Exposing to the public video streaming content Here's my question: Is it legal to expose tv series from web sites on a mobile platform? Would the developer(s) be sued for creating such a software ? Or since the data is already exposed online(i.e web sites where users can watch their tv series online), it would be considered legal to expose the data on a non-commercial or commercial platform ? Would be better if instead of the actual video, it would be the URL (link to the ressource) ?
Addressing the question of programmer liability, generally speaking, a person who creates something that others use to infringe on copyright is not liable is liable if there are non-infringing uses for the thing (Sony). They can be liable if they intentionally contribute to infringement, viz Grokster one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties. End-user liability is different. In order to legally download (watch) anything, you have to have permission from the rights-holder, and from the site operator. The site operator will have terms of service according to which you can access material: if you violate those terms, you are infringing on copyright (you didn't do what the permission to copy required of you). If the site-owner knowingly distributes material without permission, he is an infringer and you have no legal license to copy (watch) that content, so you too are an infringer. If the site-owner unknowingly distributed material without permission and generally complies with the DMCA safe harbor requirements, he is not an infringer but you the user are. Congress has not created an innocent-infringement defense where you can defend yourself against an accusation of infringement by proving that you didn't know that the material was distributed without permission (there is an option to reduce liability for statutory damages to $200 in case of unknowing infringement, but not make all liability go away).
Various elements could be legal, or not. For example, it is legal to require students to do things in order to pass a class. It is legal to require a student to write a program for a course (entirely, or in part). It is legal for a teacher to give a &quot;group grade&quot;. It is not clear whether it is legal to require the student to assign copyright or license to the teacher / school – it may be legal to require a student to pay for their class, and copyright transfer might be valuable consideration for such a contract (assuming that there is a contractual relation at all as opposed to a statutory mandate – e.g. &quot;high school&quot;). If this is a public school, you can't make students pay for a mandatory class, therefore you cannot require assignment of copyright. It is very probably illegal for the student to access the educational records of other students, but the app could be developed with dummy data.
Note that what is being bought or sold here is actually information about the exploit. Attempting to criminally penalize the transmission of information in the US often runs into First Amendment issues. If a person has good reason to know that information is going to be used to commit a crime, or is likely to be so used, and there is no plausible legitimate use for the information, that person might be charged with complicity or conspiracy for distributing the information. But where there are legitimate uses, that is much less likely. Here the information could be used to defend against the exploit, or to identify and remove software subject to the exploit, or for research into such exploits generally. There may be other legit uses as well. Some years ago the Federal government attempted to prosecute a person for exporting a book describing how to create an encryption program. The courts eventually ruled that this was protected speech. I suspect a similar ruling would be made in the sort of case described in the question, but the details would matter.
Yes Playing recorded music in public is unlawful without permission (licence) from the copyright holder. Many jurisdictions allow automatic licensing by signing up with and paying for it through the authorised music organisation.
Exactly the same way it works over all other content There are no special classes of copyright, there’s just copyright. What a user of a service may do with copyright materials will be spelled out in the licence. If there is no licence, then they are left with fair use/fair dealing.
I know the OP is asking about America, but its also worth knowing about other countries. This is legal if both subscriber and subscription are within the EU. There was also a court case about this. In another case in 2014 the pub lost, but that seems to have been because the decoder was only licensed for domestic use. These cases were for satellite decoders rather than Internet streaming, but the legal issues would be the same. Both these cases involved British pubs, so obviously this law doesn't apply to them since Brexit.
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.
No. These companies seem to be saying that they are entitled to sell music under some sort of mandatory licensing agreement authorized by the law of the Ukraine, or by a licensing agreement specific to the Ukraine. Even if this were true, it would only give them the right to distribute the files in the Ukraine. If an American, sitting in the U.S., makes a digital copy of a file on a Ukrainian server by copying it to his or her U.S. hard drive, they have to have a license to do so issued either by the U.S. copyright holder or authorized by U.S. law. A license to distribute in the Ukraine doesn't give the U.S. end user that license. A Ukrainian statute doesn't give the U.S. end user that license. If the end user doesn't have that license, he or she is violating the copyright holder's rights and may be civilly or criminally liable. There is no scienter requirement for copyright infringement. In fact, it's not at all clear that any Ukrainian site is operating even under this dubious legal cover. This report on Ukrainian licensing agencies by an industry group claims that many Ukrainian licensing authorities are actually scams that have no rights to distribute music under any license--one of the "rogue licensing agencies" discussed is Avtor, referenced in your first example. There is some legal confusion over what group does have permission to license music and collect royalties in the Ukraine, but it's clear that Avtor doesn't, and it certainly doesn't have permission to distribute them in the U.S. If a guy came up to you on the street and told you he had written permission from Disney to videotape their latest movies with a camcorder and sell them to you for a dollar, are you violating the law if you buy it? The answer is yes, and it's the same for these Ukrainian sites.