Is performance of a copyrighted written music copyright infringement? Suppose If play some piece from sheet music that contains Copyright information such as: Information: Copyright 2006 ABC Music Co. ... Reproduced by permission of DEF Music. All rights Reserved. or such as: This piece is published under license from XYZ. I understand that I am not sharing the written music but playing it on my instrument. Is uploading of it on any sites like Youtube or SoundCloud wrong? I read this and the part under "For other sounds, including field recordings...", I can say that it is spontaneous (played live) of me and I myself made it and no one else is in it. But "Does the recording contain any music or excerpts from other copyright works?(e.g. Movie Dialogue)" is confusing. I saw this question which I think says that it is wrong and this which says I should get a license. Of course these are my interpretations.
A performance of copyrighted written music is copyright infringement. One of the bundle of rights that comes with a copyright is the performance right. You can obtain a license to cover copyrighted written music, however, on a mandatory basis for a royalty amount set by law, rather than only with the permission of the copyright owner as is the case with other copyrighted works. There are exceptions to the broad general scope of the the rights associated with a copyright, such as fair use, but a performance of instrumental music is not itself, in general, fair use.
Yes So far so good. This is a copyright violation but it is probably fair use - certainly there is case law permitting a copy of a backup digital asset to be made so I don’t see why a similar argument wouldn’t work with backing up a physical book. Clear copyright violation. Alice can rent out the original under the first sale doctrine but the ‘backup’ is not so protected. It’s not fair use because it’s use is commercial, the work is a type of work the author expects to profit from, the entire work has been copied and the use is deleterious to the market i.e. the renters are less likely to buy an original - it falls foul of all four factors of the fair use test.
Here's where you went wrong legally: Suppose I legally obtain some digital image created by somebody else (e.g., by downloading from a public website). That, right there, is copyright infringement- unless the copyright owner has granted permission or the image is public domain you cannot copy it - this breaches "the right to make reproductions". By posting it on the web (assuming that it isn't itself an infringing copy) they have given implied permission for you to look at it in a web browser but not to copy it into a presentation even if that presentation is never presented. If it is presented then that makes the infringement worse - it adds breaches of "the right to communicate to the public" and "the right to use the work as a basis for an audiovisual work". How is this different from the computer wallpaper? It isn't. If you are using the one of the defaults that shipped with the OS then the license gives you permission. If you are using someone else's copyright without permission then it's a breach. There are defenses to copyright infringement but these are quite nationally variable - search this or other sites for "fair dealing" and "fair use".
The Youtube terms of service allow you to play music, and they do not impose any condition to the effect that you have to be alone in a soundproof room to play music. The school district might have a rule prohibiting the playing of music on school grounds (presumably with an exception for music classes), but there are too many school districts in Alabama to research that question. You might ask the superintendent of your local district about such rules, if it's important. Copyright law does include a separate requirement for permission to perform publicly, for example the music played in a store requires a performance license. Under 17 USC 106(4), the copyright owner has the exclusive right to authorize a person &quot;to perform the copyrighted work publicly&quot;. The definitions section says what it means to perform publicly: (1) to perform or display it at a place open to the public or at any place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered; or (2) to transmit or otherwise communicate a performance or display of the work to a place specified by clause (1) or to the public, by means of any device or process, whether the members of the public capable of receiving the performance or display receive it in the same place or in separate places and at the same time or at different times. It does seem that we're in the realm of a &quot;public performance&quot;, since the law does not specifically say &quot;intentionally play so that others can hear it&quot; (we don't know whether the teacher is being unintentionally overheard). However, the purpose of the performance license is to cover businesses that rely on playing music to make a buck, and is not intended to force people to watch out if strangers / co-workers are listening. There is a classroom-use exception, whereby teachers can perform music for instructional purposes, which this probably isn't. However, the Youtube TOS does say that all content-providers also grant each other user of the Service a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to access your Content through the Service, and to use that Content (including to reproduce, distribute, modify, display, and perform it) only as enabled by a feature of the Service. Therefore the teacher has permission to perform: except if the content is illegally uploaded by someone lacking the right to grant permissions (and to upload, in general). If you suspect that someone has illegally uploaded some artist's content to Youtube, you can contact the copyright holder with relevant information. They may or may not pursue a DMCA takedown; if they do, and they are really gung-ho, they could try go to recover lost licensing revenue. It isn't clear that there is a license for &quot;teacher laying music that others can hear&quot;.
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.
Yes it's illegal. Just like singing/whistling happy birthday in public (used to be) illegal. You could be sued for untold amount of damages that could ruin your life forever (in theory). If you whistle a mashup remix then it's legal as long as it's different enough from the original that you can't tell that they are the same song anymore. Yes anyone can sue you if you piss them off. Disney doesn't sue all the people who sing covers of their songs because it's bad for business to piss off your fans, but they can sue if they feel like it. This is more common sense than anything else but I suggest you look into fair use copyright law since there is a lot of misconception about it. https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/what-is-fair-use/
Quoting content may or may not constitute copyright infringement, depending on the various factors that go into the fair use defense. Short quotes which are made for the purpose of discussion, research and commentary and not for copy would be squarely in the domain of "fair use" under US law. That means that the copyright owner would not succeed in suing you for quoting them: under the statutory mechanism for recognizing his right to his intellectual product, there is a limit on how much control he can exert over your behavior (since the two of you have not worked out some kind of agreement -- copyright law creates rights even when there is no contract). As for Facebook, you have a contract with them, embodied in the terms of service. You have been given permission to access material that they host (permission is required, under copyright law), and their permission is conditional. It says "you may access stuff on our platform only as long as you do X": if that includes a clause "don't be nasty", then that limits your right to speak freely and be as nasty as you'd like. If it says "don't quote even a little", that means you cannot quote even a little, even when you would have the statutory right to quote a little (or, to be nasty). Fair use would mean that you can't be sued for copyright infringement of the stuff that you quoted a little of. You can, however, be expelled from Facebook. You probably cannot be sued for "accessing Facebook without permission". There is a federal law against unauthorized access of computer networks, and there was a failed attempt to construe violation of a TOS as "unauthorized access" – it isn't. But accessing Facebook necessarily involves copying (that's how computers work), and there is no "fair use" defense whereby everybody has a fair use right to access Facebook. Theoretically you could be sued for copyright infringement, for accessing Facebook's intellectual property without permission. Also, Facebook can rescind your permission to access their content (see this case), and once you have been banned, it is a crime to further access their network. This assumes that there is no overriding limit on contracts that would nullify a no-quoting condition. There is no such limit on contracts in the US, so such a contract would be enforceable. There is also nothing illegal (unenforceable) about a TOS which prohibits automated methods of access.
The opera may be in the public domain, but unless the performance is from several decades ago, which I assume is not the case, the performance is not in the public domain. The video therefore has copyright protection of its own. The use to which you want to put the video does not sound like fair use to me, although as the other answer notes that's impossible to determine without knowing more than you've told us, but the fact that the composition being performed is in the public domain is not a particularly important consideration in the analysis.