Is it legal to read or distribute the DeCSS Haiku? TL;DR: Is it legal to download and read the DeCSS Haiku in the US? Is it legal to share it? I now ask about The DeCSS haiku A poem written As an exercise Of the First Amendment right To speak of one's views. This particular view was that the DVD CCA cannot Use their copyright Or, perhaps, trade secret right, To stop a coder From decrypting His legally acquired, Yet encrypted, discs, And telling others What he found would decode The encrypted discs. To show computer code is speech, Protected under the law, He wrote a poem. Four hundred sixty, Oh, and five more, stanzas Of geeky haiku. From these many stanzas, Another coder, who knows C, can write their own Program to decode Encrypted video discs, And thus, he proved that Code is, in fact, speech. Or so it was thought by some; Others may argue, Particularly the DVD CCA, that He did not succeed; Even if code is speech, This code is unprotected, And thus illegal. Who is right, O Muse? (Or rather, SE users), Please do inform me, May I read this poem Legally in USA? Or does it infringe Other rights, which are Held above free speech in court? May I read those words, And also share them, Written to protest against IP tyranny?
The “decss haiku” consists, in primary part, of a long string of numbers, split up into lines by syllables. It was a clever joke, but anyone who feels that encryption keys are stripped of any legal protection by making them into “poetry” fundamentally misunderstands the difference between telling a computer to do something and telling a judge to do something. In any case, however, the finding that the encryption key was covered by trade secret protections was reversed on appeal.
There is also the part that says &quot;except as expressly permitted by law&quot;. In the USA, you are allowed to run the software. This means the operating system making the copy that transfers the software from your hard drive to the RAM of the computer, and all necessary changes there. And this includes modifications to relocate the software, or to protect it against certain attacks by hackers, and I'm confident that Apple checked that it includes translating x86 machine code to ARM machine code and store the translated copy together with the original. Similar things have been done already around 2000 or so, and no software manufacturer has ever complained.
Recall the basic principle of copyright law, as detailed in 17 USC 106: The copyright holder has the exclusive right to make copies; prepare derivative works; or distribute copies by sale, rental, lease, or lending. Other people can legally do these things only if they are given permission by the copyright holder, typically via a license. (Remember, the literal meaning of the word license is permission.) Often, the copyright holder will require a prospective licensee to accept various terms and conditions before the license will be granted. If there is &quot;no EULA&quot;, or if there is one but the purchaser has not agreed to its terms, then the purchaser has not been granted any such license, hence does not have permission to do any of the things listed above. If they do so anyway, it is illegal copyright infringement and they will be liable for damages. To use a firewall analogy, copyright law is &quot;default deny&quot;. So let's take your questions one by one: Do they own the software? US law has no concept of literally owning software. The closest thing is owning the copyright, which the purchaser certainly does not. It still belongs to the vendor that wrote the software (or whoever they may have later transferred it to). Can they legally alter the code of the program they purchased? No, that would be preparing a derivative work. The copyright holder has not granted them a license to do that. (There are some exceptions for purposes such as reverse engineering and interoperability, see 17 USC 1201(f)). Can they legally redistribute it No; again, that is the exclusive right of the copyright holder, and the purchaser has not received their permission. or transfer ownership? Maybe, if the first sale doctrine applies. Its application to software is complicated. The user has a better case for being able to sell the software if it exists as some tangible object which is transferred (physical media, pre-installed on hardware, etc). Can they legally modify the code of the program for others who have also purchased the same package? No, that would be preparing a derivative work. Can they take that software and install it on a secondary machine? No, that would be making a copy.
Making and sharing and using subtitles for movies is not legal. It is copyright infringement. I paint this statement with a very broad brush. The movies are copyrighted (they are original and fixed in tangible form). (17 U.S. Code § 102(a)) 17 U.S. Code § 106(2) provides that the owner of copyright has the exclusive rights to prepare and to authorize to preparation of derivative works based upon the copyrighted work. 17 U.S. Code § 101 defines derivative work as a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted.... So we have established that the copyright holder has exclusive rights to authorize translations, but this exclusive right is limited by fair use. 17 U.S. Code § 107 provides some examples of fair use: criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research If these subtitle files are not used for a fair use purpose (the examples cited are examples only, not an exhaustive list) then translation is infringement. If the files are used for one of the fair use purposes then § 107 also gives us the factors to determine whether that particular use is fair use: (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.
You can't own a database; you might, however, own (have) the copyright to a database if you created it or the creator transferred that right to you. You can also possess a copy of a database: the question is whether it is legal. "Leaked" implies that it is taken without permission, so you might be in violation of copyright law by possessing a copy. The only databases that would escape copyright protection would be those US government works, things put in the public domain, and things publically licensed to allow copying. Plus, any database whose content fails to exhibit a modicum of creativity (Feist). A database might be inherently illegal (at least in your hands), so it would depend on what the content is. The first thing that comes to mind is a database from a child-porn website, which contains numerous illegal images: see section 110 of Title 18. "Leaked" information might involve violation of 18 USC 1030 (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act), which prohibits unauthorized hacking. It does not directly prohibit being in possession of a hacked database: but you might still be prosecuted as an accessory after the fact. (That is one of those ad libitum areas of the law where there's no way to know for sure what is and is not "okay"). If they do prosecute you, you might rely on Bartnicki v. Vopper, 532 U.S. 514, where because it was a matter of "public interest", propagation of illegally obtained material was held to be protected by the First Amendment. Also there is the case of the Pentagon Papers. At the federal level, there are no controls over storing credit card information so if you get a copy of the Target or Home Depot hacked database, there's no federal law against that (if we discount "accessory after the fact"), but there are circumstances in Minnesota where retaining such information could be illegal.
It depends where you and your friend are and where the copyright was created. Ripping music for personal use is considered fair use/fair dealing in most jurisdictions. Having multiple copies/devices for personal use is OK too - practically, you can't watch more than one at a time unless you have a very unusual brain. If the intention is that both you and he would have and use copies then that is a violation.
A more general version of the question, as far as I can see, is &quot;Is Google Drive legal?&quot;. I can create an account and upload files to Google Drive, and I can open them from the cloud using various interfaces. I can directly open only certain files types, others I have to download to the device that I'm using in order to open the file. There are various file storage systems that allow this, most or all of which seem to use some sort of system of password access, file-access permissions and encryption to block access by unauthorized individuals. All systems seems to allow &quot;sharing&quot; of a specified file. Google and colleague escape liability by complying with 17 USC 512 aka the DMCA safe harbor provisions. Basically, they don't know, they don't select uploads, they have a removal procedure, they don't know that the material is infringing, and they &quot;are not aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent&quot;. There is a chance that you would be sued for inducing copyright infringement, see MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd, specifically We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties You describe a situation that is unlikely to be found to constitute inducement to infringing, instead it is &quot;enabling possible infringing&quot;, and mere possibilty of doing something bad with a tool does not make you liable for selling a tool, under current US law. An eyebrow would be raised, though, as to why this service only allows ebooks to be deposited.
You would be in poorly-tested waters under US law. The invented name &quot;Cthulhu&quot; as appearing in a novel is not protected by copyright. A collection of invented names and other words assembled into a dictionary (e.g. of Klingon) might be found to constitute a copyright-protected creative work. In Paramount Pictures v. Axanar Productions (complaint), plaintiffs partially base their claim on infringement of language; defendants sought to dismiss the suit on various grounds (&quot;questions of law&quot; rather than questions of fact), but the court denied defendant's motion for summary judgment. Subsequently, defendants settled the case. Constructed languages are highly creative expressive works whose elements are deliberately selected for an artistic purpose, and they are not naturally-occurring facts. The copyright office has no position on copyright protection of a constructed language, and any such position would have to come from so-far non-existent (definitive) case law. The dismissal in Paramount v. Axanar doesn't clearly indicate that a constructed language is protected. The primary legal question would be whether the database that you copy into your system is protected. There is a colorable legal argument that a collection of language-like objects. The statutory language in 17 USC 102 does not specifically preclude protection of a wholely-creative database, and the copyright office does not say whether a conlang can be protected because the courts have not ruled one way or the other. The situation in Feist is very different from the case of a work which invents a language from nothing.