Using screen recording of client&#39;s products in promotion I work at a company that creates software that developers use in their frontend. We have a free and open source version of our software and a paid, non-open-source version. It is easy to detect if a product uses our product (or not) and doing so doesn't require insider information. We already have a section on our website that shows an image preview of client's products and links to their websites. This is done to promote those companies but also to show off what our product can be used to do. None of our clients have had an issue with this and some even request for their new products to be added to this list. However, I don't believe that we have anything explicitly in our licensing/user agreement saying that we retain the right to promote websites that use our product. Is it legal to make a video compilation of websites that use our product for promotion of our company? We would provide a link to their website like we do with the image showcase section of our website. We would only be showing brief clips of client's products, strung together for a short video. All products that we show would be publicly available and currently live at the time of making the video.
Is it legal to make a video compilation of websites that use our product for promotion of our company? [...] We would only be showing brief clips of client's products, strung together for a short video. This will most probably be both copyright violation and trademark infringement. Copyright is generally violated if you copy a creative work produced by someone else - which is what you want to do. Trademarks are generally violated when you use someone else's trademarks (such as their logo or company name) to promote your product - which, again is what you want to do. There are various exceptions available - copyright may not apply if the work is very simple, trademark use may be allowed e.g. in comparative advertising, etc., etc., but the rules for this are complex, unclear and very different in various jurisdictions. You could risk it and hope no one sues you (and maybe no one will), but the safe route is to ask permission first.
Yes, it does. Using the downloaded content, whether it was scraped or individually downloaded one file at a time, for research or for commercial purposes would violate that TOS provision (unless some other provision contradicts it, or you obtain specific permission). The site owner could sue you for such a violation, should the owner become aware of it. I do not think it would be likely to be a criminal offense, depending on the jurisdiction.
It depends on what you are selling to the enterprises. You could be selling just a licence to use the program, and retain all the rights on the source code. You could be selling the rights to the source code. For #1, the source code is yours and you can do what it pleases with it1. In fact many programs offer both an open-source licence (which usually forces the user to make its changes to the code publicly available) and a commercial one (which allows the user to keep the modifications of the source code for themselves). For #2, the source code is no longer yours so it is not up to you to decide what to do with it. 1I am assuming no other agreements imposing limits on those; for example that none of your contracts to your customers have a clause forbidding you from making the code available to the public.
The U.S. FTC gave extensive guidance on this subject in March 2013. (You may have noticed shortly thereafter that conspicuous disclosures of free samples and compensation started popping up in reviews and posts around the web.) The FTC's FAQ covers this question in such detail I would just encourage people to visit it directly. However, as is the custom on Stack Exchange, I will reproduce the most salient content here: If an endorser is acting on behalf of an advertiser, what she or he is saying is usually going to be commercial speech – and commercial speech violates the FTC Act if it’s deceptive. The FTC (ironically?) refers to 16 CFR §255 as "the Guides." The Guides, at their core, reflect the basic truth-in-advertising principle that endorsements must be honest and not misleading. An endorsement must reflect the honest opinion of the endorser and can’t be used to make a claim that the product’s marketer couldn’t legally make. In addition, the Guides say if there’s a connection between an endorser and the marketer that consumers would not expect and it would affect how consumers evaluate the endorsement, that connection should be disclosed. For example, if an ad features an endorser who’s a relative or employee of the marketer, the ad is misleading unless the connection is made clear. The same is usually true if the endorser has been paid or given something of value to tout the product. The reason is obvious: Knowing about the connection is important information for anyone evaluating the endorsement.
I presume from the fact that you mention &quot;fair use&quot; that you're interested in United States law. In that case, the answer is a clear-cut &quot;no&quot;. 17 USC 107: Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include— the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; the nature of the copyrighted work; the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. Let's look at your proposed use under these four factors: The purpose of use: Commercial use, selling these movie clips for direct profit. You're not making any sort of transformative use (such as critical commentary), you're just re-using them as is. Big strike against you. The nature of the copyrighted work: a work of fiction; your derivative is also an entertainment product. Another big strike. The portion used: I haven't seen the clips in question, but you mention &quot;famous scenes&quot;. That would work in your favor if you were using the clips for something like scholarship, but since you're not, the fact that these are the &quot;important parts&quot; works against you; the fact that they're small is irrelevant. The effect on the potential market for the copyrighted work: This is a huge strike against you: your clips are directly displacing licensed use of the movie clips. If I were a movie company and I caught you doing this, I'd bring out the big guns: I'd sue you for every penny you earned, plus substantial penalties, plus lawyer fees, plus everything else I could think of. And given the strength of the case against you, it's virtually certain you'd lose. You might be tempted to compare what you're doing to animated-gif &quot;image macros&quot;, but there's one major difference: the &quot;macros&quot; are generally used to compare a movie situation to an out-of-movie situation, making at least a gesture in the direction of transformative use and commentary. By pre-packinging your gifs, you're not commenting on anything. Your only option for making what you're doing legal is to go to the copyright owners and ask for permission.
No You are limited to “your ... use only”. You are not given permission to make this available for 3rd parties either commercially or for free.
Probably not. There are potential problems on the levels of copyright, data protection, and the Youtube terms of service. You should assume that comments are typically covered by copyright. You do not have a license to these comments, only YouTube does. Therefore, YouTube can show the comments but you can't copy them – just like YouTube can stream your videos but others can't download them and host them on their own websites. To cover the copyright angle, you'd either need to obtain a license from the commenters, or get a sub-license from YouTube, or identify a suitable copyright exception. The comments are personal data within the meaning of the GDPR, so that your processing of these comments (including mere storage) would be subject to GDPR as well. You need a legal basis for processing personal data. Which legal basis is suitable would depend on the purpose of processing, and on your relationship with the commenters. Potentially applicable legal bases in this context: you have a contract with the commenters that requires you to show the comments on your website. For example, I could see such a contract if there were a “featured comment” perk for a Patreon subscription. But this is not going to fly with random commenters. you have a legitimate interest (LI) that allows the processing. A LI requires that you conduct a balancing test where you weigh this interest against the commenter's rights. This is very specific to the purposes for which you want to show the comments. However, a LI will generally only apply if you have an existing relationship with the commenters, making it possible for them to expect that this processing will occur – unlikely if you'll be scraping comments from YouTube. you have obtained consent from the data subject. Consent must be specific, informed, freely given, and unambiguous – you can't obtain consent by writing “by commenting under this video you consent to XXX” in the video description. Regardless of legal basis, you would have to inform the commenters under Art 14 GDPR when you scrape their comments from the platform. Finally, consider the platform terms of service. I have not read the YouTube ToS recently, so I don't know what their specific conditions are. But in general, such ToS will not allow you to scrape content from their platform in order to host it somewhere else. The ToS might allow certain actions like embedding a link/iframe to such videos on other sites, without allowing other actions such as copying other user's content to your site.
&quot;Personal use only&quot; does not excuse copyright infringement under US law. The uploader does not hold copyright, and neither gives nor denies permission to copy his creation. The law does not require a copyright holder to deny permission, it requires the user to actually obtain permission. So no matter how you slice it (even as fair use) it is infringement for you to copy that video.