Are tweets an intellectual property? I am currently planning to use someone's tweet in my book &amp; tweet won't include any images (which will made commercially available). So , first are tweets intellectual property protected by certain copyright laws and if so will I be sued if I use it in my book even if I give reference to whose tweet it was ???
It's hard to say, under the Twitter TOS. They do not claim that copyright is transferred to them: &quot;You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services. What’s yours is yours — you own your Content (and your photos and videos are part of the Content)&quot;. But you do license the content: 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). This license authorizes us to make your Content available to the rest of the world and to let others do the same. You agree that this license includes the right for Twitter to provide, promote, and improve the Services and to make Content submitted to or through the Services available to other companies, organizations or individuals for the syndication, broadcast, distribution, promotion or publication of such Content on other media and services, subject to our terms and conditions for such Content use. Such additional uses by Twitter, or other companies, organizations or individuals, may be made with no compensation paid to you with respect to the Content that you submit, post, transmit or otherwise make available through the Services. The totality of conditions, including the Twitter Rules, is ever-evolving and not apparently contained in a single link. From what I can tell, there is no condition that prohibits a user from copying tweets into a book. There are numerous statements about &quot;respecting copyright&quot; which refer to taking material that is not licensed to Twitter and redistributing: nothing about redistributing licensed material.A plain reading of the first bold sentence says that you can make your content available to the world, not restricted to &quot;retweeting&quot;.
No, it's still copyright infringement. When you modify a copyrighted work in any way, you generate a derivative work which you are not allowed to distribute without the permission of the original copyright holder.
Yes That is very simple - copyright is an exclusive right that starts automatically with the creation of a copyrightable work. The default situation is that the author has an exclusive rights to make copies of the work and derivative works. If the code is published somewhere by the author but the author has not said anything about its licence or copyrights, then the default situation applies - you need permission and you don't have it, so it's not legal for you to distribute their copyrighted works. They have the right to just publish it somewhere, others don't. If you try to contact the author and they don't say anything and ignore you, then the default situation applies - you need permission and you don't have it, so it's not legal for you to distribute their copyrighted works. If it's impossible to find the author (e.g. I have certain cases with literary works where it's not clear who inherited the rights after the author died), then the default situation applies - you need permission and you don't have it, so it's not legal for you to distribute their copyrighted works. That being said, certain forms of reuse (recreating ideas, learning from them, etc) would not be a copyright violation. But in general the situation with the author not saying anything is almost the same as the author explicitly stating "all rights reserved, you're not allowed to do anything, violators will be shot" - some specific uses are allowed even against author's wishes (e.g. 'fair use' clauses) but everything that needs their permission really does need their explicit permission.
This is not (necessarily) copyright violation It's possible that Quora's usage falls within Fair Use. At the very least, the argument could be made. If it does, then there is nothing that Stack Exchange or the OP can do. Stack Exchange can choose not to protect their copyright Unlike trademarks, which lapse if not protected, copyright endures. Therefore Stack Exchange can pick and choose the copyright fights they want to get involved in and those they don't. If you have brought it to the attention of the copyright owner (or, in this case, licensee) and the copyright owner chooses not to act then you have done all you can and significantly more than you have to do. The OP has copyright I note that one of the examples is your question. As the copyright holder, you are free to issue a DCMA takedown notice on Quora if you feel your copyright has been violated.
Twitter's terms says the following: 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. [...] You may not do any of the following while accessing or using the Services: (i) access, tamper with, or use non-public areas of the Services, Twitter’s computer systems, or the technical delivery systems of Twitter’s providers; (ii) probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of any system or network or breach or circumvent any security or authentication measures; (iii) access or search or attempt to access or search the Services by any means (automated or otherwise) other than through our currently available, published interfaces that are provided by Twitter (and only pursuant to the applicable terms and conditions), unless you have been specifically allowed to do so in a separate agreement with Twitter (NOTE: crawling the Services is permissible if done in accordance with the provisions of the robots.txt file, however, scraping the Services without the prior consent of Twitter is expressly prohibited); (iv) forge any TCP/IP packet header or any part of the header information in any email or posting, or in any way use the Services to send altered, deceptive or false source-identifying information; or (v) interfere with, or disrupt, (or attempt to do so), the access of any user, host or network, including, without limitation, sending a virus, overloading, flooding, spamming, mail-bombing the Services, or by scripting the creation of Content in such a manner as to interfere with or create an undue burden on the Services. facebook is a bit harsher: You will not engage in Automated Data Collection without Facebook's express written permission. So just go and use the APIs meant for the explicit purpose of automatic data collection.
Ideas (methods of playing, game mechanics, strategy, goals) cannot be protected by copyright. But any part of a creative work can. So, no copying of drawings, patterns, images, sounds, or the element. I suppose copying the software code is not an issue here, but it can, obviously, also not be copied. And nothing in your game can look like someone's else trademark.
In my opinion, you are totally free to publish the information. There are two areas of law that can be cosidered - private and public law. In the private law area, you can be liable for revealing trade secrets, but only if you agreed to keep them by a contract. Trade secrets do not exist by themselves (there are minor exceptions, eg. in competition law, but those do not concern us), they must be protected by contracts. Another private limitations, like libel laws, won't apply here. This is not uncommon, but not in cars - you can find clauses like these in software license agreements. Then there is the public area. Is there any regulation, any policy of the state, that prevents you from publishing it? I am not aware you whole legal code of your state, but I doubt there is. It would be a harsh limitation of freedom of speech. Even if the modification could lead to illegal effect (like, modifying toy weapon to kill by rising its power...) it would be only illegal under very rare circumstances. To conclude it - freedom of speech can be limited only if there is sufficient public interest to do so, and I don't see any.
&quot;Plagiarism&quot; is an academic concept, not a legal one Plagiarising the work of another without attribution is academic misconduct in every reputable academic facility and can lead to disciplinary action. But it's not against the law, and you can't be sued for doing it. Copyright violation is against the law You violate copyright when you copy or make a derivative work from the copyrighted work of another without permission or without an exemption under the law. In some jurisdictions, authors and artists have moral copyright, which operates alongside proprietary copyright and gives certain rights, including the right of attribution and the right for their work to be treated respectfully. In those jurisdictions, even if you have the copyright holder's permission, you must still respect the moral rights. Let's make some things explicit by considering a particular artwork. Say, this one: This particular piece is not subject to copyright because a) it was created before there was such a concept, and b) da Vinci died in 1519, so if there had been a copyright law, copyright in this work would have long expired. So, you can make as many copies of this as you like. Now, let's consider what the situation would be if Leonardo's alchemical pursuits had been more successful and instead of dying in 1519, he died last Tuesday. If you want to make a copy of this image, you must have Leonardo's heir(s) permission or be operating under an exemption under copyright law in your jurisdiction. When you train your AI, you will need to make a copy of the image. Do you have permission? Do you have a relevant exemption? If you obtained your images by scraping websites then the answers are no and (probably) no. Whether the image has metadata identifying the author is irrelevant to answering the questions. Whether there is any way of identifying the artist is also irrelevant - you still need their permission even if you don't know who to ask. If your AI, when prompted, generates an image that is strikingly similar to a copyrighted image it was trained on, that is a derivative work and you need permission for that. Under current law, the programer(s) are likely the copyright violators rather than the users of the AI.