Legality of putting ads on an academic studying tool that contains user-generated content? I made a web app that helps users generate interactive study notes, which facilitates their studying. The nature of this kind of user-generated content is that it will inevitably contain copyrighted material from textbooks and other studying material. This situation is very similar to that of studying tools like Quizlet. My question comes in 2 parts: Is it legal to put ads in my web app if it contains user-generated material that may contain copyrighted material? If I don’t put any ads, is it considered fair use to operate a web app like this?
Fair use is a four-factor test. Whether the use is commercial is part of just one of the four factors. Fair use is determined on a case by case basis, and it would be rather silly to assume that everything a user could post would be covered by fair use. Rather than just rely on the possibility of fair use, you may want to utilize the DMCA protections. Doing so can protect you from copyright liability for the user-generated content. You will have to register a DMCA agent, and expeditiously respond to takedown notices and counternotices.
Cheating is not a legal concept, fraud is. Obtaining an essay written in India or by your mother is not fraud. Fraud comes in inducing the university to give you something of value (a passing grade, or perhaps admission) based on a material false statement ("I wrote this myself", or making false statements about your interest in tennis). A number of people were recently charged with various forms of fraud (mail fraud and honest services mail fraud) for similar actions (spelled out here). I do not know of any case where a student has been criminally prosecuted for turning in a purchased essay, but in principle it could happen.
Makerbot's explanation of the Terms is accurate This is comparable with most other services that host and display User-created content - even with SaaS providers, as per Interpretation of content ownership/usage in service provider agreement. They are correct that they are asking for the lots of broad rights, but it's all qualified with (my emphasis): 3.2 License. You hereby grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company and its affiliates and partners, an irrevocable, nonexclusive, royalty-free and fully paid, worldwide license to reproduce, distribute, publicly display and perform, prepare derivative works of, incorporate into other works, and otherwise use your User Content, and to grant sublicenses of the foregoing, solely for the purposes of including your User Content in the Site and Services. That is, if they use your User Content for a purpose other than including it in the Site and Services (and you have not agreed to this use), you may be entitled to relief in the form of an injunction or damages.
Pretty much everything you need to know about the ownership and licensing of your material on Medium is in the Medium TOS you contractually agreed to when you signed up with the service. Basically, you granted Medium a license to use the work, but you did not agree to an exclusive license nor turn over copyright to them. Part of that Terms of Service – Medium Policy reads: Content rights &amp; responsibilities You own the rights to the content you create and post on Medium. By posting content to Medium, you give us a nonexclusive license to publish it on Medium Services, including anything reasonably related to publishing it (like storing, displaying, reformatting, and distributing it). In consideration for Medium granting you access to and use of the Services, you agree that Medium may enable advertising on the Services, including in connection with the display of your content or other information. We may also use your content to promote Medium, including its products and content. We will never sell your content to third parties without your explicit permission. You’re responsible for the content you post. This means you assume all risks related to it, including someone else’s reliance on its accuracy, or claims relating to intellectual property or other legal rights. You’re welcome to post content on Medium that you’ve published elsewhere, as long as you have the rights you need to do so. By posting content to Medium, you represent that doing so doesn’t conflict with any other agreement you’ve made. By posting content you didn’t create to Medium, you are representing that you have the right to do so. For example, you are posting a work that’s in the public domain, used under license (including a free license, such as Creative Commons), or a fair use. We can remove any content you post for any reason. You can delete any of your posts, or your account, anytime. Processing the deletion may take a little time, but we’ll do it as quickly as possible. We may keep backup copies of your deleted post or account on our servers for up to 14 days after you delete it. Pertaining to presenting Medium content in an iFrame on another site, this is reasonably close to not allowing that: You may not do, or try to do, the following: ... (2) access or search the Services by any means other than the currently available, published interfaces (e.g., APIs) that we provide;... You can use Embed Code Generator | Embedly to embed an iFrame of a Medium page on another site. But contacting Medium via the email at the bottom of the TOS would tell you for sure if it is OK. Comments on your pieces on Medium do belong to the owner. And You own the rights to the content you create and post on Medium. appears to cover the idea of copying your material from Medium to your own site. If in doubt, ask them.
Exactly the same way it works over all other content There are no special classes of copyright, there’s just copyright. What a user of a service may do with copyright materials will be spelled out in the licence. If there is no licence, then they are left with fair use/fair dealing.
You are asking the wrong question. It should be: When you have downloaded the content and metadata, what are you allowed to do with it and what is forbidden? Somebody owns the copyright to the text and images in the thumbnail. This could be the operator of the third party website, or that site has licensed the content from yet another party. You haven't licensed it from anybody. So you can watch the content in accordance with the TOS, and your computer can evaluate the metadata to do it, but you cannot display it on your own site. Details will differ between jurisdictions, of course. You might also be held responsible for illegal content in the thumb you generate. Follow-up: There seems to be some question of what 'thumbnail' and 'card' mean in this context. This answer assumes a somewhat scaled-down representation of the content of the entire page, not just a collection of actual metadata like content length and expiry.
The first question is whose law you are concerned with, since in principle you might have violated copyright law in any country, and might be sued under the laws of multiple countries. The US has a concept of "fair use" which is notoriously difficult to apply. When you are sued in the US, you can defend against the allegation by arguing certain things: telegraphically, this includes purpose and character of use, nature of the work, substantiality in relation to the whole, and effect on market. Plus there is a 5th factor to be considered, transformativeness. The court then weighs these factors to decide if the use is "fair". By reading existing case law on the topic (conveniently available from the US Copyright office) you might develop a fact-based opinion of the risk: you would be vastly better off hiring an attorney who specializes in US copyright law to do an analysis for you. Do not hire a programmer to give you legal advice (do not hire an attorney to debug code). You would "fail" on the test of substantiality in that you are copying a highly substantial portion of the original work(s). You would "win" on nature of use (research especially non-profit and commentary are the underlying purposes that drive fair use law). It's not clear how you would fare w.r.t. nature of the work, which is intended to distinguish the extremes "news report" and "literature and artistic work" where copying news is at the fair use end of the spectrum. It is not clear how you would fare on "effect on market", but probably not so badly: are you avoiding some licensing fee? Coupled with the tranformativeness consideration, you are most likely having no effect on the market, since the product that you will distribute is not the original work, but a scientific conclusion about the work. Germany has different laws, and this article would be relevant if you cared about Germany. There was a change in the law that expanded the analog of fair use pertaining to research use. That law allows 15 percent of a work to be reproduced, distributed and made available to the public for the purpose of non-commercial scientific research. That, b.t.w., does not refer to what you are planning to do (unless you also publish quotes); for personal scientific research you may reproduce up to 75 percent. Since this is a new law only a year old, you could become part of the cutting edge in testing the limits of the law. So the standard disclaimer applies: ask your attorney. But note section 60d of the law which legalized data mining, and is squarely on point: (1) In order to enable the automatic analysis of large numbers of works (source material) for scientific research, it shall be permissible to reproduce the source material, including automatically and systematically, in order to create, particularly by means of normalisation, structuring and categorisation, a corpus which can be analysed and to make the corpus available to the public for a specifically limited circle of persons for their joint scientific research, as well as to individual third persons for the purpose of monitoring the quality of scientific research. In such cases, the user may only pursue non-commercial purposes. (2) If database works are used pursuant to subsection (1), this shall constitute customary use in accordance with section 55a, first sentence. If insubstantial parts of databases are used pursuant to subsection (1), this shall be deemed consistent with the normal utilisation of the database and with the legitimate interests of the producer of the database within the meaning of section 87b (1), second sentence, and section 87e. (3) Once the research work has been completed, the corpus and the reproductions of the source material shall be deleted; they may no longer be made available to the public. It shall, however, be permissible to transmit the corpus and the reproductions of the source material to the institutions referred to in sections 60e and 60f for the purpose of long-term storage.
It's a contract violation if you're under the EULA. It may be a contract of adhesion, but such "clickwrap" contracts been found to be acceptable and enforceable in software EULAs out of necessity. However, there may be some limits. If you're not under the EULA, as you argue, then you lack a license to use the software at all and it's an outright copyright violation and/or a theft or misappropriation of the software. Whether or not you can be sued depends in part on what you do with it — if you don't release the material or otherwise cause damages then there's not much to sue for... Added for clarification: to answer the framing question, supposing neither contract or copyright applied, one could be sued in tort or in equity (i.e. for unjust enrichment).