Legality of selling transcription services on copyrighted material? I provide an audio transcription service, for which I charge according to the audio length. Mostly I receive either audios or videos that have been produced by the person or organisation that sent me the material to be transcribed, so the copyright is theirs on both the source and transcript. No problem. Sometimes, however, I get asked to transcribe material that is publically available online (e.g. podcasts or YouTube videos), and not owned by the person requesting the transcript. The transcript may or may not be for the requestor's personal use. Is it illegal for me to transcribe this sort of material? I understand that a transcript of a podcast or video is a derivative work, and only the copyright owner can authorise creating a derivative work. Thanks.
"I understand that a transcript of a podcast or video is a derivative work, and only the copyright owner can authorise creating a derivative work." You've answered your own question, at least for the US and Berne Convention (Wikipedia) signatories.
It is legal Because of the first sale doctrine a person may freely sell a copy that they legitimately own. Copyright preserves the owner's right to make copies - Copy-right; once they have made (or authorised) a copy then the physical embodiment of that copy (record, CD, DVD, book etc.) is personal property and can be bought and sold like any other piece of personal property. The prohibition on copying its contents remains.
It's not fair use. Fair use is when you do something that normally only the copyright holder can do. Playing a video game is the ordinary, intended use of the work. In the United States, ordinary use is not protected by copyright. 17 USC 106 sets out the rights protected by copyright. The include copying the work, producing derivative works, distributing the work, and so on. None of these are ordinary use. Someone could perhaps argue that you are creating a derivative work. I doubt that argument would work because you are not taking any protectable elements from the work. But if anyone did argue that, it would make sense to also argue that if that's so, your use would still be covered under fair use because it's transformative, does not substitute for the original work in any way, and takes very little of the work.
The length of a literary work doesn't determine if its use is fair use. Copyright does not cover names, titles of works, catchwords/catchphrases/advertising slogans etc. or lists of ingredients (like in a recipe or chemical instructions), however, the procedure can be copyright. The work must also be original. If the tweet copies something that already exists then there is no copyright in the tweet - if the thing that is copied has copyright protection then the tweet itself may be a violation. That said, assuming that the Tweet enjoys copyright protection, the owner will be the author: presumably the owner of the Twitter account. For anyone else to legally use it, the use must be either: Licensed by the copyright owner Fair use (USA) or Fair Dealing (most everywhere else in the English speaking world) For Item 1, the Twitter terms of service say: You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed). In case you don't know what that means, Twitter gives you this plain English summary: Tip: This license is you authorizing us to make your Tweets on the Twitter Services available to the rest of the world and to let others do the same. So, you can get permission from the copyright holder or from Twitter. Well, Twitter has given permission: Except as permitted through the Twitter Services, these Terms, or the terms provided on dev.twitter.com, you have to use the Twitter API if you want to reproduce, modify, create derivative works, distribute, sell, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, or otherwise use the Twitter Services or Content on the Twitter Services. Providing you use their API, you can "reproduce, modify, create derivative works, distribute, sell, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, or otherwise use the ... Content ..." Therefore, fair use/dealing considerations are irrelevant.
You also retain the right to license the work to others. Therefore you can sell similar rights to MusicBook and anyone else, as long as you do not grant an exclusive license (you have already licensed another party to distribute). They do not gain the right to sub-license your work. If you had executed a copyright transfer, you would have no rights to the work whatsoever (leaving out moral rights for jurisdictions that have them and where they are absolute).
Generally, it's illegal. You are creating a derivative work and you are not allowed to do that without the permission of the copyright holder. Some jurisdictions may have exceptions, such as fair use under US law. However, this generally protects uses that are intended to comment on or parody the work. It doesn't sound like that is the purpose of your image modification. NOT including: faceswaps, modifications that would shame or affect negatively the reputation of the actors on the image. That doesn't make it legal. I share it in a way that I don't make any economic profit out of it, and clearly stating that it is a modified image (not sure if inside the image, or in the caption under it) and state who is the legal owner of the original image. That doesn't make it legal, either.
I'm not a lawyer; I'm not your lawyer. I would interpret the Copyright Board's interpretation in relation to tariffs when musical works copied for private use only, as the document's scope does not appear to extend beyond that. However, in BMG Canada Inc. v. John Doe, [2004] 3 FCR 241, a consortium of record industry corporations attempted to request confidential ISP account holder information. Essentially, the plaintiffs failed to bring adequate evidence to prove the magnitude of copyright infringement; additionally, it is specifically stated at [24-5] that: Subsection 80(1) [as am. by S.C. 1997, c. 24, s.50] of the Copyright Act provides as follows: 80. (1) Subject to subsection (2), the act of reproducing all or any substantial part of (a) a musical work embodied in a sound recording, ... onto an audio recording medium for the private use of the person who makes the copy does not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the musical work, the performer's performance, or the sound recording. Although the Copyright Modernization Act, did, in fact, introduce a number of amendments, Subsection 80 still reads as it does when the BMG case was decided. Since this case, I can find no court that has found this ruling to be invalid, and no cases which have considered and not applied this subsection. There is also Subsection 29.22 (1) (which applies to all works): 29.22 (1) It is not an infringement of copyright for an individual to reproduce a work or other subject-matter or any substantial part of a work or other subject-matter if (a) the copy of the work or other subject-matter from which the reproduction is made is not an infringing copy; (b) the individual legally obtained the copy of the work or other subject-matter from which the reproduction is made, other than by borrowing it or renting it, and owns or is authorized to use the medium or device on which it is reproduced; (c) the individual, in order to make the reproduction, did not circumvent, as defined in section 41, a technological protection measure, as defined in that section, or cause one to be circumvented; (d) the individual does not give the reproduction away; and (e) the reproduction is used only for the individual’s private purposes. Subsection 80(1) creates a special exemption purely for musical works, and so the less restrictive conditions there should be found to apply to them instead. On the basis of the case above, and my consideration of the Copyright Act, I would find that reproduction of a musical work does not constitute copyright infringement, pursuant and subject to s 80(1) of the Act.
Probably not. It sounds like you've copied the complete work without any meaningful transformation. You've reduced the market for the original work by hosting your own copy. The fact that your purpose &quot;is to share the information&quot; doesn't really do you any good, as that is also the purpose of the original work. You're almost certainly outside fair-use territory. If you're looking for a &quot;kosher&quot; way to do this, the generally accepted practice is to link to the article and either paraphrase or excerpt the most relevant portions. That said, the fact that this piece came from a university may help you out. If it's a public university, it may be that its &quot;news&quot; articles are actually public records and not protected by copyright. For more information on how to run a fair-use analysis, see the answer here.