Who is responsible for proving the validity / invalidity of a license for a song should it be challenged? I have a YouTube video which uses a song that I found on http://freemusicarchive.org/. The website gives me permission to use the song under the CC 3.0 Attribution license. Appropriate credit is given in the video description. I have not had any direct contact with the artist. I live in the US. A company presumably representing the artist has filed a claim on my video and ignored the proof of license that I provided (a link to the song on the website and a link to the license itself). I don't expect it will come to this, but I found myself wondering - if they were to come after me through legal channels, would it be my responsibility to prove that my license is valid or would it be their responsibility to prove that it is invalid? Would a license obtained in this manner hold up in court?
The first thing that has to be done (in court, or via lawyer-to-lawyer communication) is that The Company has to prove that they own the copyright. If they accomplish that, you can defend yourself by providing proof of a license to download and redistribute. From what I can tell, you cannot directly prove that, since the rights-holder did not give you the license. The issue is that a third party cannot impose a license on a work simply by putting it out there with a file that claims to be a license from the artist. So this brings in the Free Music Archive: they presumably have some evidence that the rights holder did indeed grant the alleged license, and may be able to provide proof. Your argument may be credible, in the sense that you had a good-faith belief that the item was so licensed, and the website would provide a basis for concluding that that belief is reasonable. If the work was licensed, then the some rights holder would know that, but not necessarily the current one. Assume the artist made a recording, transferred the rights to Company A, who later sold the rights to Company B who is now coming after you. Artist may have licensed it when it was his, and forgot to tell A. A may have licensed it when they sold the license to B. Artist may have improperly licensed it after he sold the work to A (under the "I wrote it, I have the right to do whatever I want" non-legal theory). A might have improperly licensed the work after selling the right to B (maybe by mistakenly including it in a package deal, i.e. via bookkeeping error, rather than ignorance of the law). Or, they may simply have forgotten. If this is a DMCA takedown notice, the notice-giver could just be abusing the system. But we don't know how you were contacted, so I'll leave DMCA out of this for now.
Copyright expires 70 years after the original writer breaths his/her last breath, after that it becomes public domain. And all works published before 1923 are in the public domain in the US. This means that the inheritors of the rights cannot sue you for infringement because there is nothing to infringe. If the music is not in public domain you will need to contact the rights holders and negotiate the rights to use the music. This can also be a company that has the right to sublicense the content to others. This is often the way radios and DJs get the right for the music they play.
Generally speaking, it is illegal for you to do this. Copyright gives the creator of the image the exclusive right to copy it, and just making copies to send to other people is probably not going to be fair use. Making copies without a license from the copyright holder would therefore be copyright infringement. Are there likely to be any consequences for doing this? Probably not.
Pretty much everything you need to know about the ownership and licensing of your material on Medium is in the Medium TOS you contractually agreed to when you signed up with the service. Basically, you granted Medium a license to use the work, but you did not agree to an exclusive license nor turn over copyright to them. Part of that Terms of Service – Medium Policy reads: Content rights &amp; responsibilities You own the rights to the content you create and post on Medium. By posting content to Medium, you give us a nonexclusive license to publish it on Medium Services, including anything reasonably related to publishing it (like storing, displaying, reformatting, and distributing it). In consideration for Medium granting you access to and use of the Services, you agree that Medium may enable advertising on the Services, including in connection with the display of your content or other information. We may also use your content to promote Medium, including its products and content. We will never sell your content to third parties without your explicit permission. You’re responsible for the content you post. This means you assume all risks related to it, including someone else’s reliance on its accuracy, or claims relating to intellectual property or other legal rights. You’re welcome to post content on Medium that you’ve published elsewhere, as long as you have the rights you need to do so. By posting content to Medium, you represent that doing so doesn’t conflict with any other agreement you’ve made. By posting content you didn’t create to Medium, you are representing that you have the right to do so. For example, you are posting a work that’s in the public domain, used under license (including a free license, such as Creative Commons), or a fair use. We can remove any content you post for any reason. You can delete any of your posts, or your account, anytime. Processing the deletion may take a little time, but we’ll do it as quickly as possible. We may keep backup copies of your deleted post or account on our servers for up to 14 days after you delete it. Pertaining to presenting Medium content in an iFrame on another site, this is reasonably close to not allowing that: You may not do, or try to do, the following: ... (2) access or search the Services by any means other than the currently available, published interfaces (e.g., APIs) that we provide;... You can use Embed Code Generator | Embedly to embed an iFrame of a Medium page on another site. But contacting Medium via the email at the bottom of the TOS would tell you for sure if it is OK. Comments on your pieces on Medium do belong to the owner. And You own the rights to the content you create and post on Medium. appears to cover the idea of copying your material from Medium to your own site. If in doubt, ask them.
Seems unlikely that it will "forestall copyright infringement suits". Some jurisdictions, e.g the USA, say that "Works produced by mechanical processes or random selection without any contribution by a human author are not registrable". On the face of it, in such a jurisdiction copyright can't exist in a randomly generated work. Which the TED talk doesn't mention. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJtm0MoOgiU Let's imagine a case in a jurisdiction where copyright can exist in such a work. There is a dispute between two artists or labels. The plaintiff produced a well known tune and accuses the defendant of copying this work. The defendant says the plaintiff didn't have copyright in that work because it wasn't original in the first place, there is a 1200GB TAR file (compressed file) on GitHub that contains all possible single octave, 8-note, 12-beat melody combos, which were produced before the plaintiff's work. The plaintiff says, "like the majority of the population I never heard of GitHub, let alone downloaded, uncompressed a 1200GB file and listened to every melody." That's all aside from plaintiffs or lawyers deciding they have a case or believing the mere threat of civil proceedings will cause the alleged infringer to acquiesce to their demands. I think they are making a point about the law rather than a realistic means of thwarting copyright disputes. It's reasonable of the creators to say there is a finite set of melodies and the likelihood of inadvertently 'creating' the same melody as someone else may be smaller than we think, maybe copyright law has led to some unjust outcomes and led to a chilling effect on music-making.
No, the musical composition itself (i.e., what you might express tangibly in sheet music) has copyright distinct from the copyright that exists on Led Zepplin's recording of the song. Your new cover will still be a derivative work of the musical composition. When you record a cover of a copyrighted song, you must get permission from the composer (or current copyright holder of the composition). In the United States, however, you can compel the copyright holder to grant you license under 17 USC §115. Under a compulsory license, you pay a fixed fee per copy of the cover that you distribute (currently 9.1 cents), and the copyright holder must allow you to distribute those copies. See the circular Compulsory License for Making and Distributing Phonorecords from the U.S. Copyright Office. I am not aware of other countries that have a similar compulsory license scheme, so in those jurisdictions, you would need to negotiate a license with the publisher or an intermediary agency they use. However, even if you did get a compulsory license to distribute your cover song, you must get permission to synchronize the song with a video. The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers describes the copyright holder's exclusive synchronization right: A synchronization or "synch" right involves the use of a recording of musical work in audio-visual form: for example as part of a motion picture, television program, commercial announcement, music video or other videotape. Often, the music is "synchronized" or recorded in timed relation with the visual images. Since the synchronization right cannot be acquired under a compulsory license, you will need to have the publisher (or whoever the copyright holder is) agree to license the synchronization right to you under whatever terms the two of you can agree upon.
The takedown action is a little sketchy. The law regarding takedown notices and host liability is here. The notice includes &quot;Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed&quot;, a &quot;signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed&quot;, and a statement that &quot;the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law&quot;. These things are present in the notice, for which reason the items were taken down. The complaint states that The clear purpose of this source code is to (i) circumvent the technological protection measures used by authorized streaming services such as YouTube, and (ii) reproduce and distribute music videos and sound recordings owned by our member companies without authorization for such use. We note that the source code is described on GitHub as “a command-line program to download videos from YouTube.com and a few more sites.” and the source code expressly suggests its use to copy and/or distribute the following copyrighted works owned by our member companies: Icona Pop – I Love It (feat. Charli XCX) [Official Video], owned by Warner Music Group Justin Timberlake – Tunnel Vision (Explicit), owned by Sony Music Group Taylor Swift – Shake it Off, owned/exclusively licensed by Universal Music Group Complainants are &quot;confused&quot; about actual infringement (which is prohibited by copyright law), and creating a method for infringing copyright. Under DMCA and US copyright law, copying is infringing, programming is not infringing. The complaint does not clearly allege unauthorized copying of another person's intellectual property, and their complaint is based on the theory that certain programming actions constitute copyright infringement. I don't actually think they are confused, I think they are testing the boundaries. Github has no reasonable options but to comply; the authors have the option of filing a counter-notice; then RIAA has the option of claiming that they have filed a copyright infringement lawsuit. If they do, the material remains taken down and the courts sort it out if a lawsuit is actually filed. There is minimal burden on the complainant to reign-in over-zealous takedown notice practices: Lenz v. Universal Music finds that complainants must give good faith consideration to a fair use defense. 17 USC 1201(a)(1)(A) states that No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. Let's assume that the removed material does circumvent a technological measure protecting a work. This is a separate offense in Title 17. 17 USC 501(a) defines infringement of copyright, saying Anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner as provided by sections 106 through 122 or of the author as provided in section 106A(a), or who imports copies or phonorecords into the United States in violation of section 602, is an infringer of the copyright or right of the author Production of an anti-circumvention technology is not included in those sections: on a plain reading of the law, this is not infringement. To summarize the legal dance at issue: RIAA has taken the first legal step in alleging infringement, and Github has taken the material down because Github does not get to decide what the courts would conclude. Let's assume the authors file a counter-notice stating that there is no infringement; then, equally, let's assume that RIAA states that they files a lawsuit. Github will leave the material down. Let's also assume that RIAA actually files suit. Under the prior assumption that the material violates 17 USC 1201(a)(1)(A) which seems likely, the authors could be slapped for being in violation: but they would not have been in violation of §106-122. What recourse would the authors have for RIAA's misuse of the term &quot;infringe&quot;, and against whom? Nothing against Github: the service provider does not get to decide the merits of the case. Perhaps RIAA. From Lenz supra, If an entity abuses the DMCA, it may be subject to liability under § 512(f). That section provides: “Any person who knowingly materially misrepresents under this section—(1) that material or activity is infringing, or (2) that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification, shall be liable for any damages․” Id. § 512(f). Subsection (1) generally applies to copyright holders and subsection (2) generally applies to users. Only subsection (1) is at issue here. The court said that We must next determine if a genuine issue of material fact exists as to whether Universal knowingly misrepresented that it had formed a good faith belief the video did not constitute fair use. This inquiry lies not in whether a court would adjudge the video as a fair use, but whether Universal formed a good faith belief that it was not. Contrary to the district court's holding, Lenz may proceed under an actual knowledge theory, but not under a willful blindness theory. Perhaps the authors can prove actual knowledge. The Lenz reasoning on this point (§IV C) is rather contorted.
That licence does not allow you to do what you want It’s a non-commercial licence and your usage is commercial (making money). You don’t need a licence to perform commentary or review of a book Providing that you use as little material as necessary from the original work, commentary and review is one of the exceptions to copyright carved out by fair dealing in most English speaking jurisdictions. In the USA, the fair use exemption is not so clear as it involves a four factor balancing test. Your planned use is in favour of being fair use, your commercialisation is against.