What does the copyright in a dissertation protect exactly? I am a PhD student and I was recently told that unless I publish the content of my dissertation, my university will not be able to freely conduct research in the same research area after I graduate. This is because I will supposedly be the only one who can make derivative works from the dissertation. I was quite startled by this and I was wondering if it is true?
This sounds completely incorrect to me. First, subsequent research is not normally a "derivative work" for the purpose of copyright, since copyright doesn't protect your ideas but only the particular form in which you have expressed those ideas. Second, as the owner of the copyright, you can permit anyone to make any sort of copy or derivative work, or sell, assign, or license the ability to do so to other parties, without regard to whether the work has been published. The real reason that nonpublication of your work would stifle further research is that researchers will not have access to it.
This would likely be considered a derivative work. You would need permission from the copyright holder to make it, especially if you intend to distribute it for profit.
Ideas (methods of playing, game mechanics, strategy, goals) cannot be protected by copyright. But any part of a creative work can. So, no copying of drawings, patterns, images, sounds, or the element. I suppose copying the software code is not an issue here, but it can, obviously, also not be copied. And nothing in your game can look like someone's else trademark.
Section 108(a) is the most useful for an infringer who posts an entire copy of a protected work in public. Subsections(b,c) require that the copy not be made available outside the premises, which precludes internet posting; (d) requires a user request to make a copy; (e) applies only to items that are off the market and transferred to a specific user; (h) allows more copying in the last 20 years of the period when a work is protected (not applicable here). Subsection (a) allows a library or archive to make one copy of a work, as long as there is no commercial advantage to making the copy, the library is relatively public (it might restrict access to bona fide researchers), and a copyright notice is included: this has the fewest restrictions on copying. The internet downloader is not a library or an archive, so the downloader is not granted any permission under 108 to make a copy. Under 108(a) a library can make no more than one copy available, but every uploading or downloading is "making a copy". A library would be contributorily liable for the illegal downloadings of their "customers". It is difficult to know exactly what one can get away with under 17 USC 107 a.k.a. "fair use". I am fairly sure that posting a copy of a contemporary book in the open is not "fair use" even if the intent is to make it possible for dummies to study chemistry: such copying is not at all transformative, totally unlimited, and provides a significant market substitute for the protected work.
The copyright Act gives copyright owners certain rights: right to reproduce the copyrighted work right to prepare derivative works based upon the work right to distribute copies of the work to the public right to perform the copyrighted work publicly right to display the copyrighted work publicly The audiobook you create from a copyrighted work is a derivative work (perhaps it is a reproduction; for the analysis it does not matter). It works the other way also. A derivative work is a work based on or derived from one or more already existing works. Common derivative works include translations, musical arrangements, motion picture versions of literary material or plays, art reproductions, abridgments, and condensations of preexisting works. It is a violation of the copyright to create derivative works without permission. The commercial nature of the derivative work does not come into play in this situation. Commercial use might be an issue in a fair use defense, but fair use is not applicable based on these facts. Fair use might apply given facts such as: Ten students own copies of the printed work. These students are blind. A teacher reads the book and provides the recording to the students.
We cannot and will not try to answer &quot;what should i do?&quot; questions here. Nothing in the linked page makes me think that the views expressed in the previous question here are any less correct. They certainly have not changed the law on copyright. The linked page is an open forum. Many of the posts o9n that thread express ill-informed and incorrect views of how copyright works, and what it protects. Several google searchs find no trace of the suit described in the thread. Note that in US law no copyright claim may be heard in a small claims court, except for the federal copyright office's small claims tribunal. I am not sure if the same is true in Canada, but it might be that the suit was simply dismissed on such a basis. In any case small claims cases do not establish legal precedents in Canada or the US. Of course it is true that anyone can sue over almost anything, even when there is no valid legal basis for the suit. If the suit had been won by the claimant, or even settled that would be larger grounds for worry. A person seriously worried over publishing a book such as that described in the question might do well to consult a lawyer with relevant expertise. A single consultation plus an opinion letter might not cost very much. But 17 USC 102 (b) is very clear that copyright never protects facts, as are the copyright laws of other countries. Note that reports of the events of sports matches are not protected by copyright, although expressive language and analysis may be. 17 USC 102 (b) reads: (b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work. Article 2 paragraph (8) of the Berne Copyright Convention provides that: (8) The protection of this Convention shall not apply to news of the day or to miscellaneous facts having the character of mere items of press information. There seems little room for copyright protection of the moves of chess games.
The copyright owner is whoever first put the material in fixed form. It is most likely that that is the note-taker (you). It is possible (and highly unlikely) that the lecturer read (had memorized) a prepared script and you copied that script mechanically, and if that were the case, he would hold copyright and you infringed by making a copy. Typically, a note-taker follows the logic of a lecture and expresses those ideas in his own words (the notes do not match a plausible verbatim class lecture). Since expression is protected and ideas are not, that makes it most likely that you would prevail in a suit. The equations are almost certainly not protected.
&quot;Plagiarism&quot; is an academic concept, not a legal one Plagiarising the work of another without attribution is academic misconduct in every reputable academic facility and can lead to disciplinary action. But it's not against the law, and you can't be sued for doing it. Copyright violation is against the law You violate copyright when you copy or make a derivative work from the copyrighted work of another without permission or without an exemption under the law. In some jurisdictions, authors and artists have moral copyright, which operates alongside proprietary copyright and gives certain rights, including the right of attribution and the right for their work to be treated respectfully. In those jurisdictions, even if you have the copyright holder's permission, you must still respect the moral rights. Let's make some things explicit by considering a particular artwork. Say, this one: This particular piece is not subject to copyright because a) it was created before there was such a concept, and b) da Vinci died in 1519, so if there had been a copyright law, copyright in this work would have long expired. So, you can make as many copies of this as you like. Now, let's consider what the situation would be if Leonardo's alchemical pursuits had been more successful and instead of dying in 1519, he died last Tuesday. If you want to make a copy of this image, you must have Leonardo's heir(s) permission or be operating under an exemption under copyright law in your jurisdiction. When you train your AI, you will need to make a copy of the image. Do you have permission? Do you have a relevant exemption? If you obtained your images by scraping websites then the answers are no and (probably) no. Whether the image has metadata identifying the author is irrelevant to answering the questions. Whether there is any way of identifying the artist is also irrelevant - you still need their permission even if you don't know who to ask. If your AI, when prompted, generates an image that is strikingly similar to a copyrighted image it was trained on, that is a derivative work and you need permission for that. Under current law, the programer(s) are likely the copyright violators rather than the users of the AI.