Can I legally publish a compilation of copyrighted material without licence? How? I have bought a book A which contains much content, and a second book B which relies on some of that content. I took the time to compile only the content from A that is relevant for use with B into a new work for my own private use (PDF file). Now I would like to make my derived work of A publically available, so that future users of B do not have to spend time again to perform the same work I already did. I assume, that I can not legally do this, but am asking here to be sure. Assume I would be ready to publish my derivative work non-commercially and give up as many rights on it as neccessary to publish it. Is it then possible for me to legally publish my derivative work? Maybe by claiming fair use? Would it make it more legal in any way if I were to add a disclaimer "By clicking download, you verify that you already own A and B.". That is comparable to websites which require you to be 18+, for example. I am interested in U.S., Swiss, and if available international EU-jurisdication.
No. You may not do this. As your post points out this is a blatant copyright violation. It isn't remotely in the realm of fair use.
First, copyright means that permission from the author is generally required. The courts find three sorts of such permission: direct author-to-recipient explicit licensing (typical in the case of a book author to publisher relation), indirect licensing arising from platform usage (in using Stackexchange, you probably unknowingly click-agreed to allow me and everybody else to copy and redistribute your creations), and implicit licensing – where permission to use is reasonably inferrable, though not explicitly stated. Since the latter doesn't involve written-out statements of the conditions under which you are licensed to copy text, the courts don't rely heavily on implicit licensing. But implicit licensing is what makes it possible to legally read a web page without first signing an agreement. If we assume in your scenario that the author is fully aware that their responses are automatically distributed to various servers, then even in lieu of a platform license, an implicit license can be found. Second, irrespective of the desideratum of having permission, one is in the US allowed to copy without permission, for certain purposes known as &quot;fair use&quot;. This is a complicated area of legal analysis, where one has to weigh factors such as whether the content is artistic vs. factual, whether your use simply re-propagates vs. makes a comment, whether the use is for profit vs. free and educational, and whether the use has a negative effect on the market for the original work.
It does not matter whether the document is authentic, because it is true, by law. Under copyright law, you must have permission of the copyright holder to copy any protected work (original creative work not created as a work of the US, as an example under US law). This is true whether or not the copyright holder tells you that copying requires permission. A matter for more concern is &quot;false permission&quot;, where a person without the right to grant permission utters something that the courts would usually interpret as being &quot;permission&quot;, for example releasing a Harry Potter book under CC-0. The legal requirement is that you have actual permission, not that a prohibition was not communicated to you. It is in your interest to know whether the actual person making available a work under some license actually has the right to grant a license. But there is no way to know for certain who holds copyright. You can, however, attempt to determine that a work has been registered with the US copyright office, looking here. Works are still protected when not registered, so failing to find a copyright registration does not guarantee that the work is &quot;open access&quot;. It would tell you who the registered copyright holder is. There is no &quot;innocent infringement&quot; defense, but under §504(c)(2), your liability for statutory damages can be reduced to as little as $200, if you can prove that there were no indications that the work is protected.
Yes. The copyright owner of a work has the exclusive right to "reproduce the copyrighted work" or to make "derivative works" of it. 17 USC 106. Copyright law is older than the photocopier, and it applies to copies made by means of any technology. If your intent is to duplicate the protected work, whether you do it by tracing, photocopying, or even freehand, you are infringing that right. It is possible that you could squeeze into one of the copyright exceptions, such as fair use, but these are much narrower than people tend to assume they are (especially outside of the U.S.), and they boil down to: "Well, yes, I copied your copyrighted work, but..." The bottom line is: is it copyrighted? Did you copy it, in whole or in part? Then, unless you have a very good reason, you've infringed the copyright. Whether you do it by means of tracing paper, jellygraph, or iPhone doesn't matter.
On what grounds would you sue? Contract Well, I think that you would struggle to find the necessary elements (see What is a contract and what is required for them to be valid?) In particular, you would struggle to prove that there was intention to create legal relations on their part and possibly on yours. Are you able to identify in your "back &amp; forth" a clear, unequivocal offer and acceptance? Without knowing the details of the "back &amp; forth": I was hoping that someone at $organization might be willing to write an article explaining what you do, the history of the organization and how it works appears on the face of it to be a request for a gift; not an offer to treat. Promissory Estoppel If you don't have a contract then it is possible (IMO unlikely) that they induced you by your actions to commit resources (your time in writing) in anticipation of a reward (them publishing what you wrote). To be estopped they would have to have known that you were writing the article in the expectation that it would have your organisation's name in it, that they did not intend for that to happen and that they allowed you to invest those resources notwithstanding. If you can prove all of that then you can require them to do what they promised. The big difficulty I see in this is did you tell them that a) you were writing the article, b) it would have your name in it and c) you expected it to be published in that form. Copyright If they publish the work or a derivative work without your permission you can sue for breach of copyright. As it stands, they probably have an implied licence to publish and you would need to explicitly revoke that. Options There are two reasons to go to court: Money Principle If you are going to court for money then this is at best a risky investment and at worst a gamble: balance your risk and reward carefully. If you are going to court for a principle then I simultaneously admire your principles and think you're an idiot. Make a deal Explain that the reason that you wrote the article was a) to support their fine publication and the fantastic work it does (even if you don't) and b) to garner good publicity for your organisation. You understand and admire their strong editorial stance (especially if you don't) but the article involved a considerable amount of work and could they see their way clear to give you a significant discount (~80%) on a full page ad facing the article.
What licence should I display in the footer of my website? None unless you want people to copy and reuse the content. The content (except for mere facts) will be protected by copyright regardless. When you expect people to want to copy and reuse it, it makes sense to tell them in advance under what conditions they can do it (instead of being bothered by their questions). This is what displaying a licence is for. If you were a visual designer then a licence would make sense as visuals are likely to be wanted to be copied and used. But a CV, list of projects and comments from customers are probably not likely to be wanted for reuse and distribution, though it is ultimately for you to decide. If you think someone will want to copy and further distribute your content, you'll need to figure out under what conditions you want to allow it, and then search for a licence that fits. If none found, just create your own.
This question has been addressed directly, with very similar facts, by the federal courts, and the answer, based on those decisions, is: Maybe. The most famous case in this area is Mirage Editions v. Albuquerque A.R.T. Co., 856 F.2d 1341 (9th Cir. 1988). In that case, the defendant had bought a copy of plaintiff's art book, cut out the pages, and affixed them to ceramic tiles, which it sold. The defendant relied on the first sale doctrine, codified in 17 U.S.C. 109. The first sale doctrine says that if you own a copy of a copyrighted work, you can resell it without the copyright holder's permission. The plaintiff argued that, by altering the original artwork, the defendant had created a new derivative work. The first sale doctrine gives you the right to sell the book to someone else, but not the right to create derivative works, whether by writing and publishing an unauthorized sequel or, they argued, cutting and pasting and tiling and kilning the physical pages. The Mirage Editions court agreed with the plaintiff that the tiles were a derivative work outside the scope of the first sale doctrine, and therefore the defendants had infringed the plaintiffs' copyrights. However, other courts faced with similar facts have disagreed, and to date I'm not aware of any Supreme Court decision resolving the issue. The bottom line is: you are allowed to sell what you bought; you aren't allowed to transform it into something new and sell that. Where the line gets drawn is muddy and likely to remain so at least until the Supreme Court addresses the issue.
There is no special exemption where academic work is unprotected by copyright. You can quote from academic sources to the same extent that you can copy from non-academic sources, without getting permission. In fact, it is legally impossible to tell if a source of &quot;academic&quot; versus &quot;non-academic&quot;. Attribution is not particularly relevant for copyright, what matters is permission (when required). It may be that a copyright holder will grant permission for an extensive quote provided you attribute the source, and it may be that academic publishers or authors are more willing to grant permission than other publishers / authors. On the other hand, many academic works are very expensive, so that distributing the text for free may have more &quot;effect on market&quot;, and may result in disinclination to grant permission to quote. On the third hand, such quotes are more likely to be squarely directed at the &quot;commentary&quot; motivation behind fair use law. The point here is that there isn't a special law about just academic sources.