Are you allowed to transcribe a copyrighted manuscript? Say there is a manuscript such as this that isn't in the Public Domain. I have seen one (don't remember where) where it was a manuscript that the museum said they wanted to share online but is "unreleased" and so copyright protected in some way. In that case, and other cases like it, I am wondering if you are allowed to transcribe the picture of the manuscript into say electronic text form, or what the rules are generally around that.
The question contains an incorrect assumption -- the assumption that this manuscript or any ancient manuscript is protected by copyright. As can be seen in this well known chart under US law an unpublished document, such as a manuscript, is protected for only 70 years after the death of the author, or 120 years after the work was created if the death date is not known, or the identity of the author is not know, or the work is of corporate authorship. A work written by a person who lived from circa 950 to circa 1010 is in the public domain under US law, with no room for doubt. The exact term of copyright protection may vary somewhat under the laws of other countries, but in none of them is a document written by a person who died over 1,000 years ago protected by copyright. This work is in the public domain, and no one owns any copyright in it. (A manuscript whose author died after 1948, or that was created after 1898 might well be protected by copyright.) [The statement in italics above is apparently incorrect. It seems that under UK law such a work may be under copyright if it is unpublished. IMO this is a bizarre result but such seems to be the law.] The current owners of the physical manuscript can control who has access to it, and on what terms. Thy could use an NDA or other contract to prevent such people from publishing or distributing the text. But if they allow general access to it, they have published it, and anyone may legally republish it as they see fit. Any person allowed access under a restrictive contract to which s/he has agreed may do whatever that contract permits, and not what it does not. A modern derivative work, such as an annotated edition, or a translation, would have its own copyright, but this would not protect the original text. If the original question means that there is an unpublished manuscript recent enough to be under copyright, then its author or the author's heir or the person or entity to whom the copyright was sold or given or left owns the copyright. In that case, no one may make a copy of the manuscript, including a transcription, or of any part of it, unless with permission from the copyright holder, or in such limited ways as is permitted by fair dealing (in the UK and much of Europe) or fair use (in the US). The question does not give enough detail to judge if the partial copy suggested would qualify -- this always depends heavily on the specific facts of the case. It seems that under UK law some unpublished works are protected which would be in the public domain if they were published. I am not sure how they can be share without being legally "published" and so lose protection.
The images and text are copyright (if they are). What Google does with them is fair use/dealing. It works like this: if Google's bot can find them then you (the owner) have put them on the World Wide Web presumably because you want people to see them, effectively you have put them on public display. Google is assisting you in that endeavour by enabling people who are looking for what you are displaying to find it. Their use of your material enhances its value to you which is a rock solid defence. If you don't want your stuff on public display then a) don't put it on a public part of the web - there are plenty of private cloud storage facilities or B) stick a file in your website that tells bots not to index it.
&quot;The Holy See owns all copyrights in the works published under its name or created on its commission (art. 5).&quot; Since this painting was commissioned by the Vatican for the Sistine Chapel, they own the copyright to it. The first sentence just says the Vatican owns all copyrights that exist, it doesn't speak to whether any copyrights exist in the first place. Earlier in that article, it says &quot;The law provides for copyright 70 years after the death of the author, or 70 years after publication for works with no named author.&quot; I don't know off-hand when Michelangelo died, but I'm pretty sure that it was more than 70 years ago. So if there is a copyright, it has long since expired, and who owns it is a moot point. The painting is well in the public domain. If there were a valid copyright, a sculpture would be a derivative work and would require a license.
Usually not, usually Translating literary works is generally regarded as an adaptation, but I don't think translation programs—and HTML and Markdown, two markup languages with similar principles—are adaptations. According to the description on Creative Commons, Merely changing the format never creates a derivative. So changing WAV to MP3 is not considered an adaptation, nor is changing DOC to PDF. As for HTML and Markdown, it seems a bit vague, but it can be said that although their encoding methods are different, the results presented are very similar. According to https://creativecommons.org/faq/#when-is-my-use-considered-an-adaptation, a modification rises to the level of an adaptation under copyright law when the modified work is based on the prior work but manifests sufficient new creativity to be copyrightable Adaptation produces a derivative. A derivative contains both the will of the original author and the adapter. Creation involves choice, the painter chooses the colors to use, and the translator chooses the words to translate. There are inherently fewer options to create a program. Rendering markdown to html can be done directly through other programs, and it is difficult to see the shadow of the adapter. Editorial originality is very import. Yet one more thing is important: legal definitions. This is what it says in the https://creativecommons.org/faq/#what-is-an-adaptation FQA page What constitutes an adaptation depends on applicable law So, the laws of where you live still matter. We all know that there is a large gray area in copyright law, which often makes everything depend on the actual situation. This is just a little bit of my personal thoughts for your reference :)
Copyright in musical works extends to the composition itself, not just to the sheet music (as you notice, there may not even be any sheet music). If the musical work is protected by copyright then publishing a transcription of that work would be a potential violation of the copyright, subject to exceptions such as fair-use and fair dealing. If the piece is in the public domain, then you can publish your transcription.
Whoever "derived" the illegal derivative work most likely has copyright in his derivations, unless they are not worth copyright protections. Say I take the Harry Potter books and add a few chapters and try to sell it - that's copyright infringement of course, but I have the copyright on these additional chapters. However, I don't have the right to allow you to copy the derived work. And even if you have the right to copy the original work, you don't have the right to copy the derived work because it is a different work. I could extract my changes, and allow you to take them and do with them what you like. You could then create an illegally derived work yourself. I couldn't sue you, but the original copyright holder could. To the comments: One, a work and a derivative of the work are not the same, so even if you have the right to make a copy of a work, that doesn’t give you any right whatsoever to copy a derivative work - they are not the same work. Two, the copyright holder has the exclusive right to control copying and the creation of derivative works. If the copyright holder doesn’t want derivatives to exist, then creating them, copying them etc. is always copyright infringement.
All computer programs are not just copyrightable, they are protected by copyright as soon as they are put into fixed form (for example, as soon as I type it on my computer which will save it as a file on a disk). The copyright owner doesn't have to take any actions whatsoever to have a computer program protected by copyright. It’s not just computer programs, even many fonts are copyrighted because they are essentially computer programs. BTW. What I just wrote is also protected by copyright. There are some licenses involved that I agreed to when I submitted it to this website, and which allow the website to publish and you to read this text, but I'm the copyright holder. PS. There is a comment saying “computer programs are not literary works and therefore not copyrightable”. That may have been true or arguable in the 1980’s. It’s not true now. PS. No, stack exchange doesn’t own the copyright to my post, I do. Unless I was an employee of the company and posted on their behalf. Stack exchange needs and has a license to publish this post.
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.