With copyrighted material, as long as Bob blog a snippet of it and provide their offical website link and comply with the (DMCA) law, safe enough? Bob would like to start a blog where Bos shares some how-to tutorials. Bob would like to show some credibility and educational suggestion, so Bob would quote some instructions from the manual and provide link to the product official website where the manuals hosts. Sure, Bob will share the Disclaimer page where Bobs will comply with the (DMCA) law and don't own the manual itself. Is the safe enough for Bob and the website? The goal is the avoid any legal issues. The goal is not to avoid DMCA takedown requests. Bob will comply with the (DMCA) takedown request. PS Define &quot;safe enough&quot;: The goal is the avoid any legal issues after complying with the (DMCA) takedown request.
Short Answer As a practical matter, the strategy you suggest is widely used, and the vast majority of the time, it does not result in copyright disputes. It isn't 100% risk free, however. Long Answer All of the questions in this answer are governed entirely by federal law. Both basic copyright law, found in Title 17 of the United States Code, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (which amended Title 17 of the United States Code in part, and also added 28 U.S.C. § 4001 related to movie licensing) are federal statutes that do not have parallel state law counterparts. Copyright cases are in the exclusive subject matter jurisdiction of the federal courts when they arise in the United States. See 28 U.S.C. § 1338(a) (&quot;[t]he district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action arising under any Act of Congress relating to ... copyrights .... Such jurisdiction shall be exclusive of the courts of the states in ... copyright cases.&quot;). This isn't a DMCA case This strategy doesn't really utilize Section 230 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), however, which protects online hosts of sites from liability for user generated content, if the host honors DMCA takedown notices (subject to an exception for human trafficking content). DMCA takedown notices aren't strictly speaking applicable in this fact pattern. When Bob is the website's author, his content isn't user generated content from which he is protected from liability by Section 230. His Internet Service Provider is protected from liability for his content, but Bob isn't protected from liability for his content, because he isn't a third-party user of his own website. The Basic Copyright Law Analysis Once you understand that nuance that this isn't a DMCA question, the question collapses into a simple copyright infringement issue. The bottom line in this copyright analysis is that if you take a snipper of material from a copyrighted source and link to the source copyrighted material, are you not likely to face copyright liability. Links Are Basically Liability Risk Free The link itself, pretty much categorically, and without lots of additional relevant facts (basically some sort of conspiracy behind the scenes that can't be discerned from looking at the work itself), will never give rise to copyright infringement liability. Snippets Are Copyright Infringements That Fair Use Usually Excuses So, the remaining issue is whether a snippet of a copyrighted work flagged for educational purposes, creates risk of copyright infringement liability. There is always some risk any time you publish a copy, no matter how small, of copyrighted material without the permission of the copyright owner. The snippet is undeniably a publication of a copy of copyrighted work (by virtue of the premise of the question). This is a prima facie case of copyright infringement and your inclusion of a link to the source makes it fairly likely that your publication of this copy will be discovered by the copyright owner. So, this is a copyright infringement that gives rise to copyright liability unless this liability for copyright infringement can be overcome or excused by the affirmative defense to copyright liability of fair use. The risk that the snippet will not be considered fair use, and therefore will be found to be a copyright infringement giving rise to copyright liability is relatively higher if the snippet is a photograph or a sound recording than it is if it is merely quoted words from the source. But, usually, a reasonably small snippet of a copyrighted work published for educational purposes will come within the fair use defense, even though that really needs to be evaluated on a case by case basis. Practical Context And Analysis The fact that this mode of expression, with a snipped and a link on a blog for educational purposes is pervasive on the Internet, as a practical matter, means that generally speaking, this will be considered fair use. Usually, this strategy will prevent someone who uses it from facing litigation for copyright infringement, even though, in theory, the determination is highly fact and context specific. It isn't a guarantee of no liability, but it is low risk. Most marginal cases where someone arguably slightly exceeds fair use are resolved with a cease and desist letter (with which Bob should comply even if he thinks his use is fair use), rather than litigation.
Under US copyright law, all works are protected by copyright except for US Government works. The concept of "public domain" is not legally well-defined, and is used colloquially to refer to government works, works whose protection has expired, works available to all, and works not copyrightable (such as scientific laws or old software). Under older copyright law, releasing a work without the copyright symbol effectively put the work in the public domain. One can simply say "I dedicate this work to the public domain", and that is typically taken to be enough. CC0 purports to do this (using more words). However, as far as I can tell, author rights under European law are so strong that it is simply impossible. Releasing works into the public law has to be consistent with other aspects of the law. If you grant an perpetual exclusive right to copy and distribute to a publisher, their right does not go away on your death (a right which they would not have with a real public domain work). A problem is that an author who makes such a dedication (a bare license) could revoke the license and reassert their copyright. They could be estopped from making that argument. As property, your heirs would inherit the copyright and could (try to) revoke the license. Presumably the courts would not allow them to pursue ostensive infringers. Nevertheless, your plan is neither trivial nor bullet-proof.
It is not critical, however, it can help and it can't hurt. You own the copyright and if you were to take legal action you would need to prove this - the notice is evidence you can use to do so. Note that some jurisdictions (including the US) require registration of copyright before commencing legal action and that damages only accrue from the date of registration. A more significant issue is: what rights does the website owner have? They may believe that their contract with you involved a transfer of the copyright to them: did it or didn't it or doesn't it say?
Yes. The introduction to the license says &quot;You may adapt — ... build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially&quot;. (My emphasis). Note that there is an attribution requirement so you need to find a way to attribute each image to its individual author. For the fine details, you certainly need to read the actual license (rather than the introduction) and you probably need to consult your own, paid-for, IP lawyer - but if you are just scoping the project out at the moment, you should be fine. For contrast, here is a Creative Commons licence that does prohibit commercial use.
20th Century Fox have a trademark on "Simpsons." They have trademarks on "Bart Simpson", on "D'oh", on "Duff Beer". I would assume that they take their trademarks seriously. What you can't do is to use someone else's trademark to make people believe your commercial product is related to theirs. It's quite reasonable to assume that someone seeing your book in a store would think it is written by the makers of The Simpsons show and therefore buy it. Even if you say that isn't your intention, it is what would happen. I'd try coming up with some different titles, maybe "How to write animated TV shows" with "Example: The Simpsons" (well, you are the writer so you should come up with something better), and take them to a lawyer. And then contact the makers of the show (again asking the lawyer for advice how to do this) because even if your lawyer says the title is fine, that doesn't mean you can't be sued.
The first thing that has to be done (in court, or via lawyer-to-lawyer communication) is that The Company has to prove that they own the copyright. If they accomplish that, you can defend yourself by providing proof of a license to download and redistribute. From what I can tell, you cannot directly prove that, since the rights-holder did not give you the license. The issue is that a third party cannot impose a license on a work simply by putting it out there with a file that claims to be a license from the artist. So this brings in the Free Music Archive: they presumably have some evidence that the rights holder did indeed grant the alleged license, and may be able to provide proof. Your argument may be credible, in the sense that you had a good-faith belief that the item was so licensed, and the website would provide a basis for concluding that that belief is reasonable. If the work was licensed, then the some rights holder would know that, but not necessarily the current one. Assume the artist made a recording, transferred the rights to Company A, who later sold the rights to Company B who is now coming after you. Artist may have licensed it when it was his, and forgot to tell A. A may have licensed it when they sold the license to B. Artist may have improperly licensed it after he sold the work to A (under the "I wrote it, I have the right to do whatever I want" non-legal theory). A might have improperly licensed the work after selling the right to B (maybe by mistakenly including it in a package deal, i.e. via bookkeeping error, rather than ignorance of the law). Or, they may simply have forgotten. If this is a DMCA takedown notice, the notice-giver could just be abusing the system. But we don't know how you were contacted, so I'll leave DMCA out of this for now.
None of the methods suggested protect Bob from a copyright or trademark infringement claim. These methods may protect Bob from a claim that Bob is an intentional infringing party, as opposed to being an &quot;innocent infringer&quot;. But, an innocent infringer is not immune to liability for copyright and trademark infringement. Instead, an innocent infringer is simply subject to less potent penalties and remedies than an intentional infringer of the copyright or trademark owner's rights. Also, innocent infringer status ceases when Bob receives a cease and desist letter if Bob continues the infringing conduct. This said, in the first case, if Bob independently writes the blog post without copying anyone else's work, Bob has not infringed any copyright. This is true even if someone else had already written exactly the same thing. Copyright infringement, unlike patent infringement and trademark infringement, requires that the infringing work actually be derived from the work claimed to be infringed and independent invention of a work is a full defense to copyright infringement.
It's complicated You still own your own posts First off, you own everything that you originally created. Posting it on Stack Exchange doesn't affect your rights to your own content. Incorporating suggestions If you copy any of the text from posts that were created by others, you must comply with the CC BY-SA license. The exact version will depend on when the content was posted, and can be viewed by clicking the &quot;Share&quot; link or viewing the post's timeline via the clock icon on the left. Currently, new posts are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, which requires you to (basically) provide attribution with the creator's name, a link back to the content, and an indication of whether changes were made. A more detailed description of the exact requirements is here. You would also be required to license the work that you incorporated it into under the same license. However, game mechanics aren't copyrightable. If you merely used mechanics suggested in the posts without actually using the actual creative expression (for instance, names or description text) from the posts, you would not be required to provide any attribution or use any particular license, because you didn't use any copyrightable material from the post. A thank-you would still be nice All that said, it's still a nice thing to do to provide some sort of informal thanks to those who provided valuable assistance, even when you're not legally required to do so.