Terms, or the terms provided on dev.twitter.com, you have to use the Twitter API if you want to reproduce, modify, create derivative works, distribute, sell, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, or otherwise use the Twitter Services or Content on the Twitter Services. Providing you use their API, you can "reproduce, modify, create derivative works, distribute, sell, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, or otherwise use the ... Content ..." Therefore, fair use/dealing considerations are irrelevant.
Has this contract been translated (badly) from another language because the construction of the clause is cumbersome and confusing? Does the contract say that I can have guests over 1 night without charge? Without charge, yes. However "Without Landlord's prior written consent, Tenant has no excuse to accommodate ..." so you need the landlord's permission for overnight guests. If so does it only start charging on nights after the first? No, if a person stays more than 1 night (with the landlords permission) then this triggers the landlord's right to charge. See below for how much they can charge. Is it supposed to be 10% of monthly rent $137 per guest per night? "With temporary commendation, day-based, and additional 10% of rent each person is applied." The term is ambiguous, I can see three ways that this would be interpreted: If you have a guest who stays more than 1 night in a month they can charge 10% for that guest for that month (i.e. 2 to 31 days all for the same price). For 2 people for 2 days this would be $1,400 x 10% x 2 = $280. They can charge 10% of the monthly rent per night that the guest stays. $1,400 x 10% x 2 x 2 = $560 As, 1 except the rent would be pro-rata. $1,400 x 10% x 2 x 2/31 = $18.06 Assuming that the landlord put forward this contract the interpretation adopted in the absence of other evidence would be the one least advantageous to the landlord i.e. 3. However, there is other evidence - the landlord accepts that the rate is pro-rata - he has just failed to account for the 10%, so 3. again. How is overnight defined? Well, is it defined in the contract or by the law where you are? If not, it would take its normal English usage - "for the duration of the night". If they arrive before sunset and leave after sunrise the next day then they have stayed overnight. What if they came over at 9am and slept in the day? It says nothing about requiring your guests to sleep. If they party overnight then they are overnight guests. If they sleep all day but don't stay overnight they are not overnight guests. What about 2 am? If sunrise is after 2am then this is not overnight.
A statement by a fictional character is part of the fiction, and so is normally protected by copyright. A short exclamation such as &quot;You are not prepared!&quot; might be ruled to be too short and not sufficiently original to be protected if it were used separately, but that would apply just as much to a short statement that was not a quote from a character. But something like one of Gandalf's speeches on &quot;mercy and pity&quot; to Frodo in Chapter 2 (&quot;The Shadow of the past&quot;) in book 1 of The Lord of the Rings would clearly be protected. The longer and the more distinctive such a text is, the more clearly it would be protected. Whether it is put in the mouth of a character or is part of the narration makes no significant difference. Note, in a copyright sense a statement does not &quot;belong to a particular universe&quot;, rather it belongs to a copyright owner, often the author, or in the case of a video game quite likely thy publisher. As this comment by Kevin mentions, and as I should have mentioned, reproducing a short quotation from a work of fiction, particularly if properly attributed, is quite likely to be fair use. See Is this copyright infringement? Is it fair use? What if I don&#39;t make any money off it? for more specific details. See also the threads tagged fair use If a quote is used for a different purpose than the original, in what is called a &quot;transformative&quot; manner in copyright cases, then it is more likely to be held to be fair use. The smaller of a percentage of the source item the quote is, the more likely it is that it will be considered to be a fair use. The less the use of a quote serves as a replacement for the source, or harms the market for the source, the more likely it is to be considered a fair use. See the links above for more detail.
Most countries have compulsory or statutory licences for exactly these situations. You enter a licence agreement with a collecting society, pay them licencing fees, and give them a record of the music you perform. They in turn then distribute royalties to the rights holders. The exact details of which licence you'll need depends on your country, the types of events you will perform at, the frequency of the events, the size of the audience etc. It may be the venue's responsibility to obtain the licence instead of the performer, or both the venue and the performer may need to. I don't have any experience of this, and if I did my experience would be useless to yours in the UK ;). But luckily the UK has an easy to find website which tells you just where you need to go. You will need to get a licence from an organisation called PRS for Music.