Someone is commercially using a feature of my (free) website. What can I do? Suppose tht there is a website that allows users to create musical diagrams (sheet music). It is owned and operated by a person O. Suppose the website allows users to create and share sheet music. All of the website is completely free (no registration fees and no paid features). However O has mentioned in the footer of the page that &quot;The use of the website is not permitted for commercial purposes&quot;. Recently O has become aware of a published book that has used diagrams made by the site's online editor, without consulting O first. Does this constitute a breach of the website terms and conditions? Is O entitled to some kind of compensation? For info, the diagrams themselves use open source fonts for the notation of the musical symbols, and the rest is just standard sheet music. However O has a special style of presenting those diagrams on the website, which is (just) composed of a small graphical feature like a bolded line or a different coloured note symbol. I think that because the diagram was created by the user on a free website, the user has the intellectual copyright to those diagrams. However, he created them using this website where O explicitly said that &quot;The use of the website is not for commercial purposes&quot;. And yet the diagrams appeared in a commercially released book. What are the legal aspects of this? What rights would O have in such a situation?
You would first have to find out if publishing a book was &quot;for commercial purposes&quot;. I can write a book and publish it as a hobby. Next you check if there is any copyright infringement. It doesn't sound like there is. Using your website as a tool to create these diagrams doesn't give you copyright unless the result contains your own copyrighted work. So at best there is a violation of your terms and conditions for your website. You can sue about that, but might have to specify damages. If you allow commercial use say for a fee of $1,000, that would give you grounds to claim damages. Or if someone used your website so excessively that it costs you money, that would be damages.
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.
If you are utilizing the name of the characters just so users can rate them (by rate - I mean rank, review, critique) you should be fine. Copyrights are subject to "fair use" by the public. For purposes such as review, criticism, and comment - this is generally considered to be fair use. Is the site commercial or for-profit? That could impact the analysis, but only if you are making money flowing from the use of the actual copyrighted material(s), rather than advertising (like Adsense) or something similar (this should not suggest that those type sites cannot violate copyright, but it's part of the analysis). If it is something you are investing money into creating, you may want to get a formal legal opinion. But if the site if for fun, or hobby, you are likely fine if what's described is the only use. http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/copyright-fair-use-and-how-it-works-for-online-images/ This link is to a great, easy to read and understand article on fair use, what it is and what it allows. Keep in mind each case is fact intensive, however, from what you are describing this seems fine.
That licence does not allow you to do what you want It’s a non-commercial licence and your usage is commercial (making money). You don’t need a licence to perform commentary or review of a book Providing that you use as little material as necessary from the original work, commentary and review is one of the exceptions to copyright carved out by fair dealing in most English speaking jurisdictions. In the USA, the fair use exemption is not so clear as it involves a four factor balancing test. Your planned use is in favour of being fair use, your commercialisation is against.
There is language, but not a mechanism, covering this. Section 3(a)(3) of version 4 licenses says If requested by the Licensor, You must remove any of the information required by Section 3(a)(1)(A) to the extent reasonably practicable. If you become aware of a person using your material and attributing you, and you want the attribution removed, you would accordingly notify them (somehow), and they are required to remove the offending material. The removable informations includes: i. identification of the creator(s) of the Licensed Material and any others designated to receive attribution, in any reasonable manner requested by the Licensor (including by pseudonym if designated); ii. a copyright notice; iii. a notice that refers to this Public License; iv. a notice that refers to the disclaimer of warranties; v. a URI or hyperlink to the Licensed Material to the extent reasonably practicable;
Simply admitting that the images are not yours does not give you the right to use them. The fact that you are not profitting from them does not change this. There is no magical statement or disclaimer that will change this. If your use of the images constitutes Fair Use (since you're not mentioning how you're using them, it probably doesn't), you can include a fair use disclaimer. Sample dislaimers can be found online. A disclaimer should include the following: A statement that the work in question is not yours That the use falls under Fair Use and why Section 107 of the copyright act
Yes, a work with no license is All Rights Reserved, reserved meaning the creator of the work. Who is the creator of the work ? Everyone who contributed it, unanimously. Yes. If people contributed any copyrightable part of your work, in theory you cannot add any license or grant any right to use/reproduce/whatever the work without their unanimous agreement. That's very cumbersome, and almost nobody really does that, but it's what the law is. Big serious companies and repos require contributors to waive their rights on the code they contribute, by agreeing to a contributor's agreement. For example, python/cpython requires you to give your contribs a license allowing the python org to do essentially what they want with it, even though you retain copyright over them. If your project is not so serious, I suggest it should be enough to make the license clear, and that by contributing people are agreeing to place their contribution's code under the license. If it's a free license, that's all you need.
The general idea of such an app is not subject to copyright protection. Ideas never are protected by copyright. So creating an app based on the functionality of a fictional app would not be a copyright violation. The logo might, if it is original enough, be protected by copyright. Any or all of the "name, the logo and the color scheme" might well be subject to trademark protection. (Names and other short phrases are not protected by copyright.) You would be wise not to use these identifying elements of the show, but instead create ones sufficiently different that no reasonable person would be confused into thinking that your app had been used on the show, or was sponsored, endorse, or approved by the show or its creators. An explicit disclaimer saying that you are in no way associated with the show or its creators, and your app is not approved by or endorsed by them would also be wise. Otherwise you might be accused of trying to pass off your work as affiliated with they show, or to trade on the show's reputation and fame. Whether you make your app an open source work is not in any way relevant to copyright or trademark claims. Whether you charge for your app is of only limited relevance to a copyright claim. Whether you sell or market your app, or use it to advertise some other product or service is relevant to a trademark claim, as trademarks are only protected against their use "in trade" which generally means commercially. However, non-commercial use of a trademark may constitute "dilution" of the mark, which may give rise to a cause of action against the person using it.