Can one download the original Hebrew bible text from websites that say &quot;all rights reserved&quot;? For example, there's a website that has the entire hebrew bible text online [and I assume the original hebrew letters [without translation] is public domain [correct me if I'm wrong]] but the website says at the bottom כל הזכויות בטקסטים הספרותיים כפי שהם מופיעים באתר &quot;ספרות הקודש&quot; הן של מכון ממרא. החומר מופיע באתר סנונית על סמך רישיון מאת מכון ממרא ובאדיבותו הרבה. החיפוש באתר זה הוא בשיתוף מורפיקס כל הזכויות שמורות © 2003-2009 (ראה תנאי שימוש) {free translation} all of the rights, in the books' texts, according to how they are published in [the website named] &quot;holy books] belong to [the organization known as] &quot;machon mamray&quot;. The material appears on the website &quot;sniut&quot; [the base domain] based on a license from &quot;machon mamray&quot;, and by courtesy of it, much of the [content that is] searched in this website is in collaboration with [another company] &quot;moorfeeks&quot; all rights reserved the point is, they have sme kind of license for all of this text, and it says &quot;all rights reserved&quot;, but the original hebrew text itself is [to the best of my knowledge] in the public domain, can I extract only the hebrew text itself and republish it with no issues?
Someone similar say While it is quite true that no one can have a copyright that excludes all others from preparing their own unique copy of the Bible or other public domain works for copyright protection, our Bibles and other materials are not exactly like any others and are fully protected by copyright laws in all countries So for example, I could theoretically take an ancient public-domain texts and republish it in some modified form. Copyright does not protect the original, but it does protect my modifications. To the extent that Mechon Mamre does include protected material (of their own creation), and Snunit redistributed that material with permission, Mechon Mamre might sue you for copyright infringement. Since they don't say what their creative contribution is, it's hard to evaluate the merits of their claim.
If there is judgement and creativity used in the selection of the list, that selection is protectable by copyright under US law, and under the laws of many other countries. The standards vary, but in most cases the degree of creativity required is low. In the US the &quot;time and effort&quot; put into the list is not relevant, it is the degree of originality and creativity that matters. This is not true in all countries. If the list includes comments on individual list items written by the list creator, those comments would normally be protected by copyright, even when the list as a whole is not. If the list is ordered in some creative way, the ordering would also be protected, such as dividing the list into categories. an &quot;obvious&quot; ordering such as alphabetical is not subject to copyright protection. However, that these various web sites exist at particular addresses is a fact (or a set of facts) and facts are never protected by copyright. If someone produces a different list, that includes many but not all of the same sites, and some other sites, it is probably not infringement even if your list was used as one source for the newer list. If your list makes a serious attempt to include every nature website, and no selection is done, there is actually less creativity in the selection than if some judgement is used on what to include and what to omit. In that case, another list that also includes every nature website may not be considered an infringement. See Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991) in which one company copied a telephone book published by another company. Because there was no selection (everyone in the designated area was included) and the order was obvious (alphabetical), the US Supreme Court rules that there was no originality, and there fore no copyright protection in the book, and copying it was not copyright infringement. Feist is now a key case on copyright law in the US, and is followed in some other countries.
Summary: A transcription of a &quot;faithful&quot; to-the-letter recorded performance of a public domain work is not copyright infringement. However, once there exists original changes to the underlying composition, the transcribers are infringing copyright in all but the most trivial cases and are in for an uphill legal battle. Caveat 1: I'm mainly confining myself to US law due to the statement that this concerns a US-based company. However, there might be legal troubles in some jurisdictions for both the company and transcribers where a perpetual and inheritable moral right of first publication is recognized, like Germany (UrhG § 12). Caveat 2: Outside of copyright law, the company could theoretically gain some limited protection by selling the recording under a contract with a &quot;no transcribing&quot; clause. Since a similar scenario has already been discussed on this site, I am confining myself to the copyright law aspects. 1. What did the transcribers copy? In effect, I believe the transcribers are ultimately copying an underlying arrangement fixed by the recorded performance. That's a bit dense, so let me explain: As you already note, a performance is an artistic rendition of the underlying composition. This performance has separate copyright and may even include various changes to the underlying composition such as dynamic changes, instrumentation changes, tempo changes and various flourishes. I believe that a transcription would mainly reflect the underlying composition plus any such artistic changes to that composition made in the performance. Effectively, from a music theory perspective an underlying composition with artistic changes is the definition of an arrangement. From a legal perspective, an arrangement is copyrightable as a derivative work. Even though it's the performance itself that's being copied from and you haven't specified that there's a separate written arrangement, one can consider an implicit arrangement created by the performance. This implicit arrangement is then documented (i.e. fixed) by the recorded performance. Since a transcription is not capturing the sound itself, but rather the compositional elements of that performance, i.e. the arrangement, I think that it's a useful perspective to consider that the transcribers are copying an arrangement. Even if this way of viewing things turns out not to be 100% accurate, I think it's accurate enough and provides a clearer picture into the underlying legal concepts. I do however admit that some may take issue with this simplification, and it's entirely possible that my answer is completely invalid if this simplification turns out to have no merit. 2. Extent of possible copyright infringement The company which commissioned the orchestra and the recording undoubtedly has copyright on the performance. However, they do not have copyright on the underlying original composition, as that copyright will have long expired in US law. The company can't claim copyright on material which originates in the underlying public domain composition, but can claim copyright for any original contributions made by the arrangement (17 USC 103(b)). As such, I would expect an infringement lawsuit launched by the company will be limited to the portions of the arrangement that differ from the original composition and that are then copied into the transcription. In order to properly determine what those portions are, we would need to compare the transcription, performance, and manuscript together. Since it's the company that is initiating a lawsuit, I would expect that the judge would force them to disclose the manuscript for the proceedings (and instruct the parties that the information is not to leave the courtroom, which is ironic since an NDA is how this whole mess started). This is an exercise that will likely get bogged down in excruciating note-by-note comparisons, but luckily those are factual questions, and I'm just going to discuss the higher-level legal concepts. You also mention there might be &quot;mistakes&quot; included. In theory, copyright protection only applies to creative choices made, I don't believe that mistakes would count. In practice though, this may be difficult to prove and I think the company would argue it was an artistic choice, thus rolling it into the overall changes which constitute the arrangement. However, they might alternatively argue the mistakes are a purposeful copyright trap which can have mixed results. 3. Copyrightability of the arrangement In my opinion, the obvious argument to start with is that the company's arrangement does not qualify for copyright protection. This is a bit of a spectrum. While a full-fledged arrangement is undoubtedly protected as a derivative work, here we are dealing with just portions of an arrangement. Based on the premise of the performance being an accurate representation of a public domain song, I would expect these portions to be minimal. In fact, in the ideal case of the performance being a perfect faithful rendition of the composition, there is no separate underlying arrangement and therefore no copyright to infringe. This would be similar to the case of a photo of public domain art, which gains no copyright due to lack of originality. Copyright requires a &quot;modicum of creativity&quot; as determined in Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co.. Feist also shows the reason copyright traps don't work for defending an originality argument: while you can use traps to prove that copying occurred, they provide no indication as to the actual originality/creativity of the work. The transcribers can thus try to argue that the given portions of the arrangement do not meet this standard for copyright protection. As applied to music, one can consider that the basic building blocks of musical composition are not copyrightable, though large enough combinations of these building blocks do qualify. An examination of this can be found in Marcus Gray v. Katy Perry, where a specific 8-note sequence was found not to be eligible for copyright protection (though do note the case is currently being appealed). The court additionally stated that even if the sequence was copyrightable, such a small sequence would only be found to be infringing if the copying was virtually identical. Since the transcribers are presumably attempting an accurate transcription, this latter point is important to us as it shows that it would not take much copying for copyright infringement to occur. On the other hand, I would expect the differences in the arrangement and original composition might be scattered around and perhaps not be a cohesive artistic unit, which would benefit the transcribers' argument. For further information, LegalEagle has a 25-minute YouTube video discussing this case and the involved legal principles. As the arrangement is a derivative work, the transcribers might be able to advance a separate &quot;triviality&quot; argument. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals (also citing the Second Circuit cases) states in Schrock v. Learning Curve International, Inc. [T]he key inquiry is whether there is sufficient nontrivial expressive variation in the derivative work to make it distinguishable from the underlying work in some meaningful way. However, this emphasis the court makes on having the derivative be nontrivially distinguishable from the original doesn't arise from statute, but from a practical concern of determining whether the derivative or original was copied from given a hypothetical subsequent derivative. Assuming the company can prove the original hasn't been &quot;leaked&quot; and is unpublished, I would expect this argument to be discarded. Additionally, here is where copyright traps might actually help the company. Interesting aside: the German law on derivatives diverges here based on an oddly specific clause for public domain music (UrhG § 3): Translations and other adaptations of a work which are the adapter’s own intellectual creations are protected as independent works without prejudice to the copyright in the adapted work. The insubstantial adaptation of an unprotected musical work is not protected as an independent work. 4. The asserted truths doctrine This is a bit of a novel argument, since the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals only just articulated an &quot;asserted truths&quot; doctrine on 2020-09-08 in Corbello v. Valli: Adopting an “asserted truths” doctrine, the panel held that an author who holds their work out as nonfiction cannot later claim, in litigation, that aspects of the work were actually made up and thus entitled to full copyright protection. Basically, an author had claimed that the work was a factual biography, but then in the lawsuit claimed it was fiction in order to gain additional copyright protection since facts are not entitled to copyright protection. The court denied copyright protection for such an action. If the company is asserting that the performance is a 100% faithful rendition of the public domain work, the transcribers might be able to adapt this argument. They might argue that they relied on the asserted truth that they were copying public domain material. The company might counter that since this is a performance, one would expect that there will necessarily be at least some small differences and so the doctrine does not apply. Here, the transcribers may be able to counter that based on the company's representation, they had expected that any such small differences would not be under copyright due to not meeting the &quot;modicum of creativity&quot; standard. I think this argument is a stretch though. 5. Making the transcription public domain &amp; final points Assuming the arguments above worked for the transcribers, they don't really need to specifically designate the transcription public domain – it already is by its nature of not being copyrightable by those very same arguments. The one exception though would be that they hold copyright in the layout of their transcription so would have to designate it public domain for that purpose. If the arguments above do not work for the transcribers and the arrangement is found to have copyright protection, I can't think of any other viable arguments for the transcribers. They might argue fair use, but given their intent to disseminate the transcription, I would expect that argument to fail quickly based on both the nature/quantity of the copying and the damage caused to the company's revenue. On the minimal chance that fair use or some other argument works, the transcribers still could not put the transcription in the public domain. They could say that, but it would be of no real effect, since in this scenario it's the company that holds copyright over the arrangement represented by the transcription. In all, I believe that if the performance is a rigorously faithful rendition with only the odd mistake or flourish here and there, then the transcription is not copyright infringement. Otherwise, it is. Wow, that took me a while to get to this relatively simple conclusion.
First: the real answer to your questions is &quot;consult your academic library staff.&quot; If this is for a thesis project, then you're presumably affiliated with a college or university, and the librarians at such institutions are used to helping sort out copyright claims and helping researchers obtain the necessary clearances. There are two questions you're asking, really. Are these works in the public domain? Possibly, but not for the reasons you think. In the US, copyright in unpublished works lasts for the life of the creator + 70 years. After that, they pass into the public domain. This means that if the composer/arranger died before 1919, then the works passed into the public domain before the formal publication in 1989, and they are still in the public domain now. However, if the creator died after 1919, then their 1989 publication effectively &quot;resets the clock&quot; on the copyright, and they will not come into the public domain until (according to the above link) 70 years after the death of the creator or 2048, whichever comes later. What doesn't matter is that the original symphonic works were in the public domain. Even if the 1812 Overture is in the public domain, I could write an arrangement of it for accordion quintet and I would have the exclusive right to publish it and profit from that arrangement for the standard term. In your case, if the work really is a straight transcription, it might not have a copyright; but if the work required some amount of creativity and artistic decision-making (which a piano transcription of a symphony certainly would) then the arrangement gets its own copyright when it's published. Can I make transcriptions of them if I don't publish them? Probably, but you should really consult your librarians. It's entirely possible that your proposed copying would fall under &quot;fair use&quot;; it would be for scholarship &amp; research and you're not planning to include the transcriptions in your final published work. On the other hand, you're talking about effectively copying a substantial portion of a creative work that is still in print, which argues against fair use. Fair use rules are notoriously flexible/vague, and so it would be worthwhile to consult with an expert on the subject (i.e., your school's library staff.)
You don't say where you are located. Copyright laws are different in different countries, am going to assume US laws. Under US law, a faithful digitization of a book does not get a new copyeight, see Bridgeman Art Library, Ltd. v. Corel Corp., 25 F. Supp. 2d 421 (S.D.N.Y. 1998) and thw Wikipedia article about that case (On the issue of mrequired originality, see also FEIST PUBLICATIONS, INC. v. RURAL TELEPHONE SERVICE COMPANY, INC. (No. 89-1909.) (1991) which dealt with copying a telephone directory.) The court in Bridgeman held that: It is uncontested that Bridgeman's images are substantially exact reproductions of public domain works, albeit in a different medium. The images were copied from the underlying works without any avoidable addition, alteration or transformation. Indeed, Bridgeman strives to reproduce precisely those works of art. ... The mere reproduction of a work of art in a different medium should not constitute the required originality for the reason that no one can claim to have independently evolved any particular medium.'&quot; As discussed above, the law requires &quot;some element of material alteration or embellishment&quot; to the totality of the work. At bottom, the totality of the work is the image itself, and Bridgeman admittedly seeks to duplicate exactly the images of the underlying works. ... [O]ne need not deny the creativity inherent in the art of photography to recognize that a photograph which is no more than a copy of the work of another as exact as science and technology permit lacks originality. That is not to say such a feat is trivial, simply not original. The more persuasive analogy is that of a photocopier. Surely designing the technology to produce exact reproductions of documents required much engineering talent, but that does not make the reproductions copyrightable. The Bridgeman court was actually construing UK law, but the earthlier phase of Bridgeman i and the SCOTUS case of Feist show the same result under UIS law. Note that books and other works published before 1925 are now out of copyright in the US. Copyright can also be lost ion other ways, such as publishing without a copyright notice before the effective date of the 1976 act, and failure to properly renew a work published in the US before 1964. Assuming that the book is not under copyright, neither the library nor anyone else has a US copyright in the PFD. Unless the library imposes some additional restriction by contract, any such PDF may be copied or shared freely. It may even be sold or rented. And the validity of such an additional agreement would be questionable, but since the question does not mention such an agreement, I will not go into that further.
No, copyright protection does not exist for single words or even short phrases: see this. A word can be protected, in a certain context, by trademark. To take one example, the word "Apple" is protected in the domain of computer products, because Apple computers has registered "Apple" as their trademark, and you can't then start selling a line of computers named "Apple". You can however sell fruits called "apples", or you could sell knives with that name (unless someone has registered "apple" as a brand of knife). There are currently 45 "classes" for trademark protection. "Arcane" is a normal word of everyday language (YMMV), which means that there is relatively little protection for the word, as contrasted with "Microsoft", a word created by that company. It is unlikely that the courts would recognize "Arcane" as being distinctive. You can search the trademark database here: there is nothing for "arcane magic", and little for "arcane".
In the US, the author would be able to wind an infringement lawsuit against the re-publisher. Title 17, the US copyright law codified, grants the author the exclusive right to authorize republication, and does not require that a person use their real name. The argument "It was on the internet, it's in the public domain" is utterly without legal merit. The same goes for the assertion that a person loses his rights if he is uncontactable. The author has stated the terms of the license, so there isn't even a reasonable argument that the infringement is innocent (unknowing: "I thought it was with permission). There is no requirement that you have to allow a potential user to hassle you about the license terms. The one thing that is special regarding anonymous and pseudonymous works is that under 17 USC 302, "copyright endures for a term of 95 years from the year of its first publication, or a term of 120 years from the year of its creation, whichever expires first". For a work whose author is identified, copyright "endures for a term consisting of the life of the author and 70 years after the author’s death". This assumes that the host site has not preempted author's license: Stack Exchange, for example, preempts an author's exclusive right, so you can copy stuff from here accorting to the SE terms of usage.
From your question(s), as well as your various comments, I understand you to have two general inquiries: 1. Is there any infringement of copyright laws if you use things like the titles of books, games, apps, names, address (and any other number of things) which you will then put into datasets that will be licensed for proprietary commercial purposes? You may freely put titles, names of people, places or things into datasets without fear that you are infringing on copyright or any other laws. That is clear. Copyright law does not protect names, titles, short phrases or expressions. Even if a name, title, or short phrase is novel or distinctive it cannot be protected by copyright. So, there is no point in discussing the doctrine of fair use in this context, because Fair Use is a defense, or a legal safe harbor that is merely an exception to copyright infringement allowing people to use a copyrighted works under specific circumstances. As I understand your intended endeavor, you will not be infringing on any copyrights to the extent that you are merely using factual data, like names of copyrighted things for the purpose of creating a dataset or an application to help access it. This is why I say you need not concern yourself with the test for Fair Use with regard to this issue. The Copyright Office states clearly, despite what people may think, that there are no exclusive rights in brief combinations of words such as: • Names of products or services • Names of businesses, organizations, or groups (including the names of performing groups) • Pseudonyms of individuals (including pen or stage names) • Titles of works • Catchwords, catchphrases, mottoes, slogans, or short advertising expressions • Listings of ingredients, as in recipes, labels, or formulas. When a recipe or formula is accompanied by an explanation or directions, the text directions may be copyrightable, but the recipe or formula itself remains uncopyrightable. Hence, these things are not registrable under a copyright. While something may be potentially attached to or included in copyrighted material, is not in and of itself subject to the protections of these laws. If it (whatever it is) cannot be registered for a copyright, it is not copyrightable. Because copyright registration/notices have been optional since 1989, when the U.S. attached itself to the Berne Convention, whereby copyright protection is automatic as soon as a work is “fixed in a tangible medium of expression” (written down, recorded, painted, etc.) it’s protected. No notice is required. Registration only becomes required for litigation or enforcement purposes. But this is really extraneous to your inquiry anyway, as far as it applies to the actual data. When you get into copying whole databases for your purpose, that analysis is different. 2. You want to "scrub" the internet for information that you intend to put into your proprietary datasets and use for commercial purposes, some or most of which is already in a database or some organized form, and you want to know if there is some sort of copyright or duty owned to the person who originally databased the materials? Since ideas, procedures, principles, discoveries, and devices are all specifically excluded from copyright protection, if you want to compile this type of information from the internet for the purpose of creating datasets, or searchable databases, this is permissible. That said, there are protections for existing databases under copyright law, provided under the concept of a "compilation copyright". A compilation copyright protects the collection and creative assembling of data or other materials. Compilation copyrights protect the collection and assembling of data or other materials, such that databases are generally protected by copyright law as compilations. Under the Copyright Act, a compilation is defined as a "collection and assembling of preexisting materials or of data that are selected in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship." 17. U.S.C. § 101. The preexisting materials or data may be protected by copyright since the selections of materials and the form they take in an existing database may be original enough to be subject to a copyright. However, the data itself is merely information and is not protectable. The Copyright Act specifically states that the copyright in a compilation extends only to the compilation itself, and not to the underlying materials or data. 17 U.S.C. § 103(b). As a result, "compilation copyrights" can't be used to place protection upon those things that are otherwise not protectable. In the case of Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Company, Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a compilation work such as a database must contain a minimum level of creativity in order to be protectable under the Copyright Act. Feist makes clear that even a copyright protected database does not hold the right to prevent an individual from extracting factual data from the database (so long as you're not copying the entire database as a whole). If you take an already compiled and copyrighted dataset in its entirety, you must obtain a license for its use. However, if you are merely amassing great amounts of data to then put into your own dataset, that you are free to do. The big issue will be (and you seem to realize this) where you will amass this data from. Some websites have specific licenses in place that say you cannot use or rework their content. However, many times these websites simply throw these license requirements out there for users to see, despite the fact that they may not be (and some would argue) are not enforceable. The courts have heard arguments that "contracts" (the end-user licenses) that protect databases and information on websites is beyond the protection available through copyright law should be "preempted" by the Copyright Act itself. The preemption argument goes like this: Federal law controlling something that is subject to interstate commerce or use, should be controlled by the federal laws. So,since the federal government has enacted the Copyright Act to govern any protections to any original works, states should be (arguably are) prohibited from having contradictory laws. Because of the ability of a federal statute to preempt state law, and the fact that the Copyright Act at 17 U.S.C. § 301 sets forth specific preemptions, no state may create rights that are equivalent to any of the exclusive rights provided under the Act. It is this concept of preemption that prevents copyright protection from varying depending upon the state where a work of authorship is created. Arguably, the same is true for the internet, and supposed contractual relationship created through licenses that dictates how non-copyrightable material may be used. In the case of ProCD, Incorporated v. Matthew Zeidenberg and Silken Mountain Web Services, Inc. the court examined whether an end-user of a CD ROM phone database was subject to the license, when they extracted a large portion of the database and made it available over the Internet. The database was almost the same as the type of data in the Feist case-The lower court rejected all copyright claims and found that the shrinkwrap license that controlled the end user's right to use the data was both unenforceable (as a shrink wrap license) and preempted by the Copyright Act. As a result, there was no relief available to the creator of the phone database and the end-user was free to extract the data and use it as he saw fit. However, on appeal this decision was reversed (7th circuit). The appellate court did acknowledge that the database (on the CD) was not original enough to be protected by copyright (finding no copyright infringement by the end-user); However, they did find the end-user was breach of contract, since the shrink-wrap license prohibited the end-user's conduct. What this tells us is that these licenses (on websites) may or may not be enforceable. While the 7th Circuit found a contract right pursuant to the license, despite the preemption argument, another appellate court that is more liberal may find otherwise. Also, this was a disk, not the internet, which is the "wild west" of information, largely unregulated and unlitigated as it pertains to the legality and enforceability of (some) regulations that do exist. License agreements for site use on the internet are everywhere. If you take a database from some site that has a license saying you cannot take their work and add to it, or whatever, and you do add it to other databases that are not licensed and then make your own dataset - chances are you are NOT going to be infringing on anyone's copyright. That said, you may be in breach of contract (the license) if they find out about it, and sue you (using it doesn't put you in breach; only getting sued and having a court determine you're in breach puts you in breach. It may be a distinction worth contemplation, but that is up to you). The safest, bet would be to get a license from them to rework the materials. If the material is generic enough, and will be changed enough, that you are creating your own new (copyrightable) work - I'm not sure how they would know you "scrubbed the data in contravention of their license agreement ( I have NO CLUE if there is coding or metadata attached to it such that it's identifiable in that way. I have not tech background and do not endorse taking what's not yours). But if they can and do know, they could cause problems for you. Lastly, I will just say that the internet is littered with sites that claim copyrights, or impose unenforceable licenses on material that is ripe for public use. Just because it says it's theirs does not make it so. The inverse is also true. Just because a site does not claim copyright to something, does not mean it is in the public domain. I would recommend either sticking to public domain/use sites for your scrubbing endeavors, or seeking permissions from the sites who impose licensing requirements. Short of that, I would recommend (as I already have) seeking an formal legal opinion to say that you are not imposing on anyone's copyrights (this could only be done once you showed an attorney every place you took material from, as well as what the material is), and that the licenses from sites with generalized information that may try to limit use, are unenforceable. I would do this before you invest a lot of time or money into something that is largely based on the accumulation of other peoples work product. I wish there was an answer certain, but there just isn't without seeing everything in the end.