Is it illegal to perform a song from sheet music that I transcribed? So I have been transcribing a copyrighted song (as a HOBBY) that I love and was thinking about using it as a graduation song for my music school, but I’ve had to make some tweaks because there are some instruments involved that my music school doesn’t have access to. Even if I give credit to the composer, and I will make no profit from the performance, will it still be illegal to use my transcription?
Even if I give credit to the composer, and I will make no profit from the performance, will it still be illegal to use my transcription? This definitely infringes the composer's performance and derivative work rights under the composer's copyright. There is a mandatory right to cover someone else's composition outside of a movie or TV show (roughly speaking) for a statutorily fixed royalty, but the bureaucracy is such that it would be impractical to do here. Whether or not the &quot;fair use&quot; defense applies in this case is a &quot;colorable&quot; argument, but really, when you perform the entire work as written except for transcription, winning a &quot;fair use&quot; defense in a infringement action would be a long shot. The fact that it is somehow connected to an educational activity would be the strongest argument in this case. Also, as noted in a comment, your school may have obtained express permission to cover the work: Your music school may have a license with a PRO (performing rights organization) that covers your song. You might make some inquiries with the administration as to whether this is the case. Radio stations obtain similar licenses to play a large catalog of music without individually obtaining licenses to use each work separately from the author. This said, this kind of activity is often done, despite the fact that it is a copyright infringement, and most of the time, if the performance isn't too widely broadcast, most copyright owners will never pursue copyright infringement claims over something like this and indeed often won't even consider doing so. Still, copyright is an absolute bar to infringing rights without permission, even if there is absolutely no money received for the work and even if there is full attribution of its author. I'm not a great fan of the law as it is, and it is often disregarded, but that is the law. Also, this answer is based upon U.S. law, but there isn't much international variation in this part of copyright law in countries that meaningfully enforce copyright laws in their courts. But, as another answer notes, in some countries the mandatory right to do a cover of songs in the U.S. is much easier bureaucratically, in some other countries: In several countries, there are organizations that deal with the copyright issue globally. That means you pay a certain (quite small) fee to be allowed to perform a piece of music publicly, and the organization deals with the individual right owners. That makes reusing works much simpler.
may require that you obtain license rights from third-party owners or licensors of content that you include in your text inputs (Emphasis mine). Based solely on the excerpt above, yes, you have the copyright on the audio files if you created the source material, as you are the creator, using Amazon Polly as/to generate a "tangible medium". One of the central rights granted by copyright is to control translation into a different medium (in this case, from text into audio), as is the right to control distribution, which is what this excerpt is talking about. "Third party" in this case means neither you nor Amazon. Basically, Amazon is informing you that using their software on someone else's copyrighted material does not grant you copyright on the audio recording.
Generally, it's illegal. You are creating a derivative work and you are not allowed to do that without the permission of the copyright holder. Some jurisdictions may have exceptions, such as fair use under US law. However, this generally protects uses that are intended to comment on or parody the work. It doesn't sound like that is the purpose of your image modification. NOT including: faceswaps, modifications that would shame or affect negatively the reputation of the actors on the image. That doesn't make it legal. I share it in a way that I don't make any economic profit out of it, and clearly stating that it is a modified image (not sure if inside the image, or in the caption under it) and state who is the legal owner of the original image. That doesn't make it legal, either.
If I draw something, having been inspired by looking at some other thing, you are not copying that thing. If you carefully copy something even if you are also deliberately changing features of the original, then you are copying. Copyright law gives the copyright holder the exclusive right to make copies. There is a difference between copying music and visual art in this respect, since music can be reduced to a small set of specific symbols, so "being inspired by" a musical work is often found to be infringement. The difficult part is legally distinguishing "making a copy" versus "being inspired by". The courts use a subjective test of "substantial similarity" to decide if there has been copying. the case of Mannion v. Coors. "Pose" is an element that is considered in assessing similarity: the question the court would ask (itself) is whether such a pose could ever have come from elsewhere (such as, your own creative efforts).
As the question says the "Fugue in A Major" by Shostakovich is not in the public domain. The work was published in 1950, and so would not be PD under US law, and Shostakovich died in 1975, and so his works would not be PD in countries using a life+50, life+70, or longer term. Therefore, simply "making some changes" would be the creation of a derivative work and would be copyright infringement in and of itself, even if that work was not published or distributed. If a relatively short segment of the fuge was used, it might be considered a "fair use" under US copyright law, or perhaps a "fair dealing " in the laws of those countries that recognize this exception to copyright. But that is a very fact-intensive determination; it depends on the amount used, the manner and purpose for which it is used, and the harm, if any, to the market for the original work. One can never be absolutely sure that a use is a fair use until a court rules that it is. A two minute excerpt is fairly substantial, and might well not be held to be a fair use. Of course, you could seek permission from the Shostakovich estate (or whoever owns the copyright on the fugue). They might or might not grant it, and might or might not demand a fee. (As another answers mentions, there may be some question if the works of Shostakovich are protected by copyright under US law.)
Legal unless you violate copyright. Screenshots will probably be fair use. The manuals/how-tos need to be your originals, not copies from anywhere.
I'm not a lawyer; I'm not your lawyer. I would interpret the Copyright Board's interpretation in relation to tariffs when musical works copied for private use only, as the document's scope does not appear to extend beyond that. However, in BMG Canada Inc. v. John Doe, [2004] 3 FCR 241, a consortium of record industry corporations attempted to request confidential ISP account holder information. Essentially, the plaintiffs failed to bring adequate evidence to prove the magnitude of copyright infringement; additionally, it is specifically stated at [24-5] that: Subsection 80(1) [as am. by S.C. 1997, c. 24, s.50] of the Copyright Act provides as follows: 80. (1) Subject to subsection (2), the act of reproducing all or any substantial part of (a) a musical work embodied in a sound recording, ... onto an audio recording medium for the private use of the person who makes the copy does not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the musical work, the performer's performance, or the sound recording. Although the Copyright Modernization Act, did, in fact, introduce a number of amendments, Subsection 80 still reads as it does when the BMG case was decided. Since this case, I can find no court that has found this ruling to be invalid, and no cases which have considered and not applied this subsection. There is also Subsection 29.22 (1) (which applies to all works): 29.22 (1) It is not an infringement of copyright for an individual to reproduce a work or other subject-matter or any substantial part of a work or other subject-matter if (a) the copy of the work or other subject-matter from which the reproduction is made is not an infringing copy; (b) the individual legally obtained the copy of the work or other subject-matter from which the reproduction is made, other than by borrowing it or renting it, and owns or is authorized to use the medium or device on which it is reproduced; (c) the individual, in order to make the reproduction, did not circumvent, as defined in section 41, a technological protection measure, as defined in that section, or cause one to be circumvented; (d) the individual does not give the reproduction away; and (e) the reproduction is used only for the individual’s private purposes. Subsection 80(1) creates a special exemption purely for musical works, and so the less restrictive conditions there should be found to apply to them instead. On the basis of the case above, and my consideration of the Copyright Act, I would find that reproduction of a musical work does not constitute copyright infringement, pursuant and subject to s 80(1) of the Act.
17 U.S. Code § 107, which governs fair use in the US, says (emphasis mine): Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include— (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors. Note that commercial/educational use is part of only one factor. Even if that factor is in your favor, it may not be fair use, and even if it isn't in your favor, it might be fair use. Because fair use is determined on a case-by-case basis, we can't really say whether your use is fair use, with or without the donations. That would be the sort of thing you'd ask a lawyer about to get real legal advice on your particular case.