How does &quot;poor man&#39;s copyright&quot; work? In this answer on another SE, it is suggested that the anonymous authors of a piece of software might use a "poor man's copyright" technique to establish that they possessed the work before it was published, in case they ever want to assert their copyright. This could consist of an unopened letter with a date stamp, a notarized copy, or some other scheme involving a third party. According to the wikipedia entry there is no specific provision for this in US copyright law. Is there any legal reason to use a "poor man's copyright"? Have these techniques been used successfully in court, or are they mostly useless? And if one wanted to use such a technique, what is the best way to go about it? I am looking for an answer for US law, but would appreciate other countries' perspectives too.
The U.S. Copyright Office says of poor man's copyright: There is no provision in the copyright law regarding any such type of protection, and it is not a substitute for registration. This means that the U.S. government will not grant you any special rights or protections for having undertaken poor man's copyright, unlike advance copyright registration, which confers the ability to collect statutory damages. In any case, as a prerequisite to legal action, you will need to register your work, even if you must do so after the infringement has taken place: You will have to register, however, if you wish to bring a lawsuit for infringement of a U.S. work. Instead, poor man's copyright is purely an evidentiary mechanism for proving possession of a work at a particular point in time. Suppose a best-selling author illegally uses huge verbatim passages of your unpublished work in a new novel. As part of your legal argument against the infringing author, you want to prove that you possessed your unpublished work decades before the author claimed to have started work on the infringing novel. The truly serious issue with many types of poor man's copyright is that it simply doesn't prove what it intends to prove. If you have a sealed envelope that is postmarked with a date, that only proves that the envelope passed through the postal system on that day. It says nothing about what the contents of the envelope were at the time; notably, the envelope could be mailed unsealed and then filled and sealed at a later date. More involved forms of poor man's copyright, like storing a work in an undisturbed bank safe deposit box, might carry more evidentiary weight, but such an approach could still be difficult to verify reliably: we must ask the bank to verify the negative that no one ever accessed the deposit box. This may or may not be something the bank is prepared to do, and they may or may not maintain such records perpetually. If you really want to prove that you had possession of a creative work on a particular day (which, again, is not a complete legal argument, but may be helpful), you will need to find a trustworthy third party who can demonstrate to the court's satisfaction that the work has remained undisturbed in their possession since a particular date. A bank might be good at this, but the best agency I know of to carry out such a purpose is the U.S. Copyright Office! They allow you to register your work (for probably much cheaper than a decades-long deposit box rental) and confer the benefits of registration, e.g. statutory damages. I don't know of any legal cases that have tested a poor man's copyright in court. On a personal note, I suspect there are none, because the primary case that poor man's copyright is intended to protect against -- someone taking your unpublished work and making the baldfaced lie that it is their own, such that your only recourse is to prove a timeline that renders their claims impossible -- seems somewhat uncommon. Consider the likelihood of such a case occurring combined with the likelihood of a plaintiff who has undertaken poor man's copyright, and I suspect the likelihood is small indeed.
Under United States law, copyright is normally held by the creator of a work. There is one major exception to this rule: the "work for hire." If something is considered a "work for hire" under the copyright statutes, the copyright is held by the employer. Whether something qualifies as a work for hire is a complex analysis: here is a Copyright Office circular covering some of the basics. To be clear, I'm not giving an opinion (and I don't have enough information to give an opinion) on whether any specific works you or your fiance may create or commission qualify as "works for hire." It's a narrower test than you probably think it is. If the work is not a work for hire, the copyright holder owns the copyright, and anyone else can use it only with a license from the copyright holder. A license can be implied by the parties' behavior and communications--but it shouldn't be. If you're in a situation where you need to know, for example: That you are allowed to use the artwork forever, and the artist can't ask you to stop later; That you are allowed to change the artwork if you need to, even a simple change like cropping or adding a filter or text; or That, if your product is successful, the artist won't be able to sell another license to someone else to compete with you; then you need a written contract spelling out who owns the copyright and what the rights of the other party are. A lawyer can draw up a simple, re-usable form contract for you cheaply that will prevent the problems you're worried about. Remember: even if this is a work-for-hire situation, if you need to prove that down the road, it may require a trial, or at least preliminary motion practice, to do so. That's a lot more expensive than getting your ducks in a row now will be. tl;dr: Get a lawyer. If you're in a major city, there may be a local arts law organization that will provide you with free help for a simple job like this one. (Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts operate in several East Coast cities, and I know many top commercial lawyers who do pro bono for them).
To do so I used some images and Gifs which may be under copyright but since I don't earn money for myself and there is no company backing me I was hoping that there is some protection for private persons like me who just want to showcase the project. Sorry. If your website is public facing (i.e. not password protected and available only to family and close friends), you need to follow copyright law. There is no exception to copyright just because a project is run by an individual for non-commercial purposes. I am also insecure about the GDPR regulations since I give users the ability to create an account and try it out. Your profile says you're in the EU. Then you need to comply with the GDPR. Is there any way to protect me against greedy lawyers and companies? Could I write something like: "This website is a peace of art" and save myself with arguments like "artistic freedom" or "free speech"? Nope. A controversial website run by Peter Sunde had at one point a "free speech" disclaimer (similar to the one you propose) posted. However, Sunde did never use this defense in court: Finnish court slaps Peter Sunde with €350k fine. If he had shown up in court, I am pretty sure the court would have told him that such a disclaimer has no legal merit. The only protection that will make you completely safe is to adhere to the law.
All of your works would be considered to be a derivative work. This is because your work, is based on the work of someone else's. A good test for this to see if something is a derivative work is to see whether the new work can effectively exist without the original. Most copyright laws worldwide are similar, thanks to the Berne Convention for copyrighted works. Since derivative works are normally a right that is exclusive to the copyright holder, you can't make such works without permission (generally through a license or expiry of copyright). So now, let's take a look: The Mona Lisa was made hundreds of years ago. It's definitely in the public domain. You're in no breach of copyright laws here. Yes, of course. Microsoft retains copyright on their icons, and possibly trademarks as well. However, they may have trademark guidance that allows you to use their icons - as long as you follow it. Likely the same as microsoft - you can assume it's similar for most large companies. Code is copyrighted as a literary work - the layout and visual aspect is copyrighted as an artistic work. That artist retains copyright, unless you obtain the work with a license, or the copyright is expired. If you create a derivative work, you infringe on their rights.
"Pastiche" is a literary, not a legal term, and as a professional coder, I would not use it to describe code that to some extent imitated other code. The legal question here is: is your code a derivative work of the code it is based on, and if it is, did you have permission to make that work. Copyright, in an Berne Convention country, which includes the EU, does not protect ideas and concepts, it protects expression. It protects the choices of words and symbols, and other forms of expression. If all you did was study example code, presented for educational purposes, and then write code that performs a similar function, using the same general techniques, then I don't think you have infringed copyright. That, after all, is why people post code to Stack Overflow and similar sites, to allow them to learn how to use specific coding techniques, including in commercial projects. I have used techniques posted to SO to do coding as part of my paid job. The usual test for copying under US law is "substantial similarity". This takes into account cases where there is essentially only one way to say or code something. I don't know the exact tests under the various laws of various EU countries, and they will not all be the same. But I suspect that on this point they are, well, substantially similar :). I can't advise on your specific situation. But if it is as described, I don't think you have a problem.
If you change a single character, that's clearly a partial copy. Copyright protection has a limited extent, however. The protected work must be original and not obvious. For example, there are only so many ways to write a function that computes the average of two numbers, so the copyright owner of one body of code cannot claim infringement by the author of a second body of code simply because they both have a function float Average(float a, float b) { return (a + b) / 2; } A surefire way to avoid infringing copyright is to specify the function of the code and then have someone who has never seen the code write it from scratch. This is sometimes called clean-room engineering. Otherwise, there is no way to answer your question definitively. If you create a modified copy of the code (a "derived work" in copyright terminology), there is no strict formula available to evaluate the extent of the infringement. It comes down to a case-specific analysis of the facts by a judge. Depending on the jurisdiction, which you have not specified, there may be specific laws or judicial precedent that guide the judge, but the determination will still require a specific analysis of the facts. For example, if the alleged infringer raises these arguments, the judge would have to determine how obvious the code is, or whether the copyright claimant even owns the copyright to the code.
You've tagged this as both united-states and european-union, so this answer is about the United States. Before you can &quot;license&quot; someone to do something, you must first have the legal right to prevent them from doing it. Otherwise, your purported &quot;license&quot; is just a worthless piece of paper (technically, you might be able to sell those pieces of paper notwithstanding their lack of validity, so I suppose they wouldn't be completely worthless). If we imagine that the subject of a biography or autobiography wants to control the publication of that biography, there are a number of legal grounds that might be cited, depending on the circumstances: Copyright: The person who actually wrote the biography (who may or may not be the subject!) can prevent others from making copies or derivative works of it, as well as several other rights enumerated in 17 USC 106. Most publication agreements involve signing an exclusive license with the publisher. If the author has not signed such a license, then the biography is not going to be published in the first place. Regardless, copyright only exists once the work is &quot;fixed in a tangible medium&quot; (e.g. saved to a hard drive, written down on a piece of paper, etc.). If it's still &quot;in your head,&quot; then you don't own anything. If the subject and author are different people, then the subject does not have any rights here at all; copyright belongs exclusively to the author. Furthermore, copyright only protects the individual work. It does not prevent someone else from writing a different biography from scratch, so long as this second biography is original and does not reuse any content from the first biography. The underlying facts belong to no one. Privacy rights are generally handled as a tort under state law. If the subject is a public figure (i.e. the sort of person who's likely to have a biography written about them) then privacy rights tend to be rather limited. However, they are not nonexistent, and invasion-of-privacy claims are occasionally raised, usually in cases where highly personal, sensitive information is disclosed against the will of the subject. This may also become relevant if the author of the biography obtains information in an illegal fashion such as by hacking or physical trespass. However, in most cases, the content would need to be pretty far beyond the pale before this would have a realistic chance of succeeding. Personality rights are usually considered an extension or variety of privacy rights. In general, they allow the subject to prevent their name from being associated with a commercial endeavor without their permission. However, it is likely that the First Amendment would bar the application of personality rights to a biography, unless the publisher tried to misrepresent a ghostwritten work as an autobiography without the consent of the subject. Libel is a tort under state law. Libel laws in the US are extremely limited, and the subject would need to establish at least all of the following in order to succeed (or else the claim is barred by the First Amendment): The defendant published a statement. A reasonable person would interpret that statement as factual (and not an opinion, puffery, etc.). The statement is materially false (i.e. the &quot;gist or sting&quot; of the statement is false, regardless of whether it is technically 100% accurate). The statement harmed the reputation of the plaintiff. The defendant knew the statement was false, or made no serious effort to verify it (&quot;actual malice&quot;). Not required unless the plaintiff is a public figure, but the subject of a biography probably will be a public figure. There may be additional requirements depending on the state, and the defendant will probably try to file an anti-SLAPP motion if state law allows for it. Of these four rights, copyright is by far the most commonly &quot;licensed,&quot; followed by personality rights. Nobody gives out licenses to commit libel or invade their privacy. That leaves us with two ways of licensing your (auto)biography: Actually write it yourself, and sell it to a publishing company. You will give them a copyright license as part of the process (in exchange for royalties and an advance). Convince a publishing company to hire a ghostwriter for you, and then license your likeness to them. The public will be told that you &quot;wrote&quot; the book, and you will promote it in exactly the same way as if you did write it. Neither of these options will prevent someone else from coming along and writing their own biography about you, of course.
First I should point out that the Google question is about a different situation, the "snippet" issue where a tiny part of a web page is redistributed, where the issue of resolved in the US by appeal to the "fair use" defense. The proposed scenario as written here is broader since it would go beyond a couple of lines, and goes up to the limit of copy an entire web page. That is copyright infringement, with or without an associated link. Copyright protection is not just about attribution, it is about control. If you can limit your copying appropriately, you may survive under a fair use analysis; but you need to hire a lawyer with experience in copyright litigation to vet your notions of what is "a small amount" etc.