Do I need a license to play music on free internet radio? I want to make an internet radio station where I play music I like. If there are no adds and I don't make any money whatsoever, do I need to worry about copyright?
Yes Playing recorded music in public is unlawful without permission (licence) from the copyright holder. Many jurisdictions allow automatic licensing by signing up with and paying for it through the authorised music organisation.
Whosampled.com is not just facts The information that a song was sampled in another is a fact. But the sample itself is not a fact! The sample is a sound file and an artistic work, for which Whosampled has most likely a license to offer, but which you under that license may not distribute. Further, the agglomerate of the whole website is more than just a mere fact, it is a database. Also, while a simple fact is technically free to reproduce, you still might contractually agree to not do certain things, like reproducing the facts. Yet, Terms of Service don't always hold water and some passages might be illegal - and thus void.
Wikipedia and you likely have no contract. If you don't have to click "I agree" to access the data, its likely there is no contract. Therefore this is a pure IP law question. The ONLY IP law issue that I see is copyright. The DATA is not subject to copyright. Only the expression of that data. So copying the html and selling that IS potential copyright infringement. Copying the data in some other format and using that is not. Finally, even if you do copy the full html (i.e. full expression), this MAY be licensed by their terms of use (as you suggested they have licensed some content). That is a more particularized legal question that I can't answer here.
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).
No. Copyright does not have exemptions for obsolete works, use with credit, or non-commercial use. Depending on the purpose for the distribution, this could be fair use, but it is unlikely that a court will consider this fair use when the only reason is for other people to be able to play games. Perhaps you could try contacting Adobe; it's possible that they will give you a license to distribute the Flash Player. This isn't directly relevant to the legal aspect of copying Adobe's Flash Play, but to answer the underlying issue of legally playing Flash games, perhaps you/others could try Gnash, a libre reimplementation of Flash. I have not used it, but apparently Gnash can run some Flash software without using Adobe's player.
It seems that you don’t understand what parody is. If you do understand, please explain how it’s even possible to parody computer code. What you can do with “open source” code depends on the licence the copyright holder(s) release it under. For some very permissive licences you can do what you suggest, for most, you can’t.
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.
The terms transfer IP rights only for the New IP, meaning that Customer would own the new stuff. Developer will still own their old stuff, but Customer will have the right to use the old stuff, depending on the license terms. If the license is as in your link, then it is forever (but this is a stub, so I assume that the license will be more specific and possibly restrictive). You retain all your rights to old stuff, customer will not pay royalties for the old stuff, and they can transfer or extend the license, or part of the license, to others.