Using a public domain opera, recorded by someone else, in a parody I found a YouTube video of a public domain opera, and I want to use the sound portion in a musical parody. I will only use parts of it, alter it dramatically, and wish to claim "Fair Use." Is it indeed, Fair Use under these circumstances? Do I have any legal obligation to the creator of the sound piece? He used public domain arrangements, and placed it on YouTube. I would be happy to give him credit for his work though. Thank you!
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.
Not copyright as such because that is about protecting a 'work' — a voice is not a 'work'. As the court said in one of the following examples, &quot;A voice is not copyrightable. The sounds are not 'fixed.'&quot; (You could copyright a roar or a yell — some kind of fixed arrangement of sound(s).) But some jurisdictions have recognised property rights in voices and/or that the voice is protected by the person's 'right of publicity' (the right to control the commercial exploitation of their identity, of which the voice is a part). For example: Bette Wins Ruling In ‘Sound-Alike’ Lawsuit - AP News June 23, 1988 SAN FRANCISCO (AP) _ A federal appeals court has reinstated a lawsuit filed by entertainer Bette Midler after an advertising agency allegedly tried to duplicate her voice and singing style in one of its ad campaigns. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled Wednesday that Midler could pursue her suit against the Ford Motor Co. and the Young &amp; Rubicam advertising agency. The court said certain personal attributes - such as a voice - can be considered property rights, protected by state law. ... U.S. District Judge Ferdinand Fernandez said Young &amp; Rubicam acted like ″the average thief″ but dismissed Midler’s suit, saying no law prohibits imitation of a singer’s voice. But the appeals court disagreed. &quot;A voice is as distinctive and personal as a face,″ the appeals court said. ″When a distinctive voice of a professional singer is widely known and is deliberately imitated in order to sell a product, the sellers have appropriated what is not theirs.&quot; judgment in Midler v Ford Another case in the US is Waits v Frito-Lay Inc. The US Court of Appeal found that a radio commercial's imitation of the voice of Tom Waits constituted a civil tort, &quot;voice misappropriation&quot;. I'm not aware of any cases involving computer synthesis of voices.
It would be copyright infringement. You had the copyright holders permission to make one copy of the song by downloading it. At that time, if you gave me a copy of that song, it could be argued that very, very little damage was caused because I just had downloaded that song myself with practically the same effect. Today, that argument is not valid anymore. So this is definitely copyright infringement. That's your question answered. I doubt that anyone would take action if you gave a copy to someone and it was found out. Making it available to the world for free download is another matter. That could easily get you into trouble; in the USA there could be a fine up to $150,000 without any proof of actual damages needed.
Not very novel What you are talking about is a derivative work. This is arguably the most famous example: It's an interesting example because Leonardo da Vinci did not have copyright in the original but Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia do have copyright in the derivative. Even though the changes are physically small, they are enough. A crucial factor in current legal analysis of derivative works is transformativeness, largely as a result of the Supreme Court's 1994 decision in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. The Court's opinion emphasized the importance of transformativeness in its fair use analysis of the parody of "Oh, Pretty Woman" involved in the Campbell case. In parody, as the Court explained, the transformativeness is the new insight that readers, listeners, or viewers gain from the parodic treatment of the original work. As the Court pointed out, the words of the parody "derisively demonstrat[e] how bland and banal the Orbison [Pretty Woman] song" is. For an author to have copyright in the derivative they must: Meet the (low) threshold of originality for copyright to exist. Make their derivative lawfully - either because they have permission or because their use falls under an exception to copyright like fair use or fair dealing. However, they do not have copyright in the original elements. For example, I could take the Mona Lisa and give her different clothes, a different background or a hat I will not be infringing their copyright. If I give her a different style of moustache? However, there is an issue with "I have copyright on the contents of the post" when you don't. Even if your work is derivative, you do not have copyright in the original parts and do not have the right to licence them. So, for example, this post is a derivative work of the Wikipedia page linked to above and I have copyright in my original contributions because: They meet the threshold of originality I have permission to make the derivative either through the Wikipedia licence or because my use is fair use. I can give Stack Exchange a licence for my work but I cannot give them a licence for the original work including, for example, the image and quote above. So, someone could quote my entire answer subject to the licence or fair work, but they couldn't copy just the image or quote.
To do so I used some images and Gifs which may be under copyright but since I don't earn money for myself and there is no company backing me I was hoping that there is some protection for private persons like me who just want to showcase the project. Sorry. If your website is public facing (i.e. not password protected and available only to family and close friends), you need to follow copyright law. There is no exception to copyright just because a project is run by an individual for non-commercial purposes. I am also insecure about the GDPR regulations since I give users the ability to create an account and try it out. Your profile says you're in the EU. Then you need to comply with the GDPR. Is there any way to protect me against greedy lawyers and companies? Could I write something like: "This website is a peace of art" and save myself with arguments like "artistic freedom" or "free speech"? Nope. A controversial website run by Peter Sunde had at one point a "free speech" disclaimer (similar to the one you propose) posted. However, Sunde did never use this defense in court: Finnish court slaps Peter Sunde with €350k fine. If he had shown up in court, I am pretty sure the court would have told him that such a disclaimer has no legal merit. The only protection that will make you completely safe is to adhere to the law.
Rolling Stone has a short non-technical article on a dozen famous cases. This page is a massive database on music copyright infringement cases going back to 1844, along with analysis of the cases. That analysis may well suffice for your interests: here is an except from a recent case: In fact, there is no melodic material in the section in question in the plaintiff’s work. The harmonic progression of the arpeggiated chords of both songs is utterly commonplace and not copyrightable expression. Neither are “structure, tempo, instrumentation” when, as here, these elements in both works contain no protectable authorship individually or combined. The plaintiff’s references to “iconic notes” and “feel” are meaningless. What excited the plaintiff was merely the fact that a portion of the defendant’s song sounds like his. This similarity, however, doesn’t support a claim of infringement of a musical work when, as here, the musical elements of the portions of the songs in issue underlying the recorded sounds of both works contain little or no protectable original expression Apart from providing the appellate court rulings, this also includes original complaints and petitions, certain trial court rulings, and amicus briefs which are the &quot;technical&quot; core of the court's finding of fact. However, you will need to read a varied sample of these cases and not just pick one at random. This will at least provide the raw material basis for discovering how these decisions are made.
If I draw something, having been inspired by looking at some other thing, you are not copying that thing. If you carefully copy something even if you are also deliberately changing features of the original, then you are copying. Copyright law gives the copyright holder the exclusive right to make copies. There is a difference between copying music and visual art in this respect, since music can be reduced to a small set of specific symbols, so "being inspired by" a musical work is often found to be infringement. The difficult part is legally distinguishing "making a copy" versus "being inspired by". The courts use a subjective test of "substantial similarity" to decide if there has been copying. the case of Mannion v. Coors. "Pose" is an element that is considered in assessing similarity: the question the court would ask (itself) is whether such a pose could ever have come from elsewhere (such as, your own creative efforts).
It Depends If the person reusing the image (lets call that person R for reuser) is not complying with the terms of the Creative commons license, which include a requirement to provide attribution of the source work, then R cannot rely on the license, and the granting of the license ad the presence of a license declaration is legally irrelevant. R must have some other basis to reuse the image. This could be an exception to copyright, such as fair use or fair dealing. Or possibly the image is not protected by copyright, for example because its copyright has expired, or because it is a work of the US Federal Government being used in the US. In the absence of such a basis, R is infringing copyright. In much of the world copyright now lasts for 70 years after the death of the author (or of all co-authors). In some different terms apply, ranging from life+50 to life+100. Sound recordings and photos get shorter terms in some countries. In the US the term is life+70 for recent works, but for work created and published before 1978 more complex rules apply, depending on the date of publication, and whether laws on notice and renewal were complied with. See the well-known chart Copyright Term and the Public Domain for the various cases and when copyright expires in each case. The question asks about fair use. This is a US-specific legal concept. It is designed to be flexible, an is highly fact-dependent. As a result it is rarely possible to say if a use will qualify as a fair use with certainty until a court passes on it. See Is this copyright infringement? Is it fair use? What if I don&#39;t make any money off it? for more on fair use. Not providing attribution is itself often considered to weigh against fair use. The question does not give enough detail to make even a good guess as to whether such a use is likely to be held to be fair use. Identifying the kind of eagle has some educational value, which might favor fair use to some extent, but must be considered in light of the overall purpose of the use, which is not described. There is no indication as to whether the original work is creative or factual, or whether the reuse would be likely to harm the market for the original. Much use of images on social media does not stand up under a fair use analysis. Providing proper attribution might well help any fair use claim. See also Do you have to give attribution if an image falls under Creative Commons?