US Copyright Question Let’s say I want to create a website that helps people troubleshoot a topic. I get my facts and information from site A, and use that info to write my own articles (Not copying word for word, but stating the same ideas). Site A has this policy: &quot;Any duplication or use of images, diagrams, or text, or other electronic or printed publications is not permitted without the prior written agreement by Site A.&quot; Copyright.gov says this: &quot;Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation, although it may protect the way these things are expressed.&quot; So am I allowed to take the facts and information from Site A and use it on my own site? I will not take their images or interpretation of the facts, but just the facts themselves. And I will write my own articles and &quot;fluf&quot; based on the facts. Note: I live in the US EDIT: I tried to add this as a comment but it was too long. So my current understanding is that facts in lists of obvious order cannot be copyrighted, but their explanations or instructions can be. So can I do this? SITE A: How to fix a black screen on your computer Fixing a black screen can be quite easy! Just follow these simple steps. Restart by holding down the power key for 5 seconds (This can help refresh the system if something is not working right) Remove the battery, then replace it (This can help remove all background operations) Throw it out the window because there is nothing else you can do to fix it My Site This guide will show you how to fix a black screen on your computer! Try holding down the power button for five seconds to reset the device. If that does not work, try removing, then replacing the battery. Doing this can help stop any tasks your computer may be running. If the above steps don't work, bring your computer to a repair shop for further analysis.
copyright.gov is the oficial site of the US Copyriuht office, and is here quoting 17 USC 102(b) which is the actual copyright law. Under it, copyright protection extends to expression, but not to any idea, etc. However, these are not in conflict, because using information or ideas from a work to create a new and original work is not &quot;duplication or use of images, diagrams, or text, or other electronic or printed publications&quot; so Site A is also correct. However, a close paraphrase where the words are changed but the sentence and paragraph structure of a text is followed, presenting the same ideas in the same order in sentences of the same structure in the same order, may constitute a derivative work, and thus a copyright infringement. Wikipedia describes &quot;close paraphrase&quot; as: &quot;... the superficial modification of material from another source.&quot; It goes on to give an example: Facts and ideas cannot be protected by copyright, but creative expression is protected. The test of creativity is minimal. Hilaire Belloc's 1897 More Beasts: (for Worse Children) illustrates creative expression in his description of a llama: The Llama is a woolly sort of fleecy hairy goat, with an indolent expression and an undulating throat; like an unsuccessful literary man. If this somewhat dubious source was used for the article on llamas and was still protected by copyright, it would be acceptable to say that the llama is an animal with a shaggy coat, and perhaps that it has a long neck. These are facts. But use of the phrases &quot;indolent expression&quot; and &quot;undulating throat&quot; might violate copyright. The original choice of words is part of Belloc's creative expression. Going further, the simile &quot;like an unsuccessful literary man&quot; is also creative, and is also protected. A clumsy paraphrase like &quot;resembling a failed writer&quot; might violate copyright even though the words are entirely different. More than the facts have been copied. So when the question reads: am I allowed to take the facts and information from Site A and use it on my own site? There answer is: &quot;Yes, but the rewriting must be more than superficial, A mere substitution o synonyms will not do, the expressive structure must also be rewritten.&quot; However, if the expressive structure is simply a list of facts in an obvious order, such as alphabetical or chronological there is no copyright at all on either the words or the structure. see Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991) edit The scenario added by edit looks reasonable. In this case it would seem that the operator of &quot;my site&quot; has probably not infringed the copyright on &quot;Site A&quot;.
Ideas are not Subject to Copyright Copyright does not protect ideas. This is true in the US, in the UK, and under the copyright laws of every country that I know of. Article 2 paragraph 8 of the Berne Copyright Convention reads: The protection of this Convention shall not apply to news of the day or to miscellaneous facts having the character of mere items of press information. If the ideas of a work have been so re-written or recast as not to constitute a derivative work, the original author has no rights over the new work, which becomes a separate work with its own copyright. In such case there is no legal requirement for any credit or acknowledgement, at least not under copyright law. Also the use of a work whose copyright has expired, or is for some other reason in the public domain and not protected by copyright, may be legally made without acknowledgement of the author, or even under a false designation of authorship. Plagiarism Passing someone else's work off as one's own is generally considered to be plagiarism. Some people consider that using significant parts of another's work without proper credit is also plagiarism. Plagiarism is not a legal matter. It is considered highly improper in the academic and journalistic worlds, and may carry serious consequences there. It is considered unethical by many in other situations as well. However, it does not constitute copyright infringement, and copyright law cannot be used to prevent or punish plagiarism that is not also infringement. Works Created by an Automated Process or Script Whether an automated process can (at the current state of the art) truly extract facts and re-express them to a degree that would constitute a new, non-infringing work, I tend to doubt. Whether even sufficient alteration could be made by an automated process to reliably constitute fair use, fair dealing, or have any similar exception apply I also doubt. The US Copyright Office Compendium of Copyright practice (an official publication of the US Copyright Office) states in item 307: The U.S. Copyright Office will register an original work of authorship, provided that the work was created by a human being. The copyright law only protects “the fruits of intellectual labor” that “are founded in the creative powers of the mind.” Trade-Mark Cases, 100 U.S. 82, 94 (1879). Because copyright law is limited to “original intellectual conceptions of the author,” the Office will refuse to register a claim if it determines that a human being did not create the work. Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony, 111 U.S. 53, 58 (1884) Similar legal limits on AI authorship apply in many other countries. Fair Use Fair use is a specifically US legal concept, and generally does not apply in any other country, although I understand that Israel has closely followed US law in this matter. Fair use is defined by 17 USC 107. That law specifies four factors which a court must consider in making a decision on whether a use is a fair use. particularly important is whether the new work will harm actual or potential markets for the original, and whether it will serve as a replacement for the original. US Courts also often consider whether a new work is &quot;transformative&quot;, that is whether it serves a significantly different purpose than the original does. For example, in a popular song, lyrics are often intended to have an emotional effect. In a textbook on verse, the same lyrics may be used to demonstrate poetic technique, rhyme, meter, etc. That would be a transformative use. The presence of proper attribution or credit is often a significant factor in the decision by a court as to whether a use is fair. Using another's work without proper credit is significantly less likely to be found to be a fair use, although credit is not an absolute requirement of fair use. See Is this copyright infringement? Is it fair use? What if I don&#39;t make any money off it? and the various questions on this site tagged fair-use for many more details on fair use. Fair dealing and Other Exceptions to Copyright In the UK and some commonwealth countries, there is a doctrine known as &quot;fair dealing&quot; It is somewhat similar to fair use, but is generally more limited. In other countries there are various &quot;exceptions to copyright&quot;. Some countries have a few broad exception, some have many narrower exceptions. India, for example, has more than 28 separate exceptions. What is covered varies from country to county. Exceptions for teaching, comment and analysis, and news reporting are common. Article 9, paragraph 2 of the Berne Copyright Convention (linked above) recognizes such exceptions, stating: It shall be a matter for legislation in the countries of the Union to permit the reproduction of such works in certain special cases, provided that such reproduction does not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and does not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the author. The convention goes on to state, in article 10, that: (1) It shall be permissible to make quotations from a work which has already been lawfully made available to the public, provided that their making is compatible with fair practice, and their extent does not exceed that justified by the purpose, including quotations from newspaper articles and periodicals in the form of press summaries. (2) It shall be a matter for legislation in the countries of the Union, and for special agreements existing or to be concluded between them, to permit the utilization, to the extent justified by the purpose, of literary or artistic works by way of illustration in publications, broadcasts or sound or visual recordings for teaching, provided such utilization is compatible with fair practice. (3) Where use is made of works in accordance with the preceding paragraphs of this Article, mention shall be made of the source, and of the name of the author if it appears thereon. Thus article 10 paragraph 3 of the Berne Copyright Convention establishes an international norm that works used under an exception to copyright, such as fair use or fair dealing, shall be properly credited. Web-Scraping The law on computer scraping is still under development, and varies from country to country. If a site operator makes it clear to users that scraping is unwelcome, it may be unlawful, depending on the rules of the country or countries involved. When a Terms of Service (TOS) document constitutes a binding contract or agreement that users must accept, and when such an agreement prohibits scraping or other automated access, that prohibition may be enforceable. in Craigslist Inc. v. 3Taps Inc., 942 F.Supp.2d 962 (N.D. Cal. 2013) a US Federal district court held that sending a cease-and-desist letter and enacting an IP address block is sufficient notice of online trespassing, which a plaintiff can use to claim a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). However, that decision has been criticized by many, and was not a Circuit court or Supreme Court case. In the recent case of Van Buren v. United States, 593 U.S. ___ (2021) the US Supreme Court narrowed the application of the language in the CFAA making access that &quot;exceeds authorization&quot; criminal. In the case of HiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corp. The Supreme Court addressed the question of whether scraping a public website after a cease-and-desist letter has been sent constitutes a violation of the CFAA (this was the fact pattern in Craigslist v. 3Taps). The Court sent the case back to the Ninth Circuit for reconsideration. The Ninth Circuit Court reaffiremd its prior decision that when the website had been made publicly accessible, the CFAA did not apply, even in the face of a C&amp;D letter. This seems to overrule 3taps. Note that other means of prohibiting scraping may still be legally sound and enforceable. See &quot;hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn&quot; from the National Law Review. (This article and the decision it reports was brought to my attention via a comment by user Michael Seifert.) The article &quot;Web Scraping Watch: Cases Set to Clarify Application of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act&quot; discusses these cases in more detail, but does not incloude the latest ruling in the HiQ Labs case. Conclusion Unless the results of the &quot;rewrite&quot; done by the &quot;program&quot; are sufficiently original to be neither a quotation, a fair use, nor a derivative work, but a new work using the same ideas, they will need to qualify under fair use or some other exception to copyright (unless permission has been obtained). This may well require a proper attribution of the original article. In any case, such credit is considered to be ethically mandatory by many. The web-scraping done to obtain the initial data may or may not be lawful, depending on the contents of any TOS document, and whether the relevant laws make such a document enforceable, which is still not a fully settled point under the law, and which varies by country. Personally, I would think giving proepr credit much easier and safer than trying to justify not doing so, but that is not law, just my opnion.
united-states Functionality in general is not protected by copyright, although it may in some cases be protected by a patent. As the question noted, there are many IDEs and creating another one generally similar to those is not a violation of anyone's IP rights. The &quot;look and feel&quot; of a piece of software has been held by US courts to be protected by copyright. Broderbund Software. Inc., v. Unison World, Inc., 648 F. Supp. 1127 (N.D. Cal. 1986), was a relativcly early case in which the visual display elements of a software program were held to be protected by copyright. In the decision it is said that; On the “Choose a Font” screen, no mechanical or practical factor compelled [defendant] to use those exact words (“Choose a Font”). He could have written: “Select a Font,” or “Indicate a Typeface Preference,” or “Which Type Style Do You Prefer,” or any combination of these terms. . . .The bottom line is that the designer of any program that performed the same functions as “Print Shop” had available a wide range of expression governed predominantly by artistic and not utilitarian considerations. Another relevant early case was Digital Communications Associates, Inc. v. Softklone Distributing Corp., 659 F.Supp. 449 (N.D. Ga. 1987). In this case, the Defendant &quot;oftklone intentionally set out to &quot;clone&quot; or copy the functionality and interface of the popular program Crosstalk XVI (I was a user of thwt program many years ago). The court wrote: In the instant case, however, the arrange- ment of the status screen involves consider- able stylistic creativity and authorship above and beyond the ideas embodied in the status screen. It cannot be said that the idea of the status screen, i.e., using two symbol commands to change the operations of the computer program and reflecting that fact on a screen listing the computer program’s parameters/commands with their operative values, could not have been expressed in a large variety of ways. The defendants have never contended that they could not have arranged the parameters/commands in a wide variety of patterns without hampering the operation of their program. and found copyright infringement on that basis. Section 310 of Copyrightable Authorship: What Can Be Registered by the US Copyright office, says: The U.S. Copyright Office will not consider the so-called “look and feel” of a work. Invoking a work’s “feel” is not a viable substitute for an objective analysis of the work’s fixed and creative elements. See 4 MELVILLE &amp; DAVID NIMMER, NIMMER ON Copyright § 13.03[A][1][c] (2013) (criticizing the use of “feel” as a “wholly amorphous referent” that “merely invites an abdication of analysis”). The question asks: How far can I go in copying the user interface before it becomes copyright infringement ? There is no clear bright line on this matter. The more one copies interface elements and choices from a specific source, the stronger the case for infringement is. Using elements and choices that have become common industry practice in multiple works froim multiple developers and companies is probably safe. Clearly and extensively imitating the visual appearance and interface of a single specific work of software might well be infringement. One would be wise to consult a lawyer with experience in copyright law, and specifically &quot;look and feel&quot; issues, beforign publishing such a work of software. This issue is discussed extensively in Look And Feel In Computer Software (1993) by Jack Russo &amp; Jamie Nafziger, published by Computerlaw Group LLP, which seems to be a law firm specializing in computer law. The Law of Look and Feel by Peter Lee (Professor of Law and Chancellor’s Fellow, University of California, Davis.) &amp; Madhavi Sunder (Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Law, University of California, Davis.) is a 60-page law review article dealing with this topic. There is far more detail in these publications (and many others to be found on the net) than I can summarize in an SE answer. Configurable Interfaces The question asks whether the use of a configurable interface which could, but does not by default, imitate an existing interface would be infringement. I have not been able to find any case on point, or any discussion in a reliable source of this issue. Therefore, I am going to speculate. If there is a single choice between overall &quot;themes&quot; or &quot;shells&quot; and one of them imitates the interface from a protected program without permission, that would probably be legally the same as if the program shipped with that interface. It might or might not be infringement, depending on the details, as discussed above. If there are many settings, but the program is shipped with instructions advising a combination of settings that imitate another interface (or the developer or distributor provides such advice to users), that would probably be legally the same as if the program shipped in that configuration. If the developer provides a few preset configuration files which control these interface settings, and one such file results in settings that imitate another interface, that would also probably be legally the same as if the program shipped in that configuration. If there are many settings and there is no particular guidance or advice to a user on what combination to use, nor any predefined settings file, but users must discover (if they choose) a group of settings which imitate another interface, that is probably not infringement. I repeat that this section of the answer is based on general principals, but not on specific case law, nor on specific legal scholarship, and a court faced with this issue might rule otherwise. Before implementing this as a business plan, one might be wise to consult a lawyer with IP expertise.
The website owner brings in an expert programmer who testifies that the user cannot have gotten to a certain part of the site (or download, etc.) without having clicked to accept the terms of service, and that this document they're holding is a true and correct copy of the terms of service as of that date. That's evidence in favor of the site, and an adverse party has to have stronger evidence in order to overcome it. If the person didn't save a copy of the terms themselves, they'll have a hard time on this. Then the other party's attorney tries to discredit the programmer by asking questions like "how do you know there are no bugs in the software which could have allowed somebody to reach this without agreeing to the terms of service" etc. Apparently, some sites don't require users to click indicating agreement. If the company has significantly changed the site, terms of service, etc. since the time the user registered, and doesn't keep any copies of old versions around, and admits this, they'll have a hard time enforcing an agreement (as they can't produce a copy of it). If the user kept a copy, the user might be able to present that. It's up to the finder of fact to decide what to believe and how much weight to give the various witnesses' testimony.
Yes, you may The layout of the board and its appearance are not protected by copyright, because they are not expressions or any other type of copyrightable content. Even if they were (say if some protested art was displayed on the board) you are displaying this for instructional purposes, and not harming any market for the board, so fair use is likely to apply (in the U.S.). The device could be protected by patent, but you are not copying or imitating the board, nor showing anyone how to do so, so that would not apply. You are not selling or advertising the board, nor knock-offs of it, so trademark protection would not apply, even if a protected trademark is visible on th board. Just in case, be sure to make clear that your video is not authorized or endorsed by the maker of the board.
Video would not be transformed in any way, and discussion would take place on reddit or other discussion platforms. So you are copying someone else's video and reposting it verbatim and in full in vimeo, without adding any additional content of your own? What is even the need for it? If you want to discuss the video in Reddit or similar, you can link to the original video instead of your copy. The usual way that fair use is used is when you include the relevants parts of the work being criticized as part of your video. There are other points to take into consideration; IP lawsuits are very specific of the details of the works involved (for examples it could be easier to consider fair use the inclusion of the full original work if it were a short one that if it were a long one) so it is difficult to give an absolute "yes" or "no" answer. But what you attempt to do seems highly problematic. If your argument were valid, what would prevent me from setting an URL to download the latest Hollywood blockbuster because I am commenting about it on Reddit? Imagine that I start selling copies of "The Avengers XXII: A day at the Park"1 adding just a note at the end saying "I like this movie, but they played frisbee a lot too much" as opinion/commentary/criticism... do you think that it would qualify as "fair use"?2 Coupled with the fact that it seems that copying the video seems not necessary for commenting on it (again, just link to the source) I would consider more prudent3 not copying it. 1Well, technically I would say that I were selling my opinion (which is perfectly legal), with the film included only as "fair use" to provide context to my opinion. 2Answer: No, it would not. 3I am not a lawyer, I am not your lawyer, and this site does not provide legal advice.
It depends on the nature of the quote. Quotes from Buddha, Aristotle and Lincoln are out of copyright. Otherwise, the two basic questions are: who put that quote in fixed form, and is copying it "fair use"? If for example you happen to be at a political rally where a politician makes a noteworthy extemporaneous quote, you could be the copyright holder, because copyright law protects the person who first puts the work into fixed form. (If he's reading from prepared text, the speech writer or his employer would hold copyright). You can also quote small bits from any source, such as "Don't think about your errors or failures; otherwise, you'll never do a thing". It would not be "fair use" to chop up a novel into a sequence of 2-3 sentence quotes. This assumes that you manually assemble the quotes from legal sources, such as a print copy of "The Martian". Whether or not you can legally pull the data from an online source depends on the terms of service for that site. That lets out brainyquote as a source, so check the TOS for whatever source you get the material from.
You can read it, you can examine it to the point where you understand it, and then you can get inspired by the code and write your own code, without copying the code on the website, which does the same thing. If there is no license, then you can do what copyright law allows you to do. You are not allowed to copy the code, or create derived works by taking the code and modifying it.