Copyright of children&#39;s folklore songs Suppose artist A wanted to include a song to the tune of a children's nursery rhyme, such as Pretty Little Dutch Girl. This song was written in the 1940s, so if the composer was Australian, it would probably be covered by the rule of 70 years after death. The latest song from the list of nursery rhymes is &quot;On Top of Old Smoky&quot;, recorded by The Weavers in 1951. Some are from the 16th century and so will probably have no copyright. How could artist A gauge which of these songs are in the public domain, which ones have copyright, and which are in a grey area in between?
The burden rests on A to determine that the work is not protected by copyright, and there is no fool-proof registry where you can look up a particular work. One form of proof would be finding a copy of the song published in the 18th century. It might be possible to establish that the work is no longer protected using expert testimony (e.g. a musicologist who could establish that the song existed at some early point in time). As an example, the song &quot;Misirlou&quot; was registered in the US by Nikos Roubanis in 1941, though the song was already in existence in the 1920's, and there was no legal challenge to his copyright. From the legal perspective, that is who has the copyright, except in Greece where copyright is shared with Michalis Patrinos. One might be able to challenge a copyright registration if it is proven that the song could not have been composed by the registrant (establishing via manuscript evidence that it was written 100 years earlier). There is no way to advance-test the legal strength of your evidence that the song was created long enough ago, and if a work is registered, that makes the job even harder.
I'm wondering whos responsible for this code if people start using it? The user. Can the people using it that think its under GPL in any way get in trouble for it or be made to remove it from their projects? Yes, they can be sued (successfully) for copyright violation. It’s not enough that you think you have permission from the copyright holder - you actually have to have permission. The law places the onus on the copier to seek out and get permission from the copyright holder. In theory, someone deceived in this way could sue the repo poster(s) for misrepresentation, however, there are practical issues about finding them, having them in an accessible jurisdiction and if they are judgement proof. Copyright law was created to protect physical books and paintings - it doesn’t really fit with digital methods of reproduction but it is the law. It doesn’t matter that complying with it can be hard bordering on impossible - comply with it you must.
Court filings are, in general, matters of public record. This does not automatically put them into the public domain. This will mean that, absent a special order of the court, anyone will be able to read this filing as pert of the court records. Many courts now make all or parts of their records available on the web. But the copyright holders will possibly retain their rights to authorize the making of further copies, and surely retain the right to authorize the making of derivative works, and their other rights that are part of the copyright bundle, such as the rights of public performance. These rights would not be retained if the work had been placed in the public domain.
A mnemonic like CRAAP is not protected by copyright. The Copyright office says &quot;Copyright does not protect names, titles, slogans, or short phrases&quot;, so you do not run afoul of copyright law using that or any other abbreviation. There is a registry of copyright-registered works, maintained by the copyright office, where authors may register their works, but legal protection exists regardless of registering. Some abbreviations are protected under trademark law, which you can search here. There are 50 registrations that include &quot;AAA&quot; and three that are just &quot;AAA&quot;, also you'll find WTF and LOL. Trademark protection doesn't forbid all uses of an registered abbreviation. It turns out that &quot;CRAAP&quot; is not a registered trademark, but it could be the registered trademark of a manufacturer of crab traps, so you would not likewise call your crab trap company CRAAP, but it would be okay for plumbing supplies (trademark is relative to business uses, which are described in the registration). The only other imaginable scenario that would impede your plan is a non-disclosure agreement. For that to be relevant, there would have to be a valid contract between you and the teacher which specifically prohibits disclosure of the acronyms. The chances that there is a contract between you and the teacher is so low that it is hardly worth considering, but let's explore that for a moment. A contract is an agreement between parties where each party promises to do something that they are not already obligated to do, in exchange for getting something that they do not already have a right to. You had a contract with the college, not with the teacher. The college clearly would not prohibit &quot;using any information gained in the course of study here&quot;, and the courts would not enforce any such &quot;don't use&quot; wording in a contract as unconscionable (why else do you go to college?). Your contract with the college allows you to take classes and use the knowledge that you gain. The teacher's contract with the college requires her to teach some content, and probably allows her to set certain rules of class conduct. She might have been able to toss you out of class for disseminating her methods, but at this point she has no legal recourse. NDA enforcement is generally limited to protecting &quot;trade secrets&quot;, which are defined in terms of information with independent economic value deriving from the fact that the information is non-obvious&quot;. Also, an NDA will have a time limit associated with it except in the case of highly-sensitive personal information (social security numbers), so the courts will not enforce language saying &quot;you can never make use of this information, or these names&quot;.
One principle of copyright law is that if you can prove independent authorship, there cannot be liability no matter how similar your work is to the prior work. "If by some magic a man who had never known it were to compose anew Keats's 'Ode on a Grecian Urn,' he would be an 'author,' and if he copyrighted it, others might not copy that poem, though they might of course copy Keats's." (Sheldon v. MGM Pictures Corp., 81 F.2d 49, 54 (2d Cir. 1936)). Now, of course, the challenge is proving that you've never heard a given piece of music, or never read a particular work of fiction. If you have, even unconscious copying exposes to liability. And if the plaintiff can prove that you had access (such as the scriptwriter who sent a copy to a movie studio), they will have an even easier time proving the copying. If there is no proof of copying or not-copying, the copying can be proved circumstantially either through expert testimony or the jury's evaluation. The expert might testify something like "There is an identical tonal progression in these two songs, even though they were written in different keys. There were a million different ways the songs could have been written, but they are identical in this respect." The jury can consider that information and find the defendant liable. Or, the judge may simply tell the jury, "You may listen to these two songs, and find the defendant liable if you find them to be substantially similar to the extent that it is more likely than not that the defendant copied the plaintiff." TL;DR: The process can be conclusive, but if it isn't, then the output will be the evidence that the jury will consider.
It would seem that your song is a derived work. You took the original work and found words that sound the same. If the original work had used different words, your work would have ended up differently. So you have a derived work. Same as making a translation; if the original was different, then the translation would be different, so the translation is a derived work. I was asked "How is this not straight up infringement". But it is. Not only copying is an exclusive right of the copyright holder, but also the creation of derivative works.
Everything you see there is copyright and trademark the Tolkien estate or a derivative work thereof. It's all illegal.
If you're in the USA, this almost certainly falls under fair use, or if you are in another jurisdiction, it almost certainly falls under an analogous exception for educational use. The fact that the excerpt is short contributes to this conclusion. You can also avoid having to rely even on these exceptions by choosing sources that are in the public domain. The specific date before which a work is guaranteed to be in the public domain depends, again, on your jurisdiction, but it's probably sometime in the early 20th century. For example, you're certainly on solid ground if you use Dickens.