Why do blatant copyright infringements not get prosecuted? I feel like everywhere you go you'll see copyright infringement. When I open social media, people post copyrighted videos and photos all the time. I suppose I'm assuming they've not got permission - but what 30 follower account is able to get permission from big movie studios etc? My question - Why is this kind of infringement not acted on more, and prosecuted? For example: There are so many YouTube Shorts that just blatantly post clips of Movies, Football games, TV Programmes, etc. Why do these never get in trouble? Perhaps they get a copyright strike, but surely they would be prosecuted/sued? There are 'Leak' sites for mods of games, which operate under the proviso of having all content that is uploaded copyright free and not owned by a single entity. Enough so that newer users may not be aware that they're downloading pirated items/stolen source code. Why do those who upload to these sites, or even host these sites, not get in trouble, and prosecuted/sued, or even those that download from these sites?
You are wrong that they never get into legal trouble. It isn't terribly common but it certainly happens to those that get relatively prominent. Many of the folks doing the copyright infringement are judgement proof. It makes little sense for Disney, for example, to sue some guy living in his parents' basement for uploading a clip of their movie when that guy has no assets. Financially, it wouldn't be worth the cost of a lawyer. Many of the folks doing the copyright infringement are in jurisdictions that look the other way. If you're a Russian citizen pirating content owned by American companies, the Russian authorities aren't going to cooperate and arrest you and the American companies likely can't recover any judgement they'd get because you don't have any assets in America. There is a whack-a-mole problem. If there are hundreds of people posting pirated content to Facebook and each one is running hundreds of pages, that's tens of thousands of pages posting content. By the time you identify and close all of them, the pirates will have created tens of thousands of new pages. There is a cat-and-mouse problem. Copyright owners have automated tools to scan for their IP to issue takedown notices. Piraters know this so they modify the video (posting it as a mirror image or adding some additional video elements) in order to evade the automated tools. If copyright owners have to manually identify pirated content, it's realistically not cost effective to do so. The humans finding that content would cost more than the business loses in revenue to pirates. Tracking down the actual human/ business behind the copyright infringement is often a fair amount of work and may involve motions in courts in multiple countries. That work tends not to be highly prioritized by law enforcement. If you're a small fish, it is unlikely that anyone would go to the effort of unmasking you in order to sue.
Since the person who posted the game component under the CC-BY license has no right to do so, no one who used it in reliance on that license had any rights either, and all such uses were at least technically infringement (unless they came under a copyright exception, which seems unlikely). The holder of the copyright on the component could sue in any country where a game using it was published. The details of the law, including the rules on damages and other remidies, will vary from country to country. In the united-states those rules are contained in Chapter 5 of title 17 USC particularly sections 502-505. Section 504 provides for possible money damages. Section 502 provides for a possible injunction (court order to stop infringing). Section 503 provides for for infringing works to be seized. Section 505 provides for possible awards of costs and legal fees to a successful plaintiff (copyright holder). Section 502 allows injunctions to &quot;prevent or restrain infringement of a copyright&quot; on &quot;reasonable&quot; terms. But when the infringement has already been stopped, no such injunction is needed and a court is not likely to impose one. Section 503 allows the court to order the impoundment of infringing copies and &quot;plates, molds, matrices, masters, tapes, film negatives, or other articles by means of which such copies or phonorecords may be reproduced&quot;. This is largely obsolete for digital content. Section 504 is the key. It offers the plaintiff a choice between actual damages plus profits and statutory damages. The rule for the first is: The copyright owner is entitled to recover the actual damages suffered by him or her as a result of the infringement, and any profits of the infringer that are attributable to the infringement and are not taken into account in computing the actual damages. This means money made by use of the unauthorized content, plus any loss of sales or other losses suffered by the owner. Money mad by the infringing work but not made by use of the infringing content is not included, if this can be proven. Income obtained after the infringing content was removed would probably not be included in the infringer's profits. Statutory damages can be any amount between $750 and $30,000 that the count thinks is just, but id the infringement is proved to be &quot;innocent&quot; the lower limit is $200. The exact provision reads: In a case where the infringer sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds that such infringer was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright, the court in its discretion may reduce the award of statutory damages to a sum of not less than $200. An award of costs and fees under section 505 is entirely up to the discretion of the court. If the maximum possible award of infringer's profits is $10,000, and a defense of innocent infringement is plausible, a plaintiff might well find such a suit unprofitable, given the legal expenses involved in preparing an carrying through such a suit. But that is entirely up to the copyright owner. An owner may choose to file even an unprofitable suit in an effort to deter others. A person who has discovered that s/he has innocently infringed a copyright and made some money in the process would be wise to document the prompt removal of the infringing content form any publication, and efforts to notify the copyright owner. Ther is no way to be sure what actions the owner will take, if any, within those that the law allows. Often a owner in such a case will not bring suit if the infringement was apparently innocent, resulting profits were small, the infringement has been halted, and future infringement by that infringer seems unlikely. But different owners have different policies on such matters. An owner can delay in deciding whether to file suit or not.
If by "streaming," you mean "having my web browser create temporary copies of media from an online source so that I can view it," then Canadian law is unclear. I can't really do better to demonstrate than to cite a few articles on the subject. According to Alex Buonassisi and Jennifer Marles of IP law firm Oyen Wiggs: [...] it is not entirely clear that receiving an unauthorized stream of a copyrighted work in Canada does not infringe copyright. At best, this activity could be said to fall within a grey zone. According to Sandy Kang writing for law school blog IP Osgoode: As for users of such websites, it is currently uncertain whether their act of streaming video would be found to infringe. According to Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa law professor specializing in IP: The most controversial sources are unauthorized streaming websites that offer free content without permission of the rights holder. [...] Those accessing the streams are unlikely to be infringing copyright, however. As you can see, there is a variety of expert opinions on whether streaming pirated movies is an infringement. The section under debate is 30.71 on temporary reproductions, especially subsection (b): It is not an infringement of copyright to make a reproduction of a work or other subject-matter if (a) the reproduction forms an essential part of a technological process; (b) the reproduction’s only purpose is to facilitate a use that is not an infringement of copyright; and (c) the reproduction exists only for the duration of the technological process. I don't want to duplicate what articles above have already stated, but I'd like to dive deeper into Bishop v. Stevens, [1990] 2 S.C.R. 467, cited by the first two articles as a similar case (reaffirmed in 2015 after a few rounds of statute amendments). In it the Supreme Court held that prerecorded "ephemeral" copies used to facilitate a broadcast was an infringement. The key piece of reasoning is: [... the broadcaster] has not established that, at the time of their enactment, the sections of the Act providing for the right to broadcast a performance must have been understood to include the right to prerecord. Even now it remains fully possible, and quite common, to broadcast live performances. To me, there are two key differences why this logic might not directly transpose to the streaming pirated movies situation: "Ephemeral" prerecorded copies aren't necessarily "temporary" copies within the scope of section 30.71 above, particularly subsections (a) and (c) might not strictly be met. This case discusses the point of view of the broadcaster which is analogous to the hoster, not the end-user. While making ephemeral/temporary copies might not be strictly necessary for broadcasting, viewing online content necessarily creates at least a temporary copy on the end-user's computer. Two other random notes: None of the involved sections have a "reasonableness" or "should have known" clause whereas they are present in other parts of the Copyright Act. This means whether its legal should theoretically depend strictly on the facts (i.e. if it turns out to be illegal, pleading "oh I didn't know it was pirated" won't work). Funny enough, I don't actually see anything in the law that would differentiate between streaming online pirated video and your example of something illegal being aired on TV provided its digital (presumably some part of the TV has a temporary copy too).
I'm pretty sure in France you have moral rights and copyrights. I am writing from New Zealand, but we have some similar intellectual property laws due to being member countries of the World Intellectual Property Organisation. We are also both member countries of the World Trade Organisation (WTO has the TRIPS agreement which relates to IP). So my answer may or may not be right &ndash; check what it says in France's copyright acts: you should be able to search for terms like first owner, and moral rights, films/videos, etc. The school isn't your employer, and so the basic rule is that you as the author are automatically the first owner. Since you're not really at school to create anything or research for the school, I don't think the court would enforce a blanket term that you had to agree to that the school owns intellectual property in what you create. You probably own the copyright. You also have moral rights in what you have created, which means even if the school does own the copyright in your work, you can request they attribute it to you if they show it in public (online). Not all works have moral rights. However, in NZ if you create a film/video you do have moral rights in it.
In general, a gameplay video would be either a partial copy or a derivative work, and in either case an infringement if created without permission. Such a video might be covered under fair use in US copyright law, particularly if made for the purpose of commentary on a game or instruction in how to play or design a game. In general, a fair use defense is more likely to succeed if only the minimum amount of the work required for the purpose is used, and sound tracks might not be required for such a purpose. Thus a maker of such a video might choose to omit the sound to improve the fair-use case. Moreover, when the sound track contains licensed popular music it would be subject to a separate copyright, and many music publishers are notoriously litigious, so prudence would advise omitting the sound. All that said, fair-use is a case-by-case determination, and if the makers of such videos have not been sued, they (and we) can only guess how a case would turn out. As to why game makers refrain from having such videos taken down (if they in fact do refrain) one can only speculate. Game publishers may consider the videos good advertising. Questions based on the absence of legal proceedings are inherently speculative, unless a copyright holder has announced a policy of not taking action and the reasons for it.
canada Bob is not committing any standalone copyright infringement unless he needs to make a further copy of the material in order to receive it (such as a download). However, Rob is committing an offence punishable by indictment by making for sale an infringing copy (s. 42(1) of the Copyright Act. If Bob, knowing that Rob is selling infringing copies, buys one of them, then Bob commits the offence of possessing a thing while knowing the thing was derived from the commission of an offence punishable by indictment (Criminal Code, s. 354). (Credit to jcaron, who noted this and provided a similar answer for France.)
It seems crazy to me that you would have to give credits for some image especially if you're just sharing those images for fun. It seems crazy to me that anyone would think you can just use someone else's image without giving them credit. I mean, it's not really a good idea to assume that if you see something you want, you can just take it. But anyway, back to the point: in order to share an image on social media, (1) you have to make a copy of it, (2) you have to give (&quot;distribute&quot;) that copy to the social media website, and (3) they have to make and distribute copies of it in order for anyone else to see it. In the US or countries with similar copyright laws, the right to make copies of a creative work - like an image - is reserved to the copyright holder, which is often the person or company that created the work in the first place. Same with the right to distribute copies. So based on that part of the law alone, all three steps I mentioned above would be illegal, and if that were all there were to it, it would be flat-out illegal to share images on social media. However, there are two ways to get around this. One is to have the copyright holder give you permission to (1) make copies of the work, (2) distribute those copies, and (3) legally give other people the right to make and distribute copies of their own. The typical way to do this is with a license, such as the Creative Commons licenses. For example, the CC-BY-ND 4.0 license says this: Subject to the terms and conditions of this Public License, the Licensor hereby grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-sublicensable, non-exclusive, irrevocable license to exercise the Licensed Rights in the Licensed Material to: reproduce and Share the Licensed Material, in whole or in part; and produce and reproduce, but not Share, Adapted Material. In your case, what that means is that the copyright holder for the image (&quot;Licensor&quot;) grants &quot;You&quot;, the person who downloaded or otherwise acquired the image, permission to (1) make copies (&quot;reproduce&quot;) and (2) distribute copies (&quot;Share&quot;) of the image (the &quot;Licensed Material&quot;), as long as you abide by certain conditions (&quot;Subject to the terms and conditions of this Public License&quot;). And there's another section that says this: Every recipient of the Licensed Material automatically receives an offer from the Licensor to exercise the Licensed Rights under the terms and conditions of this Public License. which means that the copyright holder (&quot;Licensor&quot;) gives anyone who gets a copy of the image (such as the people you share it with) permission to (3) make and distribute copies of their own, as long as they comply with the same conditions. So there you go: as long as you abide by the conditions, and the social media site abides by the conditions, you have permission to do all three things you need to do to share the image on social media. Now, what are those conditions? There are a few of them but this is the main one for what you're asking: If You Share the Licensed Material, You must: retain the following if it is supplied by the Licensor with the Licensed Material: identification of the creator(s) of the Licensed Material and any others designated to receive attribution, in any reasonable manner requested by the Licensor (including by pseudonym if designated); a copyright notice; a notice that refers to this Public License; a notice that refers to the disclaimer of warranties; a URI or hyperlink to the Licensed Material to the extent reasonably practicable; indicate if You modified the Licensed Material and retain an indication of any previous modifications; and indicate the Licensed Material is licensed under this Public License, and include the text of, or the URI or hyperlink to, this Public License. This says that if you share the image, you have to keep the attribution information provided along with the image when you got it. The attribution info might be in the image itself, or it might be part of a web page in which the image is embedded, or something else. Whatever it is, you have to pass it on along with the image in some reasonable way. On social media, that might mean including the attribution info in the same post where you share the image, if it's not already included in the image itself. If you don't, then this part of the license kicks in: However, if You fail to comply with this Public License, then Your rights under this Public License terminate automatically. That means that if you share the image without keeping the attribution information that was there when it was shared with you, then you have lost your right to share the image at all (because, remember, the license was the only thing that allowed you to share the image in the first place; otherwise it would have been illegal to copy or distribute it). So in summary, if an image is under a Creative Commons license, yes you must share the attribution info along with the image. Otherwise it's illegal for you to share the image at all. For completeness, though, I should mention there's another way to get around the sharing of images being illegal. Most countries' copyright laws provide limited exceptions where you can copy and distribute something you otherwise wouldn't be able to in order to enable education, research, journalism, critical analysis, and that sort of thing. In the US, the factors that go into determining whether this exception applies are how you're using the copyrighted work (in your case, the image) - this includes whether you're trying to make money off it the nature of the work, such as how creative it is how much of the work you're using whether and how your use affects the market for the original And although the details vary widely in other countries, many of them also use some of the same or similar criteria. This is one way that the fact that you're not making money from sharing the image could conceivably push it toward being okay, although you don't necessarily get a free pass to share the image just because you're not making money from it. Because the laws vary so much from country to country, and the circumstances vary so much from case to case, it's impossible to say in general whether attribution is really required when you're taking advantage of this exception. Even if it's not mentioned directly in the law, it might be among the relevant pieces of information taken into account by a court in any particular case. However, I have a hard time imagining how including attribution could hurt this kind of case, so my guess would be that even someone who intends to rely on this exception to copyright law is better off keeping attribution information intact.
If you used some creative work of mine without my permission (I'm the copyright holder, and you have no license giving you permission) then I can sue you to make you stop using my work, to get payment for damages, and to get payment for statutory damages. If you used my work because someone else told you wrongly that you had a license, that's very unfortunate for you, but is no reason why I wouldn't or shouldn't sue you. Obviously in this situation that third party did something badly wrong. I can sue both of you together to make sure that I get payment from whoever has deeper pockets. You can also sue that third party if you think that their lying, or being mistaken, about a non-existing license caused you damages, or if there is a contract or something that makes them responsible.