Has anyone been imprisoned for noncommercial copyright infringement under US law? Has anyone who was not making money on copyright infringement been imprisoned for copyright infringement under US law?
Criminal copyright infringement is defined by 17 U.S. Code § 506 and by 18 U.S.C. § 2319. The latter section simply sets penalties, the provisions of 17 USC 506(a)(1) define the offense. It requires &quot;willful infringement&quot; for any offense. There are three sub-paragraphs which define forms of criminal copyright infringement. 17 USC 506(a)(1)(A) makes criminal any wilful infringement &quot;for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain&quot;. This need not mean that the infringer made an actual profit, merely that s/he hoped to do so. In United.States v. Cross, 816 F.2d 297 (1987), the US Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals wrote: A conviction under 17 U.S.C. § 506(a) does not require that a defendant actually realize either a commercial advantage or private financial gain. It is only necessary that the activity be for the purpose of financial gain or benefit. of financial gain or benefit. 17 USC 506(a)(1)(B) makes criminal any wilful infringement: by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180–day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000 17 USC 506(a)(1)(C) makes criminal any wilful infringement: by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if such person knew or should have known that the work was intended for commercial distribution. So 17 USC 506(a)(1)(B) would apply to a person who made copies, even at no charge, of works with sufficient retail value, and 17 USC 506(a)(1)(C) would apply to someone who &quot;leaked&quot; a manuscript that was being prepared for commercial publication to the internet or another public computer network. Either of these could be charged when a person had not made any money on the infringement, nor attempted to make any. They were both added to the law in 1997. by the &quot;No Electronic Theft Act&quot;, in response to the case of Brian LaMacchia, who created an online service for exchanging unauthorized copies of commercial computer programs. Because he made no charge, the case against him was dismissed by the trial court. See United States v. LaMacchia, 871 F. Supp. 535 (1994). I have not found any reported cases where there was a criminal conviction for a person who made no charges for infringing copies or acts. But most such cases are not reported in sources accessible to ordinary, free-of-charge search engines. Prof. James Gibson, University of Richmond School of Law writes in &quot;Will You Go to Jail for Copyright Infringement?&quot;: But will an infringer actually go to jail for copyright infringement? Highly unlikely. While the percentage increase in convictions is significant, the absolute numbers are small. ..., there were fewer than two hundred criminal intellectual property convictions in 2010 (and some of those were trademark cases). In comparison, 1,984 civil copyright infringement lawsuits were filed in the same time period. A copyright infringer’s chances of being sued for damages or an injunction are therefore much greater than his or her chances of being charged criminally. Moreover, both criminal convictions and civil suits have been decreasing in number. Convictions peaked at 224 in 2007, and civil cases reached their high of 5,488 in 2006. ... Indeed, the main takeaway from these figures is that the chances that a copyright infringer will suffer any legal consequence – criminal or civil – are vanishingly small. (citations omitted) Trotter Hardy, Professor of Law and Associate Dean of Technology, College of William &amp; Mary School of Law, in the December 2002 article Criminal Copyright Infringement in the William &amp; Mary Bill of Rights Journal finds criminal copyright cases increasing from 22/year to 207/year over the period from 1980 to 2002, but none of the cases cited in that article other than the LaMacchia case seem to have been of a person who did not attemtp to make a profit on the alleged infringement. In short, the law, makes this very possible, but I have not found any evidence that it actually happens. I should mention that violation of the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA (17 U.S. Code § 1201 (subsections (a)(1)(A), (a)(2)(A), (a)(2)(B), (a)(2)(C), (b)(1)(A), (b)(1)(B), and (b)(1)(C)) is a crime, but none of these offenses are infringements of copyright.
From your question(s), as well as your various comments, I understand you to have two general inquiries: 1. Is there any infringement of copyright laws if you use things like the titles of books, games, apps, names, address (and any other number of things) which you will then put into datasets that will be licensed for proprietary commercial purposes? You may freely put titles, names of people, places or things into datasets without fear that you are infringing on copyright or any other laws. That is clear. Copyright law does not protect names, titles, short phrases or expressions. Even if a name, title, or short phrase is novel or distinctive it cannot be protected by copyright. So, there is no point in discussing the doctrine of fair use in this context, because Fair Use is a defense, or a legal safe harbor that is merely an exception to copyright infringement allowing people to use a copyrighted works under specific circumstances. As I understand your intended endeavor, you will not be infringing on any copyrights to the extent that you are merely using factual data, like names of copyrighted things for the purpose of creating a dataset or an application to help access it. This is why I say you need not concern yourself with the test for Fair Use with regard to this issue. The Copyright Office states clearly, despite what people may think, that there are no exclusive rights in brief combinations of words such as: • Names of products or services • Names of businesses, organizations, or groups (including the names of performing groups) • Pseudonyms of individuals (including pen or stage names) • Titles of works • Catchwords, catchphrases, mottoes, slogans, or short advertising expressions • Listings of ingredients, as in recipes, labels, or formulas. When a recipe or formula is accompanied by an explanation or directions, the text directions may be copyrightable, but the recipe or formula itself remains uncopyrightable. Hence, these things are not registrable under a copyright. While something may be potentially attached to or included in copyrighted material, is not in and of itself subject to the protections of these laws. If it (whatever it is) cannot be registered for a copyright, it is not copyrightable. Because copyright registration/notices have been optional since 1989, when the U.S. attached itself to the Berne Convention, whereby copyright protection is automatic as soon as a work is “fixed in a tangible medium of expression” (written down, recorded, painted, etc.) it’s protected. No notice is required. Registration only becomes required for litigation or enforcement purposes. But this is really extraneous to your inquiry anyway, as far as it applies to the actual data. When you get into copying whole databases for your purpose, that analysis is different. 2. You want to "scrub" the internet for information that you intend to put into your proprietary datasets and use for commercial purposes, some or most of which is already in a database or some organized form, and you want to know if there is some sort of copyright or duty owned to the person who originally databased the materials? Since ideas, procedures, principles, discoveries, and devices are all specifically excluded from copyright protection, if you want to compile this type of information from the internet for the purpose of creating datasets, or searchable databases, this is permissible. That said, there are protections for existing databases under copyright law, provided under the concept of a "compilation copyright". A compilation copyright protects the collection and creative assembling of data or other materials. Compilation copyrights protect the collection and assembling of data or other materials, such that databases are generally protected by copyright law as compilations. Under the Copyright Act, a compilation is defined as a "collection and assembling of preexisting materials or of data that are selected in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship." 17. U.S.C. § 101. The preexisting materials or data may be protected by copyright since the selections of materials and the form they take in an existing database may be original enough to be subject to a copyright. However, the data itself is merely information and is not protectable. The Copyright Act specifically states that the copyright in a compilation extends only to the compilation itself, and not to the underlying materials or data. 17 U.S.C. § 103(b). As a result, "compilation copyrights" can't be used to place protection upon those things that are otherwise not protectable. In the case of Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Company, Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a compilation work such as a database must contain a minimum level of creativity in order to be protectable under the Copyright Act. Feist makes clear that even a copyright protected database does not hold the right to prevent an individual from extracting factual data from the database (so long as you're not copying the entire database as a whole). If you take an already compiled and copyrighted dataset in its entirety, you must obtain a license for its use. However, if you are merely amassing great amounts of data to then put into your own dataset, that you are free to do. The big issue will be (and you seem to realize this) where you will amass this data from. Some websites have specific licenses in place that say you cannot use or rework their content. However, many times these websites simply throw these license requirements out there for users to see, despite the fact that they may not be (and some would argue) are not enforceable. The courts have heard arguments that "contracts" (the end-user licenses) that protect databases and information on websites is beyond the protection available through copyright law should be "preempted" by the Copyright Act itself. The preemption argument goes like this: Federal law controlling something that is subject to interstate commerce or use, should be controlled by the federal laws. So,since the federal government has enacted the Copyright Act to govern any protections to any original works, states should be (arguably are) prohibited from having contradictory laws. Because of the ability of a federal statute to preempt state law, and the fact that the Copyright Act at 17 U.S.C. § 301 sets forth specific preemptions, no state may create rights that are equivalent to any of the exclusive rights provided under the Act. It is this concept of preemption that prevents copyright protection from varying depending upon the state where a work of authorship is created. Arguably, the same is true for the internet, and supposed contractual relationship created through licenses that dictates how non-copyrightable material may be used. In the case of ProCD, Incorporated v. Matthew Zeidenberg and Silken Mountain Web Services, Inc. the court examined whether an end-user of a CD ROM phone database was subject to the license, when they extracted a large portion of the database and made it available over the Internet. The database was almost the same as the type of data in the Feist case-The lower court rejected all copyright claims and found that the shrinkwrap license that controlled the end user's right to use the data was both unenforceable (as a shrink wrap license) and preempted by the Copyright Act. As a result, there was no relief available to the creator of the phone database and the end-user was free to extract the data and use it as he saw fit. However, on appeal this decision was reversed (7th circuit). The appellate court did acknowledge that the database (on the CD) was not original enough to be protected by copyright (finding no copyright infringement by the end-user); However, they did find the end-user was breach of contract, since the shrink-wrap license prohibited the end-user's conduct. What this tells us is that these licenses (on websites) may or may not be enforceable. While the 7th Circuit found a contract right pursuant to the license, despite the preemption argument, another appellate court that is more liberal may find otherwise. Also, this was a disk, not the internet, which is the "wild west" of information, largely unregulated and unlitigated as it pertains to the legality and enforceability of (some) regulations that do exist. License agreements for site use on the internet are everywhere. If you take a database from some site that has a license saying you cannot take their work and add to it, or whatever, and you do add it to other databases that are not licensed and then make your own dataset - chances are you are NOT going to be infringing on anyone's copyright. That said, you may be in breach of contract (the license) if they find out about it, and sue you (using it doesn't put you in breach; only getting sued and having a court determine you're in breach puts you in breach. It may be a distinction worth contemplation, but that is up to you). The safest, bet would be to get a license from them to rework the materials. If the material is generic enough, and will be changed enough, that you are creating your own new (copyrightable) work - I'm not sure how they would know you "scrubbed the data in contravention of their license agreement ( I have NO CLUE if there is coding or metadata attached to it such that it's identifiable in that way. I have not tech background and do not endorse taking what's not yours). But if they can and do know, they could cause problems for you. Lastly, I will just say that the internet is littered with sites that claim copyrights, or impose unenforceable licenses on material that is ripe for public use. Just because it says it's theirs does not make it so. The inverse is also true. Just because a site does not claim copyright to something, does not mean it is in the public domain. I would recommend either sticking to public domain/use sites for your scrubbing endeavors, or seeking permissions from the sites who impose licensing requirements. Short of that, I would recommend (as I already have) seeking an formal legal opinion to say that you are not imposing on anyone's copyrights (this could only be done once you showed an attorney every place you took material from, as well as what the material is), and that the licenses from sites with generalized information that may try to limit use, are unenforceable. I would do this before you invest a lot of time or money into something that is largely based on the accumulation of other peoples work product. I wish there was an answer certain, but there just isn't without seeing everything in the end.
A translation is a devivative work - the copyright owner has the exclusive right to these So, yes, translation is prima facie copyright infringement. Strictly speaking, if you translate it, it's a derivative work because you exercised creativity in making the translation; what Google translate does is not a derivative work, it's a copy because there is no creativity. Either way, only the copyright owner can do (or authorise) this. Whether it's legal or not depends on if what you are doing falls within one of the exceptions to the applicable copyright law such as fair use or fair dealing. Attributing the original author does not, of itself, allow translation. Additionally, I'm not able to find the copyright documentation for the site link I provided above. What is "copyright documentation"? Copyright exists the moment a work is created and no further documentation is required. Essentially, I could translate the whole documentation by myself to avoid this problem. No, you can't - see above. If copy-pasting the google translate is illegal, then exactly how much must I edit, move around sentences, change words, and such until the text is no longer plagiarized? All of it. If you were, based on your own knowledge of the software, to write a manual without any copying o the existing manual, that would not be copyright infringement. Is this plagiarism or copyright infringement? It's copyright infringement - plagiarism is an academic misconduct issue not a legal one. where can I check the copyright for the above link? The site you linked has "Copyright © 2020 Acquia, Inc. All Rights Reserved" in the bottom left corner which identifies the copyright holder, the date and prohibits all copying ("all rights reserved"). This isn't necessary but it is helpful. If you really want to do this, contact Acquia, Inc and ask for permission.
From the perspective of US law: Scenario 1: Removing the watermark is perfectly legal, obviously. You own the copyright. Scenario 2: Abandonware is not really a thing in the US when it comes to copyright (and the Wikipedia article you linked says this.) Even if the company went out of business, the copyright almost certainly went to somebody - the former owners, the creditors, etc. As far as the Internet Archive goes, they are taking advantage of an exemption in the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions, along with the copyright exemption found in 17 USC § 108. But both of these exemptions require you to be a "library or archive" to take advantage of them, and you are not a library or archive, so you cannot take advantage of either. As a practical matter, if the software is really abandoned it's unlikely that anyone will actually come after you for infringement, but that's not quite the same as it being legal - you could be on the hook for up to $150,000 in statutory damages per work infringed, if the owner does sue you. You could attempt to claim fair use, of course. If the image is abandoned you might get a favorable result on factor 4 of the fair use test (the effect on the market for the original) since there's no market if nobody can find the owner. But it would depend on the other factors; that alone wouldn't get you fair use. Scenario 3: I'm not sure where you get the idea that downloading a copyrighted image to your desktop is somehow protected. It isn't automatically legal to save a copy of something just because it's on the Internet. And the existence of a watermark may indicate that someone wanted to prevent the file from being copied. The website containing the image will likely have terms of use, which may indicate whether or not you're allowed to make a copy. For example, Stack Exchange's TOS says in part: Subscriber may download or copy the Content, and other items displayed on the Network for download, for personal use, provided that Subscriber maintains all copyright and other notices contained in such Content.
This is not (necessarily) copyright violation It's possible that Quora's usage falls within Fair Use. At the very least, the argument could be made. If it does, then there is nothing that Stack Exchange or the OP can do. Stack Exchange can choose not to protect their copyright Unlike trademarks, which lapse if not protected, copyright endures. Therefore Stack Exchange can pick and choose the copyright fights they want to get involved in and those they don't. If you have brought it to the attention of the copyright owner (or, in this case, licensee) and the copyright owner chooses not to act then you have done all you can and significantly more than you have to do. The OP has copyright I note that one of the examples is your question. As the copyright holder, you are free to issue a DCMA takedown notice on Quora if you feel your copyright has been violated.
are there any safeguards you could take to preemptively block such behavior, such as a disclaimer inside the book cover that reads something like The safeguard you outline would be overridden as soon as the author enters any contract that requires assignment of copyright. (I would not delve in the differences between licensing and copyright assignment because that hypothetical author is dealing with a contract of adhesion which readily requires assignment; the author has no option to change the ToS to allow for licensing only) Under contract law, one of the essential prerequisites is that the conditions of a contract be entered knowingly and willfully. By deliberately clicking on a ToS page to move forward with the uploading a copyrighted work, the author is signaling his awareness and acceptance of the ToS. The fact that the author chose not to read the ToS is irrelevant and very unlikely to strike whatever entitlements the website owner formulated in the accepted ToS. For the same reason, the author's safeguard disclaimer does not bind the website owner: It cannot be said that the website owner was aware of that disclaimer at the time of the formation of contract between the author and the website owner. That is, the website owner did not knowingly and willfully accepted the author's safeguard. The website owner is not even expected to know about any safeguards which one of its potential user intends to establish. The length of a ToS document is also irrelevant because the website owner has the valid argument that "the user-author could have skimmed through the ToS or do a search (via Control-Find) of keywords such as 'copyright' or 'property', whence any allegation of 'inadvertent' assignment of copyright is untenable". Is there a way to protect your IP from inadvertently being licensed/stolen/assigned via TOS "agreements", without having to waste your life reading huge one-sided online "contracts" that are "subject to change without notice" anyway? Yes. That consists of not uploading one's works in such platforms. In contract law that would be expressed as "declining an exchange of considerations". There are many other alternatives for an author to promote his work without being required to assign copyright.
Unfortunately, the "but everyone does that" (BEDT) argument doesn't hold water as evidenced by prosecutions of looters. Would uploading this video be a copyright infringement? It would be hard to answer this part of the question without knowing where and from whom the clips had come from. If the clips came from a company like ESPN or a YouTuber that doesn't give you permission to be able to use their clips then yes this might be a copyright infringement. If you use video/clips that are labeled as creative commons then nt it wouldn't be an infringement. YouTube has a feature for this. Would my actions be fair use? First, we'll need to understand what fair-use is. Fair use is the ability to use copyright material under certain circumstances without permission. To best determine if using copyright-protected material in your work you should weigh it against the four factors of fair use. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; The nature of the copyrighted work; The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. More information about fair-use here Youtube outlines their fair use guidelines here
It turns out that there is no difference between the ethical answer and the legal answer, in this case. The law recognizes the property right which a person has when they create a thing, such as a font, and that right is encoded in the law of copyright. The relevant US federal code is contained in Title 17, which you can read (essentially identical laws exist in virtually or perhaps actually all countries). The important thing to understand is that there is not a distinction between "privately" trespassing on a person's property and "publicly" trespassing on a person's property. The violation of the owner's property rights comes from taking the material without consent. There is a legally-recognized exception to the owner's rights, in the form of "fair use", which is widely misunderstood to mean "if it's not for profit, the property owner has no legal protection". Simply taking and using someone else's IP non-commercially is not "fair use".