Can digital signature/Hash sequence be copyrighted? So in order for you to copyright your piece of work - any work -- it has to meet criteria of minimum creative value. According to &quot;An artist’s guide to copyrights&quot; by Laura Levin-Dando: a broad range of creative works, such as photographs, visual art, audio recordings, sheet music, novels, and screenplays. If you expended creative effort to make something, you created it independently without copying someone else’s work, and it is embodied in a physical format Therefore, things that deemed to lack creative value or are facts (phone numbers) cannot be copyrighted. Where does this leave sequence of characters like digital signatures or hashes? They arguably don't have artistic value on its own - while they are unique, it just machine-generated sequence of bytes. It would be different if, for example, you used bunch of existing or valid hashes to compose them in ASCII art - but it would protect that piece of ASCII art only, wouldnt it? Plus, from my point of view - they are factual things. Windows.dll version 1.0.2.003 has md5hash aea603dba12c6e23b7b0ab9db4f81120 - this is a fact. A file, containing list of hashes for list of files is not copyright protected on its own, even if it is a part of something which partially protected by copyright (software, video game). Am I missing something? P.S. If we delve into patent territory, then you can patent the mechanism by which has generated but not the product -- hash/digital signature -- itself. P.P.S I'm talking in this specific case about signatures used to sign files but not the authoritative ones like SLL Certificates, signed and what not or personal digital signatures. Just a signature for the encrypted container that is regenerated anew every time it is created.
The quote in the question and the question text both imply that what is protected by copyright is &quot;creative effort&quot; or &quot;creative value&quot;. In united-states law at least, the test is &quot;originality&quot;. In many, probably most, cases these will be the same. But there can be things with &quot;creative value&quot; that are not considered original enough for copyright protection, or in some other way are not subject to copyright protection. Individual words or short phrases such as the titles of works are not protected by copyright, even if they have creative value, for example. An improvised song or dance that is not recorded is not protected, however creative it may have been, because it was not &quot;fixed in a tangible form&quot;. However, a hash computed from a text is indeed a fact, just as a statement of the number of characters the text contains, and it would not be protected by copyright. The hash algorithm might or might not be protected by patent, and the code to a hash program might be protected by copyright. But the resulting hash value will not be protected by either.
To the extent that the photograph is an expression of the operator's originality (e.g. framing, subject, angles, camera settings, etc.) it is the operator who has the best claim to copyright. Whether it was &quot;made by a machine&quot; misses the issue: what matters is the degree to which the purported author contributed originality. In your hypothetical, the operator is the person responsible for fixation of the work and the person who contributed original expression to the work. It is the &quot;the product of [that person's] exercise of skill and judgment&quot; (the Canadian standard) and an expression of a &quot;modicum of creativity&quot; (the U.S. standard). See generally, CCH Canadian Ltd. v. Law Society of Upper Canada, 2004 SCC 13; Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co. Inc., 499 U.S. 340 (1990). But the Copyright Office has stated that: [it] will not register works produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any creative input or intervention from a human author. The crucial question is “whether the ‘work’ is basically one of human authorship, with the computer [or other device] merely being an assisting instrument, or whether the traditional elements of authorship in the work (literary, artistic, or musical expression or elements of selection, arrangement, etc.) were actually conceived and executed not by man but by a machine.” Copyright Compendium, s. 313.2 I am comfortable predicting that a mere 10-second delay will almost always fall on the side of the line where the operator would be considered to be an author.1 1. At the other end of the spectrum are pre-positioned cameras that record continuously or when triggered by motion. Who (if anyone) holds the copyright in that circumstance has not been answered, with opinions differing across jurisdictions and academics: some arguing that the device owner would hold copyright, some arguing that no one would, others arguing that it would be fact-based inquiry about who might have contributed sufficient originality.
united-states The composition of a photograph, a painting, or an image of any sort is one of the elements that can be protected by copyright, and indeed one of those aspects that make an image original and thus a proper subject of a copyright under US law. A new image that imitates the original and distinctive composition of another might be held to be a derivative work, and thus an infringement of copyright if done without permission. Note that the composition must be original. A photo of, say, two people standing side-by-side has been done many times, and would probably not have any distinctive element of composition. The images shown as part of the question look rather distinctive to me, but for all I know this is a cliche that has been done over and over. If this came to an actual lawsuit a defendant could present evidence showing the composition to have been previously used by others, and thus common coin, free for anyone to adopt. This would be similar to the Scènes à faire concept. Things that have been done over and over are not original and are thus not protectable by copyright. That would ultimately be a judgement for the court to make, dependent on the facts of a specific case. I suspect this answer is correct for the laws of many countries, but I can only confirm it for US copyright law.
No The artwork is all covered by copyright that, in Japan, lasts for 70 years after the death of the last artist. As employees of Squaresoft, the artists don’t own the copyright, Squaresoft (or it’s heirs or assignees do). So, the copyright currently vests with the successor company Square Enix. They are the only organisation with the right to make or licence derivatives. While they currently don’t want to, they might in 10 or 20 or 40 years and any work you made would damage the profitability of that hypothetical project. So it isn’t fair use. So you can’t do it.
Probably Not The creator or owner of a piece of software does not in general have any copyright over the output when others run the software, unless that output is itself a derivative work of input supplied by the copyright owner, or forming part of the software. In this case the translation is a derivative work of the 19th century original, but that is assumed to be in the public domain. SAo google has no copyright on the resulting translation. But copyright protection is only available for &quot;original works of authorship&quot;. (See 17 USC 102 in the US, and similar laws elsewhere.) A machine-produced translation is not an original work, and it is surely not then work of the author of the overall book. However, the author would still have a copyright on the book as a whole. The legal situation is no different than if the author had simply quoted a 19th century work. One may incorporate public domain works into a later work, and that later work is still protected by copyright, provided that there is enough original contentr to make the work as a whole &quot;an original work of authorship&quot;. Others may use the PD [arts, or the original from which they are taken, but not the rest of the work (beyond what fair use would allow in any case). For example, I have made a number of posts here on LAW.SE. In several,of those I quoted sections from one of the numbers of The Federalist. That 19th century work is in the public domain. Anyone else may re-quote the passages I quoted from it. But that gives them no rights to use the rest of my work, except as the CC-BY-SA license or fair use permits. So the author would retain copyright on the book as a whole. But soemoen who merely quotes or uses the translated 19th century article but none of the original parts of the book would not be infringing that copyright. I say probably in the header, because I do not have any actual case-law to cite here. It is possible that some court has rules otherwise on the subject of the copyright on the output of a software tool, but I strongly doubt it.
Names of people, institutions, and events are not protected by copyright. Things that have occurred at events like math tournaments are facts, and may be recounted, in your own words, with no fear of infringing any copyright. Facts are never protected by copyright, although a particular description of facts could be, and so could a particular selection and arrangement of facts. Specific math techniques and their names are not protected either, and may be described without infringing copyright. The items you mention in the question are: video game / movie references and names No copyright issue here. common integration bee problems No copyright issue here. names of a university / math competition organizers No copyright issue here. integration techniques and formulas No copyright issue here, unless you copy an extensive description of a technique without rewriting it in your mown words.. using someone's Overleaf Latex package to format the book This depends on the license for the package, but there is not likely to be an issue. In short I think you are worrying over issues that are in fact non-issues.
Copyright in the US is usually a civil matter. Meaning that the copyright owner can sue (typically for money damages or injunctive relief) an infringer. The criminal laws that we have are aimed at the reproducer and/or distributor. In other words, chances are that you won't get in any criminal trouble for accessing academic articles of dubious origin. But never say never. RIP Aaron Schwartz.
It is not possible to say that this is generally fair use, although sometimes it would be. A copy for personal use is still a copyright right violation on its face, and fair use does not categorically exclude non-commercial or personal use of copyrighted works. It is a highly fact specific inquiry. The likelihood of anyone discovering that you have done so and deciding to sue over it is slight, but that doesn't mean that there isn't potential copyright infringement liability. Compare this to speeding. People do it all the time, and even driving one mile per hour above the speed limit is still a traffic violation. But it is rare for less serious violations to be ticketed.