I&#39;m writing a book and ask for help on Worldbuilding Stack Exchange. Does my book become CC-BY-SA because I used an answer from WB.SE? The following question is similar to If I include an unmodified CC-BY-SA work in a book, does the whole book have to be CC-BY-SA?, but there is a contextual difference I believe is unique enough to ask a new question. If I am wrong, please mark this question as a duplicate. Over at Worldbuilding.SE a user asked, basically (and simplifying), if there were any books, movies, etc. on the market that contained material from Worldbuilding. I posted as an answer my belief that there would be few if any due to the limitations imposed by Stack Exchange's use of the CC-BY-SA license. To wit, while some of the work (e.g. a book) could be copyrighted, those portions (at least) that fell under CC-BY-SA could be used by a film maker with proper attribution but without compensation to the author. In my I-only-think-I'm-a-lawyer-because-I-slept-in-a-Holiday-Inn-Express-last-night mind, CC-BY-SA made that portion of the book open game for &quot;fair use.&quot; One of our mods then asked if CC-BY-SA wouldn't then make the whole book CC-BY-SA, a question that's partially answered by the previously linked question... but not exactly. The Situation I'm an aspiring author with a novel in progress, but I'm stuck while developing my fictional world for the work. I saunter over to Worlbuilding.SE and ask how I can resolve my problem. I follow SE's rules such that the question is specific and answerable and I get a dozen answers — one of which fits neatly into the world I'm building. I use the idea as a modified idea because, kinda by necessity, nothing actually written on Worldbuilding.SE is editor-ready for any work, but because I received the solution from the Stack, I attribute the concept to the respondent.1 Can I (and I assume only one can be chosen)... (a) Copyright the entire book, despite CC-BY-SA but providing proper attribution? (I get, for the sake of argument, 100% of whatever movie rights the author is entitled to. The respondent gets 0%.) (b) Copyright the the entire book, despite CC-BY-SA, but copyright of the attributed concept is granted/retained/owned by the respondent? (I get most of the movie rights and the respondent gets the rest.) (c) Copyright the book save that one concept, attributed to the respondent? (I get most of the movie rights but the respondent gets 0% because they've lost control via CC-BY-SA.) or... (d) There is no practical copyright, the entire book is CC-BY-SA and a film maker can make their film, so long as both I and the original respondent are attributed, without any compensation to either of us? As you might imagine, the answer to this question will be of great interest to the users over at Worldbuilding.SE. Please note that there might be a follow-up question posted based on the answer to this one that asks whether or not the author can claim copyright protections should anyone else us the selected respondent's answer to the author's question. But that's not contemplated in this post. 1 And don't think that creating a useful attribution from a website that uses usernames wouldn't by itself cause a legal nightmare. But let's assume I was able to get in contact with the respondent and get a suitably legal attribution.
Placing a work which uses idea suggested in a Stack Exchange post under a CC-BY-SA license is not required Copyright law is clear: copyright does not in any case protect an idea or a method of achieving a result. In the US 17 USC 102(b) provides that: (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. There are similar provisions in the law of most countries Article 2 of the Berne Copyright Convention protects “literary and artistic works”, not the ideas expressed in such works. The text of the CC-BY-SA license states in section 3.b: In addition to the conditions in Section 3(a), if You Share Adapted Material You produce, the following conditions also apply. The Adapter's License You apply must be a Creative Commons license with the same License Elements, this version or later, or a BY-SA Compatible License. Notice that this applies only to &quot;Adapted Material&quot; Section 1.a of the license defines Adapted Material: Adapted Material means material subject to Copyright and Similar Rights that is derived from or based upon the Licensed Material and in which the Licensed Material is translated, altered, arranged, transformed, or otherwise modified in a manner requiring permission under the Copyright and Similar Rights held by the Licensor. Use of an idea is not a translation, alteration, transformation or modification of a source work. Note further that section 2.a.2 of the CC-BY-SA license states: For the avoidance of doubt, where Exceptions and Limitations apply to Your use, this Public License does not apply, and You do not need to comply with its terms and conditions. This means that when an exception to copyright (such as fair use or fair dealing) permits a use, he terms and restrictions of the license do not apply. It also means that when a limitation of copyright law prevents a lawful claim of protection, the license and its terms and conditions also do not apply. Thus the license does not purport to cover protection of ideas, as copyright law dos not protect them. This means that there is no such thing as a &quot;copyright on a concept&quot;. Choice (a) of the four in the question would be the normal response, the finished book is under copyright to the author, until or unless s/he sells it or gives it away or licenses it. The author could choose to release the book under a CC-BY-SA license (which is essentially option (d)), but is under no obligation to do so. (And this would be very unusual.) Options (b) and (c) are not really legally possible. If the other person does enough of the work to be considered a co-author, that person would get half of all profits unless the co-authors agreed on a different split, which they may choose to do. But merely providing an idea in a typical worldbuilding.se post would not normally be enough to make the poster a co-author. Derived works What many find confusing in a situation of this sort is the issue of derivative works. When one work is based on another, the later work is said to be a &quot;derivative work&quot; and one may not create a derivative work from a work protected by copyright without permission from the current copyright holder. For example, creating a sequel to a work of fiction that uses the distinctive setting, and at least some of the distinctive characters from the source work would usually be considered a derivative work, and require permission if the original is protected by copyright. But merely using an idea from an earlier work would not constitute creating a derivative work. In the US, 17 USC 102 (quoted above) would forbid this. In US law a derivative work is defined in 17 USC 101 as: a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications, which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a “derivative work”. Similar definitions apply in other countries, and in the Berne Convention. Merely using an idea does not make a later work a derivative work. There must be detailed, distinctive, non-generic similarity of setting, character, plot, or other creative element of the original. General ideas such as &quot;a couple coming from feuding families fall in love&quot; is not enough. Professional writers asked about the value of an idea for a work are apt to say things like: Ideas are ten a penny. It is what a writer does with the idea that matters. Specifically, author Lawrence Watt-Evans writes on his witting FAQ page: I have this cool idea -- if I tell it to you, will you write it, and we'll split the money 50/50? No. Ideas are cheap. I have far more than I can use; there are literally hundreds in my files that I haven't used yet. I have this nifty idea -- has it ever been used before? Yes. Pretty much every idea you can imagine has been used, and probably at least a decade earlier than you'd have thought possible. (The first story describing something like the Internet was published in 1909.) So simply using ideas, particularly ideas specifically offered to help a writer in progress, will not require the resulting book to be placed under CC-BY-SA. However, if such a post contains a detailed and specific way to use an idea, copying those details might require getting permission from the post author. In practice, such a suit would be quite unlikely. Multi-Licensing Note also that the author of a work released under a CC-BY-SA license, such as a SE post, is free to re-release under a different, less restrictive license, if s/he so chooses. The copyright owner is not bound to continue using the CC-BY-SA license, nor to use the same license to everyone. The poster of an SE answer could, for example, grant the poster of the corresponding question a free license to use content from that post on any terms the poster chooses, including on simple attribution alone, with no share-alike requirement. Thus if the person who posted the question and wants to use content from an answer asks the poster of the answer for permission, and gets it, there is no need to place a book under a CC-BY-SA license, even if the book uses so much of the post as to become a derivative work of the post (unlikely but possible, as described above). Attribution The question reads: And don't think that creating a useful attribution from a website that uses usernames wouldn't by itself cause a legal nightmare. But let's assume I was able to get in contact with the respondent and get a suitably legal attribution. One may validly attribute to a pen name, which is what a user name is, legally. It serves to credit the originator of the idea or text quoted. Many CC tests are posted under usernames or pen names, and people make reasonable attributions and fulfill the terms of the license often. Something like Concept based on a post to worldbuilding.stack exchange by user &quot;QRS&quot; on {date}. Post available at {URL}. ought to be a sufficient attribution. There is no need to learn the legal name of the poster. In fact all the CC licenses allow the licensor to specify a pen name to be used for attribution, and in the absence of any other statement, the user name would be that pen name. Fair Use The question reads: ... CC-BY-SA made that portion of the book open game for &quot;fair use&quot;. A CC-BY-SA does not in any way increase (or decrease) the scope of fair use in a work licensed under it. In fact, where fair use (or any other exception to copyright) applies, the CC-BY-SA license explicitly does not apply. A CC-BY-SA license is a grant of permission, over and above what fair use permits, to use the work. CC-BY-SA seems similar to fair use in that it allows a person to reuse a work, or part of one, without specifically asking permission, and without paying any fee. But the basis is different. Under a CC-BY-SA license there is no need to ask permission because the owner has already given permission, that is what the license does. That permission is limited by the terms of the license, including the SA part. Under a claim of fair use one is allowed to reuse a protected work because the US Congress has decided that m a limited amount of reuse is for the public benefit, and has included this exception into the rights given to the copyright owner. Any fair use is restricted by the terms of 17 USC 107 and the complex case law developed under that provision. So each grants permission for reuse for specific reasons subject to limits. But the entity doing the granting is different, the reasons are different, and the limits are different. CC Licenses The questiion reads, in option &quot;d&quot;: (d) There is no practical copyright, the entire book is CC-BY-SA It is not the case that a CC license, such as CC-BY-SA gives up or loses copyright. It is the case that the owner of the copyright in such a work gives up some of the rights s/he would otherwise have had, including the right to insist n payment for any use or modification of the licensed work. However, a commercial filmmaker is unlikely to want to use a work under a CC-BY-SA, because of the license that such a film would need to be released under. As I explain in the &quot;Multi-Licensing&quot; section above, the owner of such a copyright can still grant to a person or firm a different license on different terms. A filmmaker could still get the right to create a film based on such a work in a traditional arrangement in return for a royally or fixed fee, and the filmmaker would not need to release the film under a CC-BY-SA license.
Can he use another commercial product that is copyrighted, e.g. a map of a location (the map is a political map and has nothing to do with trees), for his tree research purposes, if such a map won't be part of the book he works on? Yes. Copyright protects particular expressions of ideas and knowledge, not the ideas and knowledge themselves. Using a map for research purposes when the map or a modified version of it does not appear in the final work does not make the final work a &quot;derivative work&quot; covered by copyright.
You are confusing two separate concepts: trademark and copyright. I'll give you a broad overview of both of these, although the details will differ depending on what country's law we're talking about. A copyright is held by the creator of a work of artistic expression. It gives the creator certain exclusive rights, including the right to create copies of the work and to prepare derivative works. For example: The movie "Star Wars" is a work of artistic expression. You cannot copy "Star Wars," or any significant part of it--including the script, the music, etc.--without the permission of the copyright owner, unless your use fits into one of the exceptions to copyright in your jurisdiction. Likewise, you cannot write your own book featuring the Star Wars characters: that would be a derivative work, a work based on the original work, and would violate the rights of the copyright holder. Without having read the book in question, I'm not going to comment on whether it does or doesn't infringe the film's copyright. But ideas can't be copyrighted. A film review, for instance, isn't a copyright violation--and a longer work discussing the ideas involved in a film isn't necessarily a copyright violation, either. Copyright only protects the expression itself--the language, the images. You are very limited in how much of that you can copy, but as long as you're using your own words, copyright protection is less of a concern. Trademarks, on the other hand, are intended to protect a business from customer confusion. Trademarks are not protected in the same way as copyrights; the key analysis of a trademark infringement lawsuit is: does it create confusion about the origin of the goods? For example: if you slap a swoosh on a shoe, Nike will sue you. If you use a swoosh in a political cartoon criticizing Nike, they won't, because nobody is going to think Nike wrote the political cartoon. So: If you write a book and call it: "Ewoks Gone Wild: A Star Wars Story," Disney will sue you, because it would be reasonable for someone who saw that book in a store to think that Disney authorized that book. If you wrote a book called "Forcing the Issue: The Hermeneutics of Science Fiction Movies from Star Wars to Inception", the case would be less clear-cut. But the important thing to understand is that these issues are complicated. There are exceptions to these rules; there are applications that may not be obvious to the non-lawyer ("initial interest confusion" is one minefield in U.S. trademark law), there are national and EU-specific considerations, there are safe harbors, and there are practical considerations, like whether you can afford to fight a lawsuit even if you're in the right. Therefore, I'm not going to tell you whether your hypothetical work would infringe anyone's copyright or trademark, and I'm not going to give you a set of rules on how to avoid it. The only person you should be listening to that sort of advice from is a real, non-anonymous-internet lawyer, licensed to practice in your jurisdiction, who is familiar with the specific details of your specific situation.
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).
All computer programs are not just copyrightable, they are protected by copyright as soon as they are put into fixed form (for example, as soon as I type it on my computer which will save it as a file on a disk). The copyright owner doesn't have to take any actions whatsoever to have a computer program protected by copyright. It’s not just computer programs, even many fonts are copyrighted because they are essentially computer programs. BTW. What I just wrote is also protected by copyright. There are some licenses involved that I agreed to when I submitted it to this website, and which allow the website to publish and you to read this text, but I'm the copyright holder. PS. There is a comment saying “computer programs are not literary works and therefore not copyrightable”. That may have been true or arguable in the 1980’s. It’s not true now. PS. No, stack exchange doesn’t own the copyright to my post, I do. Unless I was an employee of the company and posted on their behalf. Stack exchange needs and has a license to publish this post.
Copyright is hard. The movie has a copyright, and so has its ship model. This is the original copyright. The boardgame has a token. That thing has its own copyright, no matter if it's a parody of another thing or not. The copyright holder might not be the boardgame maker, but it is under copyright. In any way, parody is fair use, so no harm here. The model has a copyright, but also infringes on the film's copyright as it is a derivative of the film. If the film copyright holder wants, they can have it taken down and sue the maker. In any way, this model is available under a specific license. The model license is clearly Non Commercial. The CC-A-NC license can't be changed to one that is commercial. You can only add more No categories. The questions: 1 - No. Your work is a derivative work of both the model AND the boardgame. You don't parody the boardgame. 2 - You need a license from not one but at least two sources: the model author and the boardgame copyright holder. You might even need a license from the original film company. 3 - YES. He made the model, he can license it as he wants, but the license might be ineffective: He might have coverage under an explicit fan license with the movie company to make the model (allowing sharing under such other license) or not (when it might be silent acceptance of fan works, am implicit license or just plain lack of knowledge of the infringing model) - determining if the company wants to pursue is not your legal battle. Your battle is more likely with the copyright holder (of movie and boardgame) anyway because you lack a valid license from them. &quot;I used this infringing model and breached the license I got it under&quot; is... a very precarious point in court. 4 - No. You used the other work, you can't get out of the CC-A-NC license by altering the item. It'll always be a derivative work of the model you put in. You only get copyright in the changes. The resulting item has shared copyright with the original model maker. He gave you a license to do that, but the unbreakable condition unless you get a different license is: You can't ever sell this, you HAVE to tell them that I was part of this design.
The comment is incorrect; creating a derivative work without permission is still disallowed, even for private use. In US copyright law 17USC 106 defines the exclusive rights that the copyright holder has, the right &quot;to do and to authorize&quot;. The second of these is: (2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work; Note that the right is the right to &quot;prepare&quot; a derivative work, not the right to &quot;distribute&quot; or &quot;sell&quot; the work. US copyright law defines a derivative work in 17 USC 101 which reads: A “derivative work” is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications, which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a “derivative work”. The laws of other countries are similar to US law on this point. Article 2, paragraph 3 of the Berne Copyright Convention provides that: (3) Translations, adaptations, arrangements of music and other alterations of a literary or artistic work shall be protected as original works without prejudice to the copyright in the original work. However, it should be noted that if a person creates a derivative work in private, and never shows it to anyone else, the copyright owner would never learn of it, and so could never sue for infringement. But if it were shown or described to anyone, and the owner did learn, then he owner could in theory sue. Whether the owner would choose to sue over a derivative work never circulated is a different matter. The real effect of this law is that when an infringing derivative work is distributed and the owner wants to sue, the owner need not prove distribution. Proving creation of the derivative work is enough. The quoted comment asks about whether such a rule is &quot;unconstitutional or something&quot; and says that &quot;You should be allowed to do whatever you want with your own stuff in your own home.&quot; The US constitution does not grant any such broad right. There are lots of things one might do in own's own home that are illegal: building a bomb for example. Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the US Constitution, sometimes called the Copyright Clause or the IP clause, grants Congress the power: To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. See the LII page &quot;Intellectual Property Clause&quot; and the page Nature and Scope of the Right Secured for Copyright where it is written that: Congress was within its powers in giving to authors the exclusive right to dramatize any of their works. Even as applied to pantomime dramatization by means of silent motion pictures, the act was sustained against the objection that it extended the copyright to ideas rather than to the words in which they were clothed. {Kalem Co. v. Harper Bros., 222 U.S. 55 (1911). For other problems arising because of technological and electronic advancement, see, e.g., Fortnightly Corp. v. United Artists Television, Inc., 392 U.S. 390 (1968); Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios, 464 U.S. 417 (1984).} See also the Wikipedia article &quot;Copyright Clause&quot;.
Regardless of the license associated with a document, there is no copyright protection on information. Copyright protection prevents copying "expression", e.g. the wording, but not the facts / opinions expressed through those words. The non-legal academic concept of "plagiarism" is where the notion of attribution primarily comes into play. There is a special exception under 17 USC 106A that imposes an attribution requirement for works of visual art. CC and other license schemes may add in an attribution requirement for actual copying of the expression (the "BY" attribute in CC). If a work is licensed under CC-BY, you may copy the actual expression provided that you follow the terms of the license, which primarily means that you have to attribute the work in the prescribed manner. This does not apply to extracting information from a work, because information is not protected by copyright.