Kirtsaeng and books from the UK marked &quot;not for sale in the U.S.A.&quot; Many older books printed for the UK market (most notably The Great Gatsby) had text on the back cover resembling the following: For copyright reasons this book is not for sale in the U.S.A. Under Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley, I'm pretty sure this has no legal meaning in the US any more, but I have some questions: What was the historical basis for this notice? Is this notice indeed legally void in the United States under Kirtsaeng (assuming the book was lawfully acquired in the UK or its territories)? In other works, could I legally sell such a book in the US?
When an author writes a book, it is frequently licensed to one company in the United States and another company in the U.K. If the publishing company Bathroom Books gets permission to print and sell the books pursuant to a license from the author in the U.S., that contract will usually include a non-compete clause that prohibits Bathroom Books from selling books it prints to retail customers in the U.K. or to wholesale customer that intend to sell the books at retail in the U.K., where the permission to print and sell the books pursuant to a license from the author has been granted to WC Books (and vice versa). The clauses are about enforcing the peace between distributors given different territories, because different publishers have better sales networks in different places. The first sale doctrine, clarified for purposes of U.S. copyright law in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley, makes the &quot;not for sale in the U.S.&quot; language inapplicable under U.S. law to a consumer who purchases the book in the U.S. and then resells it used to someone in the U.S. Whether it bars someone who purchased the books on a wholesale basis in the U.K. from reselling the books in the U.S. depends to some extent on the nature of the contract between the wholesaler and the publisher. For example, if the wholesaler is selling the books on a consignment basis for the publisher and has a right to return the unsold books without payment to the publisher and doesn't have to pay for the books sold until they are sold at retail, the first sale doctrine likewise does not apply. It also isn't entirely obvious that the &quot;first sale doctrine&quot; makes it illegal to count U.S. sales towards the amount due to the U.S. publisher rather than the U.K. publisher, even if they are sold by WB Books instead of Bathroom Books. (Re the faux names of the publishers, one of the first books I every handled copyright and licensing for, a year out of law school, involved bathroom humor.) Also, if the case ends up in a U.K. court before it reaches a U.S. court, the first sale doctrine may or may not apply, but Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley will not be binding precedent, so the applicable rule of law might be different. And, it isn't hard to write a binding forum selection clause that insures that the case would be resolved in a U.K. court rather than a U.S. court if the law in the U.K. were more favorable.
Yes The US constitution is in the public domain. Anyone may publish a version of it, including an altered version. No US law forbidding publication of an altered version would itself be constitutional -- the First Amendment would prevent such a law. However, if an altered version were sold under such conditions that a customer might reasonably believe it to be an unaltered version, that might be false advertising, or perhaps fraud, because the seller would be deceiving the customer as to what the product is.
17 USC 105 provides that: (a) In General.—Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise. Under 17 USC 101: A “work of the United States Government” is a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person’s official duties. However under 17 USC 105 (b): Subject to subsection (c), the covered author of a covered work owns the copyright to that covered work. The definitions section of section 105 provides that &quot;covered authors &quot; are faculty members at any of 12 specified institutes, academies, colleges, and universities run by the Federal Government, and &quot;covered works&quot; are any textual works created by covered authors. Thus to be free of copyright under section 105, a work must have been created by &quot;an officer or employee of the United States Federal Government as part of that person’s official duties.&quot; and not by a faculty member at any of the institutions listed in 105 (d). 17 USC 105 does not apply to works by the various US state governments, nor to contractors hired by the US Federal government. Works that are free of copyright under section 105 are in the public domain under US law, and may lawfully be used in any way at all, but it is widely considered unethical, although not unlawful, to fail to credit the source of such works, or indeed of older works long out of copyright protection. Note that such works could be protected under the laws of other countries, and such copyrights may apply outside the US. Just because an image or text is published by a US government agency does not waive copyright, nor does the absence of a copyright notice. (Under the Berne Convention a copyright notice cannot be required for protection, and US law implements this in 17 USC 401 (a) which provides that a notice may be present.) The web page linked in the question above includes the statement: Video contributed by Dr. Marcelo Saba, National Institute for Space Research, Brazil This strongly implies that Dr Saba owns the copyright, although it does not prove that. It might be owned by the Institute, or some other employee of the Institute. But Dr Saba could probably indicate who does own the copyright, and on what terms if any the image may be used. When content is protected by copyright, a license to reproduce that content must normally be explicitly stated. The US Freedom of Information Act (FoI) has nothing to do with providing such licenses. It does not matter under US law whether the person wanting to reuse content is a citizen or resident of the US or not, the rules are the same for all. However, US government works may be protected outside the US. It is the location of use, not the nationality of the person using them, that will matter.
First, copyright means that permission from the author is generally required. The courts find three sorts of such permission: direct author-to-recipient explicit licensing (typical in the case of a book author to publisher relation), indirect licensing arising from platform usage (in using Stackexchange, you probably unknowingly click-agreed to allow me and everybody else to copy and redistribute your creations), and implicit licensing – where permission to use is reasonably inferrable, though not explicitly stated. Since the latter doesn't involve written-out statements of the conditions under which you are licensed to copy text, the courts don't rely heavily on implicit licensing. But implicit licensing is what makes it possible to legally read a web page without first signing an agreement. If we assume in your scenario that the author is fully aware that their responses are automatically distributed to various servers, then even in lieu of a platform license, an implicit license can be found. Second, irrespective of the desideratum of having permission, one is in the US allowed to copy without permission, for certain purposes known as &quot;fair use&quot;. This is a complicated area of legal analysis, where one has to weigh factors such as whether the content is artistic vs. factual, whether your use simply re-propagates vs. makes a comment, whether the use is for profit vs. free and educational, and whether the use has a negative effect on the market for the original work.
Such works may be considered as copyright infringements under US law. The US does not apply the &quot;rule of the shorter term&quot;, and so the PD status of the parent work in some other country,. including the source country, is not relevant. There are, however, other ways for a work to have lost copyright protection under US law, and one of them might apply in a particular case. Also, whether a work is legally a derivative work of another is a fact-based legal question, and the answer is not always as obvious as one might think. The copyright holder of the parent work could file a copyright infringement suit, seeking damages and other relief in a US Federal court. Note that one of the rights that make up copyright is the right to make or authorize the making of derivative works. This ism spelled out in 17 USC 106 item (2) &quot;to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;&quot; I am not sure of the rules for customs seizure of allegedly infringing works. I thin k that only works already adjudged to be infringing are seized, pursuant to a court order, but I am not sure of that. II do not see how the customs service would determine the disputable issues mentioned above. For the matter of that, any such work could be authorized by permission from the copyright holder, and I don't see how customs would know if there had been such permission granted. Added citations: 17 USC 503 says: (a)(1) At any time while an action under this title is pending, the court may order the impounding, on such terms as it may deem reasonable (A) of all copies or phonorecords claimed to have been made or used in violation of the exclusive right of the copyright owner; ... (b) As part of a final judgment or decree, the court may order the destruction or other reasonable disposition of all copies or phonorecords found to have been made or used in violation of the copyright owner’s exclusive rights, ... 17 USC 602 provides that: (a) (2) Importation or exportation of infringing items.—Importation into the United States or exportation from the United States, without the authority of the owner of copyright under this title, of copies or phonorecords, the making of which either constituted an infringement of copyright, or which would have constituted an infringement of copyright if this title had been applicable, is an infringement of the exclusive right to distribute copies or phonorecords under section 106, actionable under sections 501 and 506. ... (b) Import Prohibition.—In a case where the making of the copies or phonorecords would have constituted an infringement of copyright if this title had been applicable, their importation is prohibited. In a case where the copies or phonorecords were lawfully made, the United States Customs and Border Protection Service has no authority to prevent their importation. In either case, the Secretary of the Treasury is authorized to prescribe, by regulation, a procedure under which any person claiming an interest in the copyright in a particular work may, upon payment of a specified fee, be entitled to notification by the United States Customs and Border Protection Service of the importation of articles that appear to be copies or phonorecords of the work. It appears that copies of an infringing work may be seized. but only by court order. It appears that import of an allegedly infringing work may be prohibited, but not when copies were lawfully made. But such imports may be reported to the claimant, who can then take appropriate legal action.
It's questionable, because if you design your own visual interpretation of the T-Shirt then it isn't necessarily the one from the book and thus your art has it's own copyright. However, if the current Copyright Holder and Possible Trademark owner is selling the shirt it could be an issue because yours is not official but being sold as one. If you're making it for non-sale and just cosplay, than you have a better arguement.
There is no general prohibition against taking down material, even non-infringing material, which is posted by some person, but there is a risk to the service provider. Abstracting away from the specifics of github, a Provider has some agreement with the User whereby User rightfully makes Stuff available on Provider's site. Arbitrarily removing Stuff (in violation of the usage agreement) may cause damage to User, who may sue Provider, and Provider will avoid that if possible. DMCA protects Provider from copyright infringement suits by Victim, providing the proper DMCA procedure is followed, and it allows Provider to remove Stuff without fear of getting sued by User (17 USC 512(g)). This protection is not available if the takedown notice is not proper. (As a case in point, the entire series of Harry Potter books is still out there freely on the internet, because only the rights holder can demand a takedown, and the rights holder seems to not be concerned).
Since the effective date of the US 1976 Copyright act, a copyright notice is not required at all on works published in the US, nor is it required on works published in any other country that adheres to the Berne Convention (which is adhered to by almsot every country in the world at this time). A copyright notice, if present, may specify a pseudonym, a business name, or a form of the author's name other than his or her legal name. The validity of the copyright does not depend on the name in the notice. This is true in all Berne Convention countries. Even under the 1909 US copyright law, when a notice was required for protection, the exact form of the name used was not important, and pseudonyms and variant forms were permitted, as well as DBA names, which might not be easy to associate with the actual copyright holder. Nor do I know of any other country in which an error in the name in the notice would invalidate the copyright. Aside from people changing names, a copyright can be sold or otherwise transferred. This does not require changing the copyright notice to reflect the changed ownership of the copyright, although it is often done with new versions or printings. The name on a copyright notice is at best suggestive or helpful; it does not define the owner.