Are there consequences for not filing a DMCA (any country) Awhile ago, I linked someone to a fansite of people who read his indie fiction and he cursed me out because there were illegal copies to his work on it. He told me that he was legally bound to file DMCA's now because if he didn't, he would lose the ability to file a DMCA against anyone. Something about "If you do it for one, you have to do it for everyone". I'm also interested in how this works overseas. If someone in Japan or Korea found an english version of one of their novels, would they also be legally bound to file DMCAs over it simply because they became aware of it?
If I understand correctly, you are asking whether a copyright holder's failure to submit a DMCA "takedown" notice in accordance with 17 U.S.C. § 512 prevents that copyright holder from enforcing their copyright. The answer is no, for multiple reasons. DMCA is an optional process First, a common misconception seems to be that the DMCA creates a mandatory process for anyone. It doesn't. The DMCA takedown process doesn't impose an obligation upon anyone: copyright holders don't have to submit DMCA takedowns, and service providers don't have to honor takedown notices. In fact, all 17 U.S.C. § 512 does is it provides a "safe harbor" for service providers who do follow the takedown procedures. In other words, with limited exceptions, DMCA says that internet service providers can't be sued for hosting content that infringes copyright unless they fail to obey a DMCA takedown first. But if the copyright holder isn't looking to sue the service provider, then filing a DMCA takedown is not a prerequisite. Not enforcing copyright now doesn't prevent future enforcement The broader question that you're getting at is also whether it's possible to lose copyright by failing to take enforcement actions in general, not only as authorized by the DMCA. This is a pretty common question because it turns out there's something sort of like this when it comes to trademarks, which are a different form of intellectual property. It's possible to lose trademarks for a variety of reasons: under 15 U.S.C. § 1127, trademarks are abandoned if they cease to be used or if they become genericized, for instance, so failure to enforce the trademark in one instance might cause problems enforcing it later. But copyrights and trademarks are very different, and copyrights are not abandoned in this way. It is actually fairly difficult to lose copyright protection: in countries that have adopted the Berne Convention (essentially every country), copyright exists from the moment a work is created, and though it is possible to abandon copyright, it must be done intentionally and the intent to do so "must be manifested by some overt act indicative of a purpose to surrender the rights and allow the public to copy". Hampton v. Paramount Pictures Corporation, 279 F. 2d 100 (9th Cir. 1960) (citing National Comics Publications v. Fawcett Publications, 191 F. 2d 594 (2nd Cir. 1951)). As to your question about the rules of other jurisdictions, the Berne Convention's mandate that "enjoyment and the exercise of these [copyright] rights shall not be subject to any formality" (Article 5) would suggest that other countries also do not impose additional requirements for the full exercise of rights under copyright law, but the rules of any given jurisdiction vary and it would be impractical to discuss the steps required to enforce copyright in every jurisdiction in the world.
Although the exact answer should depend on the country you are, in general private copies of copyrighted works are allowed. General rules are: You need to have got the work in a legitimate way. That is, that you have purchased a copy of the work with permission from copyright owners or you have got the work from an act of public distribution authorised by copyright owners - if you got it from a website that is not making a copyright infringement itself, you are in the second case. That you don't make a collective or commercial use of the work. (I took these rules from Spanish Intellectual Property law (article 31), but most countries have similar rules, specially in the European Union. Anyway, the exact limits of private copying exception may differ). Since private copying might have an economic effect, some countries collect private copying levies to compensate copyright owners - probably you have already paid for those when purchasing the printer. Therefore, you can print a book downloaded from a website (unless the site is hosting the work without authorization of the copyright owners, as pirate sites do) for your own use. You can't sell the copies or made a collective use of them. Although reach of collective use might be hard to assess, I would suggest that if you want all the people in your class have the book, send them the link so that any one could print their own copy. Update about the USA As the OP has now specified now their country I update the answer with a comment, although an additional answer by anybody more knowledgeable on US law would be great. I'm quite sure that for practical purposes the result is that you can print such a book anywhere in the world. However, I don't know which laws regulates that in the US. Google doesn't return meaningful results for "private copy usa", so I suppose it is know there by another name. Furthermore, statutes in common law countries tend to be less explicit and there might be no case law applicable. For example, I nobody printing a copy of a pdf for himself to read at home has ever been challenged in court in the USA, there might be no explicit rule about the subject.
In the USA, you are covered by the DMCA act, which you should most definitely read. I can't sue you and your website for copyright infringement unless I first send you a DMCA takedown notice. (Of course I can sue, but I will lose). In the DMCA notice I have to tell you who I am so that you can contact me, I have to tell you under perjury that I am the copyright holder or an agent of the copyright holder of some work, and that I believe your website is infringing on that copyright. You then have the choice to remove the material, which means I cannot sue you for copyright infringement because you acted on my DMCA notice, or you can refuse to remove it and I can include you in a copyright infringement lawsuit. By not acting on a DMCA notice you take full responsibility. If you remove the material, you should inform the person who uploaded it. That person can decide to be Ok with the removal (and hope they won't get sued for copyright infringement, and they usually will be fine), or they can send you a counter notice. That counter notice would tell you that the uploader believes he or she isn't infringing any copyright. After receiving a counter notice, you may reinstate the material, and you tell the sender of the DMCA notice. Again, you are now legally protected. The uploader can now be quite sure to be sued, unless the DMCA notice was sent in error.
If you're in the USA, this almost certainly falls under fair use, or if you are in another jurisdiction, it almost certainly falls under an analogous exception for educational use. The fact that the excerpt is short contributes to this conclusion. You can also avoid having to rely even on these exceptions by choosing sources that are in the public domain. The specific date before which a work is guaranteed to be in the public domain depends, again, on your jurisdiction, but it's probably sometime in the early 20th century. For example, you're certainly on solid ground if you use Dickens.
Under US copyright law, all works are protected by copyright except for US Government works. The concept of "public domain" is not legally well-defined, and is used colloquially to refer to government works, works whose protection has expired, works available to all, and works not copyrightable (such as scientific laws or old software). Under older copyright law, releasing a work without the copyright symbol effectively put the work in the public domain. One can simply say "I dedicate this work to the public domain", and that is typically taken to be enough. CC0 purports to do this (using more words). However, as far as I can tell, author rights under European law are so strong that it is simply impossible. Releasing works into the public law has to be consistent with other aspects of the law. If you grant an perpetual exclusive right to copy and distribute to a publisher, their right does not go away on your death (a right which they would not have with a real public domain work). A problem is that an author who makes such a dedication (a bare license) could revoke the license and reassert their copyright. They could be estopped from making that argument. As property, your heirs would inherit the copyright and could (try to) revoke the license. Presumably the courts would not allow them to pursue ostensive infringers. Nevertheless, your plan is neither trivial nor bullet-proof.
It would seem that your song is a derived work. You took the original work and found words that sound the same. If the original work had used different words, your work would have ended up differently. So you have a derived work. Same as making a translation; if the original was different, then the translation would be different, so the translation is a derived work. I was asked "How is this not straight up infringement". But it is. Not only copying is an exclusive right of the copyright holder, but also the creation of derivative works.
Alice has been developing her own enhancements, and they're pretty similar to Bob's. Neither Alice nor Bob has copied the other's enhancements, so neither has violated the other's copyright in the enhancements. Whether that could be proved in court is another matter, of course, but since the original work is licensed under creative commons the question unlikely to arise in court. Would Alice be prevented from coming up with enhancements to her own game if other people could prove they thought of and released the idea first? No. Copyright does not protect ideas. It only protects a particular expression of those ideas from being copied. Theoretically, if two authors come up with identical 500-word descriptions of something and can establish that each did so independently, neither has a claim against the other. The practical problem there, of course, is that it would be impossible to prove such a thing. Could Alice outright claim Bob's "Adapted Material" because he developed it on her original work? Assuming that in publishing his adaptations Bob followed the terms of the creative commons license with respect to the original work, Alice's only claim would be that he copied her adaptations without following the terms of the license. If Bob can show that he did not do so, her claim would fail. In a comment, you wrote: Suppose Alice went ahead and intentionally, somehow provably ripped off Bob's "Adapted Material" because she liked the content so much, does Bob reserve any rights on his adaptation, or is Alice able to commercialize the work that Bob did in extending her original work? If we assume that Bob complied with the license of the original material, we know that he licensed his adaptations under "the identical terms," so Alice would be able to use Bob's adaptations under those terms for non-commercial purposes. Since the assumption here is that Alice provably copied something of Bob's, I think it is fairly clear that she would be liable for damages if she exploited that material commercially without paying royalties.
This is relatively uncharted legal territory, so until multiple cases establish some sort of precedent, we can only guess. I know of no legal requirement that a Browser or User has to submit cookies or referrer data or other meta-information accurately. In that regard, a user is unlikely to be prosecuted just for submitting HTTP headers. It is likely closely related to Free Speech issues. The DMCA spells out that it is illegal to circumvent copyright protection measures. While this law is typically used to make it illegal to copy DVDs, video-games or streaming movies, it is possible that the "3-free articles" policy could be interpreted as a copyright protection mechanism, and defeating it by changing HTTP headers is a circumvention. A good summary is here. A specific site's TOS (Terms of Service) probably contains language that spells out it is a violation to use the site in a manner other than as it is intended. This is a typical anti-hacking, anti-screen-scraping provision. Altering a browser session to circumvent their services is probably a violation of the license to access the site, and may open a user to a civil lawsuit for damages or even criminal hacking charges (the details of which are different state-to-state)