Downloading music using &quot;online converters&quot; Is it illegal to use online converters to download .mp3 files of songs from websites such as Soundcloud, YouTube etc. You can search online for terms such as youtube to mp3 or download from soundcloud and find countless sites that allow users to paste in links and direct-download an .mp3 file of songs. I think I've heard that distributing music collected this way is illegal, but keeping them for yourself is okay. I've seen this post, but I'm specifically interested in general music from any website. What are the laws regarding this? And do they vary in different countries (UK, Australia, North America etc.)?
Under US law, the use of the converter is irrelevant. The legal situation would be the same if they were posted in MP3 format, or downloaded and played in whatever format they are posted in. The point is making and distributing copies without permission. The first question is: Is the music protected by copyright at all? If the work is old enough, there is no copyright on the composition. For example, most works of classical music will be long out of copyright. However, the recording itself can be copyrighted, even if the composition is not. In general, if recording was published before 1972, it will not be protected by US copyright. There are some other edge cases where the the recording will not be protected. See This chart for details. Assuming the recording is protected, the second question is: is the posting legal? That is, was the music posted by or with the permission of the copyright holder? If not, any download or further use would be copyright infringement, although holders are unlikely to sue individuals who download for personal use only. If the posting of a protected work was legal, the key question is, did the user have permission or some other legal basis. It is generally considered that when music (or other content) is posted to the net, there is an implied permission to download it for personal use. Alternatively and to the same effect, this might be considered in US law to be a case of fair use. But this will stop at personal use. Any making of additional copies, redistribution of such copies, or public performance of the music will require permission from the copyright holder. In the absence of such permission, it will be infringement, and the holder could sue. Permission may be granted directly, by contract, or by a permissive license. But permission in some form is required for such use to be lawful. I should add that the creation and distribution of a new (cover) version of a copyrighted song or other music may be permitted under US law by a compulsory license, known as a &quot;mechanical license&quot;. This is provided for under 17 USC 115. There is a specific procedure to follow, which involves notifying the copyright holder and paying royalties at a specified rate. Failure to follow this procedure, unless permission is obtained in some other way, means that making and distributing recordings (phonorecords) is copyright infringement.
The DMCA prohibits circumvention of technological measures that effectively control access to a copyrighted work. So you can't legally "crack" the software, period -- even if you own a disc containing the software and have a valid license to use it, a license to use the work is not authorization to circumvent access controls. So if the disc is copy-protected, by my understanding of the DMCA, you're kinda screwed. (The company might be willing to provide you a replacement copy, even if only to maintain the illusion that the software is "licensed, not sold". But you can't make one yourself.) Likewise, if you have a copy of the disc but have lost the license key, you're screwed. Even if you could prove beyond any doubt that you are the licensee, there's not any law i'm aware of that would compel the copyright owner to provide you another license key. And courts have held that distribution of license keys without authorization is a violation of the DMCA. So whoever might provide you another key, if they're not the copyright holder, has broken the law. If you managed to copy the disc from a friend (without circumventing any kind of copy protection), and had your own license key, you might be in a better position. Many EULAs allow you to make a backup copy. Even if they didn't, copyright law does, so there's a possible case for fair use.
Content posted to the web is usually openly accessible to all (unless protected by a password, paywall, or similar restriction). But that does not mean it is freely copyable by all. Such content is protected by copyright in just the same way as if it had been published in a book of essays by various contributors. Unless the copyright holders (who are likely to be the original authors, but might not be) give permission, or an exception to copyright applies, copying such content would be clear and obvious copyright infringement, and any copyright holder could sue for damages. Permission could be given by publishing the content under a permissive license, such as a CC-BY-SA license, or any of many other available permissive licenses. Or a would-be reuser could find the copyright holders and ask for permission. If the holder cannot be found or identified, or does not respond, then no permission has been granted. In the US the main exception to copyright is fair use. See this answer and other threads with the fair-use tag here for more on fair use. Since the question seems to contemplate using the whole of the posted content, since it might well damage any potential market for that content, and since the use does not seem to be &quot;transformative&quot;, nor used for criticism or comment, a finding of fair use for this situation seems unlikely. But Fair use findings are very much fact-driven, and the exact facts do matter. Thus I cannot be at all sure whether a court would find this toi be fair use or not. In other countries there are a variety of exceptions to copyright, and I have not come close to reviewing them all. But none of the ones I know of seem to apply to the situation described in the question. Many are narrower than the US concept of fair use. I fear that without permission, copying this content would be infringement. However, it would not be infringement to create a site that includes a link to the existing content, and a summary or description of that content, along with new content, including comments on the old, with brief quotes to indicate what is being commented on.
Let's examine some laws that may apply to your case Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) There are criminal penalties for willful infringement for personal financial gain. If you are only sending it to one family member through a private communication (eg not posting it publicly) and not selling it and one copy of the music video has a retail value of $1,000 or less then there will be no criminal penalties. But you may be liable for civil penalties. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) Courts have ruled that ToS violations do not constitute unauthorized access (or exceeding access) so you aren't in violation of the CFAA Civil Liability By downloading a video off of YouTube you are in violation of their ToS. There isn't enough prior case law for me to tell you the outcome here. You may be committing some sort of civil wrong by the act of downloading. In addition, you are distributing a copyrighted work without permission which would open you to more civil penalties. The real question is how likely is it for this to be enforced? Not likely.
You are required to provide a copyright notice on your work, such as putting (c) rhino 2016 in the liner notes. Nothing precludes you from licensing that copyright in any way you want, such as Creative Commons. As long as you aren't in violation of the last sentence (your work is not primarily the samples, and you actually made a song with them), then others should be able to use your work with no restrictions other than what you yourself place on the work. The purpose of requiring a copyright notice on derivative works is to give notice of who the actual author is and distance the original author from the derivative work. If you take their samples and make a song that is later at the center of a lawsuit (copyright, defamation, etc), the the copyright notice will hopefully steer people first to the derivative author and not the original author. That is the purpose of the clause in the copyright grant above.
You don't need to &quot;publish&quot; your song to obtain copyright protection. Original works are protected by copyright at the instant they are fixed in a tangible medium. This means that if you type the lyrics, write an arrangement of notes, or record yourself playing the song, the song is copyrighted.
Sure, you can. But if you, from the US, contract with and pay someone outside the US and then use the results of that effort - the reverse-engineered code, either directly in violation of copyright or to find workarounds - within the US, you may not be culpable in a criminal sense (depending on different jurisdictions and trade/IP agreements), but you certainly would be liable in a civil sense. If the US based software developer (I assume a US-based software company, as you said "outside the US") tracks you down, they can open a civil action against you for any damages they want to claim, including theft of IP, loss of profits, EULA violations, and on and on, because you posses and are using reverse engineered code. How much money do you have to lose?
Any adapted work derived from a work used under a CC-BY-SA licnese must be distributed, if at all, under a compatible license. The question is whether a large work incorporating a much smaller work is said to be "based on" that work. The CC-BY-SA 4.0 legal text does not use "include" or "incorporate" or any similar term to define an adapted work, instead it says: 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. For purposes of this Public License, where the Licensed Material is a musical work, performance, or sound recording, Adapted Material is always produced where the Licensed Material is synched in timed relation with a moving image. If including a single work makes your book Adapted Materiel, than you must either release the book under the same license, or else not rely on the CC license. I am not at all sure if such use would make the book Adapted Materiel. If the content could be quoted (perhaps only in part) based on fair use or fair dealing or a similar theory, you would not be relaying on the license. But whether such use is legitimate is always a very fact-bound question, which will depend on various specific facts. See Is this copyright infringement? Is it fair use? What if I don&#39;t make any money off it? for a summary of US fair use principles. If the materiel you want to use would not qualify under fair use (or whatever similar principle applies in your jurisdiction), and the book would be considered Adapted Material, then you would have to omit it or put the book under the CC license. I see in The CC case law page the statement that: The atlas was a compilation not a derivative work, so did not need to be licensed under the SA term, Which might apply to your book. If it does, you would not need to place the book under a CC license. Update: On reading CC's detailed wiki page on Drauglis v. Kappa Map Group, LLC I find the statement that Use of a whole work is suggestive of a "compilation" rather than a derivative work subject to the ND/SA terms. attributed to the US District court (DC district) that decided this case in 2014. If that decision were followed, it would seem that the book would not be considered a derivative work and while proper attribution must be provided, and the applicable license must be indicated, the book itself need not be released under CC-BY-SA.