Can I sell the file OR a print of a 3D model that I significantly altered? I downloaded a freely available .stl file that is a fan-made model of a space ship from a well-known sci-fi universe. The fan posted the file under a Creative Commons - Attribution - Non-Commercial license. I edited it significantly (by reshaping, deforming, resizing, adding details, etc.) and put it onto a stand I created. I 3D printed the resulting model and use it as a piece in a board game. Two of my friends saw it: one wants to buy a printed copy from me and the other wants to buy a copy of the .stl file so that he can print it himself. Am I allowed to sell either of those things to my friends? One of my friends is telling me that since I've altered the work by more than 30%, it's mine and I can sell it. If I do the same thing with a 3D file that has only a Creative Commons - Attribution or Creative Commons - Attribution - Share Alike license, could I then sell it?
united-states The license won't let you sell the .stl file. Probably you have created a derivative work, which means you can't sell it without a copyright license (and the CC-A-NC won't do). If it were licensed under CC-A you could sell it without problems (you'd have to give attribution, of course). You could also sell it under the CC-A-SA, but once you do you have no control over the result -- anyone you sold it to could give it to someone else under the terms of the license. This could work, though, if it were (say) a commission and you only expected to sell one copy. I don't know what the situation would be with the physical objects printed under any of these licenses.
No. You may not do this. As your post points out this is a blatant copyright violation. It isn't remotely in the realm of fair use.
Recall the basic principle of copyright law, as detailed in 17 USC 106: The copyright holder has the exclusive right to make copies; prepare derivative works; or distribute copies by sale, rental, lease, or lending. Other people can legally do these things only if they are given permission by the copyright holder, typically via a license. (Remember, the literal meaning of the word license is permission.) Often, the copyright holder will require a prospective licensee to accept various terms and conditions before the license will be granted. If there is &quot;no EULA&quot;, or if there is one but the purchaser has not agreed to its terms, then the purchaser has not been granted any such license, hence does not have permission to do any of the things listed above. If they do so anyway, it is illegal copyright infringement and they will be liable for damages. To use a firewall analogy, copyright law is &quot;default deny&quot;. So let's take your questions one by one: Do they own the software? US law has no concept of literally owning software. The closest thing is owning the copyright, which the purchaser certainly does not. It still belongs to the vendor that wrote the software (or whoever they may have later transferred it to). Can they legally alter the code of the program they purchased? No, that would be preparing a derivative work. The copyright holder has not granted them a license to do that. (There are some exceptions for purposes such as reverse engineering and interoperability, see 17 USC 1201(f)). Can they legally redistribute it No; again, that is the exclusive right of the copyright holder, and the purchaser has not received their permission. or transfer ownership? Maybe, if the first sale doctrine applies. Its application to software is complicated. The user has a better case for being able to sell the software if it exists as some tangible object which is transferred (physical media, pre-installed on hardware, etc). Can they legally modify the code of the program for others who have also purchased the same package? No, that would be preparing a derivative work. Can they take that software and install it on a secondary machine? No, that would be making a copy.
It is reasonable to interpret the statement in their Github repository README.md as a "public domain" license for anything contained there. However, their "usage guidelines" backpedals a bit ("generally are not copyrighted", the misleading implication that content used commercially is subject to restrictions that educational and personal uses are not subject to). Although it is true that works "created by the US government" are not protected by copyright, not everything associated with a government agency is created by the US government. An agency might have a policy that they will not post material that is not copyright-free, there is no practical means of knowing if an item is an actual government work, versus a government-supported or government-hosted work (where copyright is held by someone else). If you trust their implication that all of those items in the repository are indeed government works, then they are free of copyright. I don't know any reason to not believe them, although sometimes the government is wrong and they end up liable big-time for infringement. However... NASA Open Source Agreement Version 1.3 (another copy on a NASA web page) on first glance seems to contradict the "government work" theory. Here, they claim to grant certain rights to users and also impose impose restrictions (including obligatory registration). This does not make any sense for a work that is in the public domain. The license is legally defective in that it fails to fill in relevant blanks (agency name, title of work, URL for obligatory registration). Also notice that the license is only for software. The scope of that license therefore has to be something narrower – it applies only to software, and presumably software that is not "a government work". I have no idea what software NASA could legally give away and is not a government work which is therefore not protected by copyright.
Yes, that’s allowed. Under the Stack Exchange terms of service, content you upload is licensed to Stack Exchange Inc. on a non-exclusive basis under CC-BY-SA 4.0. The terms of service do not give Stack Exchange the copyright to your contributions, and a non-exclusive license means you are not promising Stack Exchange that “only Stack Exchange will be allowed to use this content.” That means you can continue to do whatever you want with your own content and do not need to mention Stack Exchange at all. The only restriction is that you can’t stop Stack Exchange from continuing to use your Stack Exchange content under CC-BY-SA 4.0, and since it’s a Creative Commons license you also can’t stop anyone else from using your Stack Exchange content under that license.
This is known as "film novelization"(For example, the novelizations of the Star Wars movies are film novelizations, created under license), and is copyright infringement unless made under a license from the copyright holder. Specifically, you would be making a derivative work of the original, by changing the medium. One of the rights provided by copyright is the right to control the transference from one medium into another. This, in my (non-lawyer) opinion, is unlikely to be found as fair use. There are four test factors for determining fair use(source), decided on a case by case basis: Transformative Character of the Derivative Work: Unlikely to be found in your favor, as nothing is transformed ("I don't change anything, the name are the same, everything is the same, it's just a conversion to textual form"). Nature of the Original Work: A narrative entertainment film, thus unlikely to be found in your favor. Amount and Substantiality of the Portion Taken: You've taken all of it; not in your favor. Effect on the Potential Market: You are essentially providing a free version of what copyright holders can often charge for; negative effect on their potential market. Not in your favor.
Your understanding of the GPL is a bit off. GPLed code doesn't generally force you to GPL the output of the program, but that's just because the output of the program is normally not a derivative work of the program. For instance, if you write a novel in Emacs, your novel is an entirely original work. The fact that you used Emacs as a tool doesn't mean that your novel is somehow based on Emacs. This generator is different. It generates sprites by putting together art assets made by the program's creator. That means that the output contains a substantial amount of content made by the program creator, which means that it would likely be covered by the program creator's copyright. If the content was licensed to you under the GPL, you normally have to abide by GPL restrictions when you redistribute the content or incorporate it into your own program. Copyright holders can, if they want, grant additional permissions to their content and allow you to incorporate that content into nonfree software. For instance, the GCC compilers have an additional permission for their runtime libraries to let you use them in any GCC-compiled code; without that permission, GCC could only be used to compile GPL-compatible code. But unless the copyright holder has granted those permissions, when program output contains large amounts of their copyrighted content you're bound by the GPL when using it. In this case, the program specifically says that the art is dual-licensed under GPLv3 and CC-BY-SA-3.0. Since the generator's output is a combination of premade art assets (the buttons just let you tell the program which art assets to combine), the output is a derivative work of those assets. You can't use it unless your use is compatible with the GPL v3 or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (either works, since dual licensing lets you pick either license).
You need permission from the copyright holder(s) to make the prints at all unless it falls under some fair use doctrine or is a work in Public Domain. If permission is granted, it would presumably involve you paying money on some negotiated basis. An artist might flatly refuse to give permission to your plan to use their art as a component of your art.