Is certification required to become an author&#39;s editor? According to this source, I would not need a license to be a freelance editor. But if I had a business, the source says I may need to register the business, and I also may need a vendor's license depending on the circumstances. However, would I need to undergo any registration if I edit a single author's books? Also, would my services be taxable? If relevant, assume I am paid per page.
Editing is protected speech under the First Amendment. The government may not require any license to perform such services, though an author could impose whatever credentialing requirements she chooses. If you have created a business to provide those services, that business may need to be registered with/licensed to business in the state generally, but again, it would not require any special licesnse to perform editing services. Whether you provide those services as an individual or as the agent of a business entity, any income you derive from editing is subject to taxation the same as any other income you receive.
You'll want to read the actual licenses yourself and understand what is required. If you don't understand, then you'll want to consult an attorney. But neither of these licenses are all that complex in my opinion. MIT: Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the &quot;Software&quot;), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. Apache 2.0: Redistribution. You may reproduce and distribute copies of the Work or Derivative Works thereof in any medium, with or without modifications, and in Source or Object form, provided that You meet the following conditions: (a) You must give any other recipients of the Work or Derivative Works a copy of this License; and (b) You must cause any modified files to carry prominent notices stating that You changed the files; and (c) You must retain, in the Source form of any Derivative Works that You distribute, all copyright, patent, trademark, and attribution notices from the Source form of the Work, excluding those notices that do not pertain to any part of the Derivative Works; and (d) If the Work includes a &quot;NOTICE&quot; text file as part of its distribution, then any Derivative Works that You distribute must include a readable copy of the attribution notices contained within such NOTICE file, excluding those notices that do not pertain to any part of the Derivative Works, in at least one of the following places: within a NOTICE text file distributed as part of the Derivative Works; within the Source form or documentation, if provided along with the Derivative Works; or, within a display generated by the Derivative Works, if and wherever such third-party notices normally appear. The contents of the NOTICE file are for informational purposes only and do not modify the License. You may add Your own attribution notices within Derivative Works that You distribute, alongside or as an addendum to the NOTICE text from the Work, provided that such additional attribution notices cannot be construed as modifying the License. Nowhere does either license require you to publish your application's source code, even if your application is directly based on the original code.
Contracts don’t have to be in writing Generally, there are specific exemptions. For example, in some jurisdictions, copyright transfers have to be in writing. Written contracts do not have to take any particular form Again, in general, some specific contracts may need to be in particular forms or explicitly deal with particular matters. Writing doesn’t mean ink on paper Of course, ink on paper is “writing” but so is an email, a text message, a Facebook post, a photo, a comic book. In law, writing simply means a semi-permanent record. Signatures are not required Unless, of course, they are in the specific circumstances. Your examples The plumber’s promise is both binding and unnecessary - the plumber is responsible for his own negligent acts and omissions even without such an agreement. On the other hand, if you promised not to hold him responsible, that promise would be binding. The designer’s agreement to transfer copyright is binding even where such agreements must be in writing because it is in writing. See What is a contract and what is required for them to be valid?
The (journal) publisher's interest is presumably to comply with conditions imposed by the copyright owner: CUP might demand of Elsevier that their reviewers delete electronic copies of books after the review is finished. In keeping and using the work (and perhaps freely distributing that copy), you have violated CUP's copyright (assume that CUP holds the copyright). Therefore you can be sued. Elsevier can also be sued. What is not clear is how many people can sue you (and whether you can sue anyone). It would depend on whether you were informed of the deletion requirement before you agreed to review the work. If you were led to believe either that you would get a paper copy of the work, or at least would be able to retain and use the electronic copy for your own use, the journal publisher does not have the option of rewriting the terms of that agreement after the fact. If you reasonably relied on them granting you permission to keep the work, they can't sue you. You might even be able to sue them, insofar as getting a free copy of an expensive book in exchange of writing a review is a standard academic business deal. On the other hand, if they told you in advance that you'd have to delete the review copy, then that is the end of the discussion. If you didn't read the agreement, that too is the end of the discussion. It is not clear what recourse the rights holder might have against you. You have no contractual relationship with the book publisher, and the journal publisher is not the agent of the book publisher so the book publisher is not bound by the errors of the journal publisher. Because you are expected to know that all IP requires permission of the rights holder to copy and since you know that the journal publisher is not the copyright holder, you are on thin ice in assuming that the copyright holder has granted you permission to copy the work. Indeed, even agreeing to review a work in electronic form is a dubious proposition, without suitable legal assurances that the rights holder has granted permission to make the required copies. If a journal buys a physical copy of a book, it can lend or give it to you to write a review, and no permission is required wrong the book publisher. To review an electronic copy, permission from the book publisher is required. You might try defending yourself against an infringement suit under the fair use doctrine, since the underlying purpose of "fair use" is precisely to allow book reviews. If the journal publisher was negligent in not informing you of the copyright conditions imposed on them (which they are supposed to impose on you), your infringement may be innocent, and you might only have a small liability. You could sue the journal in case the book publisher sues you – the journal publisher has a duty of care to you. Technically speaking, you're in trouble once you download the illegal copy, and technically speaking, you infringe copyright every time you read the work. Digital content is, or should be, distributed under some license (a contract between you and the rights holder), otherwise it is illegal to receive or use the work. Hence various public licenses grant permission to copy, subject to various limitations: the use may not be commercial; the work may not be redistributed; the work may not be altered; the work may not be redistributed in exchange for money, or some something of value... The teeth that digital licensing has is that if you copy and use a work contrary to the terms of the license, you do not have permission (the rights holder has granted conditional permission). Copyright law gives the rights holder the exclusive right to authorize making any copies, and in order to use a computer file, a number of copies are made (by various programs). The basic protection is that "the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following: (1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords; (2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work". Copies are statutorily defined as "material objects, other than phonorecords, in which a work is fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. The term “copies” includes the material object, other than a phonorecord, in which the work is first fixed." One or more "derivative works" (with no added creative content) are created in getting from a pdf file to a computer screen. In §117, Congress created an exception to general copyright protection, whereby one can make "another copy or adaptation" of a computer program provided Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided: (1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner, or (2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful. This exception only covers computer programs, and not data files, and as the Copyright Office says You are not permitted under section 117 to make a backup copy of other material on a computer's hard drive, such as other copyrighted works that have been downloaded (e.g., music, films). It is also important to check the terms of sale or license agreement of the original copy of software in case any special conditions have been put in place by the copyright owner that might affect your ability or right under section 117 to make a backup copy. There is no other provision in the Copyright Act that specifically authorizes the making of backup copies of works other than computer programs even if those works are distributed as digital copies. I say that "technically", it is infringement if you open and process a digital file that you do not have permission to copy (via a license), because that is what the law says, and no court case has deemed that Congress intended something entirely different. It is notoriously difficult to establish legislative intent. Since Congress did articulate narrow exceptions in similar cases (computer programs, also secondary transmissions of performances and display of works, and did not include any exception for copies made by computer programs in the course of "using" a protected work, but could have, we can conclude that Congress did not intend to create such an exception. One might point to other facts to argue that Congress did intend that. At present, I believe that the Supreme Court would uphold the letter of the law, but there is really only one way to find out. That is, at any rate, the basis for the copyright holder pursuing an action against you (or, you and the journal). Even without any prior notification of a requirement to delete, they can still tell you that you must delete the work. They probably could not successfully force you to delete the work in a court of law, but there are many other things that they can do that boil down to the fact that you must delete that copy of the work. Blackballing, for example.
Under United States law, copyright is normally held by the creator of a work. There is one major exception to this rule: the "work for hire." If something is considered a "work for hire" under the copyright statutes, the copyright is held by the employer. Whether something qualifies as a work for hire is a complex analysis: here is a Copyright Office circular covering some of the basics. To be clear, I'm not giving an opinion (and I don't have enough information to give an opinion) on whether any specific works you or your fiance may create or commission qualify as "works for hire." It's a narrower test than you probably think it is. If the work is not a work for hire, the copyright holder owns the copyright, and anyone else can use it only with a license from the copyright holder. A license can be implied by the parties' behavior and communications--but it shouldn't be. If you're in a situation where you need to know, for example: That you are allowed to use the artwork forever, and the artist can't ask you to stop later; That you are allowed to change the artwork if you need to, even a simple change like cropping or adding a filter or text; or That, if your product is successful, the artist won't be able to sell another license to someone else to compete with you; then you need a written contract spelling out who owns the copyright and what the rights of the other party are. A lawyer can draw up a simple, re-usable form contract for you cheaply that will prevent the problems you're worried about. Remember: even if this is a work-for-hire situation, if you need to prove that down the road, it may require a trial, or at least preliminary motion practice, to do so. That's a lot more expensive than getting your ducks in a row now will be. tl;dr: Get a lawyer. If you're in a major city, there may be a local arts law organization that will provide you with free help for a simple job like this one. (Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts operate in several East Coast cities, and I know many top commercial lawyers who do pro bono for them).
You can't, in general, know whether a distributor of a work has permission to distribute, or is a pirate site. I verified that they have posted an illegal copy of a work that I created, and I know that I did not grant permission to them (or anyone) to infringe my copyright. Both hosting and downloading works without permission is a violation of copyright law, so both parties are liable. Downloaders may erroneously rely on the "I didn't know!" defense, which in the US carries no legal weight. Even so, if you download my book, it will probably cost me vastly more to sue you for infringement than the damages that I might be awarded over your infringement. Usually, copyright holders go after the pirate sites, and only rarely go after particularly egregious serial downloaders.
First off: Legally, everything is copyrighted anyway. Licensing is not at all necessary. Hence, even if a court would disagree with # SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0, that would just make it closed source. Having said that, the law generally doesn't bother with trivialities such as &quot;file headers&quot;. Any commonly accepted way to state the copyright and license terms is OK. Your LICENSE is such a common convention. If you want to avoid all doubt what is covered under that license, put a reference to that LICENSE in each header. If you have just five files in one directory that are all licensed the same, I wouldn't even bother with that. Again, the default position is that everything is closed source.
The author, or the copyright holder if the author has sold or assigned the copyright, may register a copyright at any time, even many years after the work was copyrighted. However, for all modern works (since 1978 in the US) the work has copyright protection as soon as it is created and set down in a tangible form (such as on paper or in a computer file), whether it is registered or not. Registration cannot gain or lose copyright protection. It is evidence of the copyright, and it provides some additional rights if an infringement suit should occur. If there are multiple co-authors, one author should ideally register on behalf of all of them, listing all co-authors, but multiple registrations will do no major harm. No one who is not an author or copyright holder of a work (or a valid authorized agent of the author or copyright holder) may legitimately register a copyright in that work. Registration procedures and the exact benefits of registration vary by country. In fact, some countries do not have any copyright registration. Edit: In the US, registration procedures are described in Circular #2 from the Copyright Office. Falsely registering a copyright is a crime under 17 U.S.C. § 506(e), and could be reported to law enforcement. See also Wikipedia's article on "Copyfraud". If a false registration has been made, the true author can file a conflicting registration. This should be sufficient to allow a copyright infringement case to be filed. It would be very wise to consult a lawyer with experience in copyright infringement issues before taking steps in the matter. Second Edit: It is one of the elements of an infringement claim that the plaintiff owns the copyright, or has been authorized by one who does. often this is not disputed, and is passed by with no significant time or effort. But if a false copyright registration has been made, in which a person who was not the author claims to be the author, then evidence clearly establishing the actual authorship will probably be needed if the case goes to court. A registration establishes a rebuttable presumption that the person who registered the copyright owns it, and this presumption would need to be overcome.