Could I infringe a copyright if I use content available for free online? I made a video and uploaded it to YouTube. I created the video, but I attached an audio track I found online for free. How do I know if I am allowed to use this audio in this way? If I pay for creative works like music, songs, graphics, etc., do I infringe the copyright of the work if I post those in a video I upload to YouTube?
The author of that work owns its copyright. Barring a licence that gives you the right to use it, you are infringing copyright. (I'm assuming no fair use in this case; i.e. the YouTube clip isn't actually about the audio track.) If you pay for licences, make sure the licence allows for the purpose you intend to use it for.
More generally, can anyone just copy an existing website (without copying the code or images)? Yes. Could I make a website that lets people post pictures like Instagram but call it MyPics? Yes. In general, copyright protects particular expressions of ideas, not higher level ideas or concepts.
Yes Both melody and lyrics source back to the middle ages, as for instance described here. The difficulty could be to make sure you rely your derived work on a variant that is really in the public domain. E.g. if you use notes or lyrics from the Simon &amp; Garfunkel version and derive from there, you might violate their copyright.
Recording the original work and editing that record is a breach of copyright. You are taking unauthorised copies of the original music and lyrics when you make the notes, and creating derivative works when you alter the notes of the song to match what you think they should be. Performing the songs is a breach of copyright in countries that don't provide for it explicitly (the USA is notably strange on this point). You cannot simply just take a piece of music and perform it this way everywhere, even for church service. In sum, what you're doing is at least partly and could be fully illegal.
It is clear that facts are not subject to copyright but the expression of them can be copyrightable. From your question it sounds like you are on solid ground but specific things you end up doing may or may not be free of copyright issues. Certain ways of organizing information that involves some minimal creativity may qualify to be copyright protected so your compilation might be protectable as a whole. You should look into the European protection for databases. It is not, like most of the rest of copyright law, based on minimal creativity but on the effort it takes to compile and maintain. From your question, this might help you protect your work rather than hurt your creation of your work.
This seems to be a mix of question about law and a meta-question about this site, but I'll treat it as an on-topic question about law. The author of a question, or answer, owns the copyright to their contributions, and they can re-publish to their heart's content. Any user who posts here grants a license to SE and other users to use content posted here, so I don't have to ask you permission to quote you. As part of the permission granted by SE to use this website, you have agreed to &quot;follow the rules&quot; set by SE. There are many rules, some spelled out more clearly that others. For example, if you post a question, you indirectly agreed that your content can be upvoted or down-voted. Certain content can be &quot;closed&quot; and deleted, when the content is deemed to violate the rules in particular ways (is spam, porn, abuse, or judged to be poor-quality). Judgment (on different matters) can be rendered by community managers, moderators, or other users. The agreement is here, see especially here. If we take the post that you linked to, it is quite possible that it was deleted because it is not a general legal question, in violation of the acceptable use policy. If you want a historical analysis of your particular case, it should be asked on Law Meta.
Copyright infringement requires that you actually copy elements from an earlier work produced by a different author. If you created a similar, or even identical, work independently, it is not copyright infringement. When considering whether or not infringement has occurred, the court is likely to consider whether the defendant could reasonably have had access to the plaintiff's work. If the court finds that they could have, then the defendant would be required to produce evidence of original authorship. Consider the My Sweet Lord/He So Fine case, where the court found the defendant had subconsciously copied the plaintiff's song. Had Harrison been able to produce evidence of original authorship, the judgment could have been different. In your example, it is unlikely that an suit in copyright infringement could be decided against you, as you've stated the text is generated randomly. However, more evidence of this randomness might be required to support your case. Of course, whether a computer or automated process can produce works independently is still questionable; I'm not aware of cases that have tried this. The US Copyright Office has said that Works produced by mechanical processes or random selection without any contribution by a human author are not registrable. Of course, whether this has a bearing on your particular scenario is undecided, and I'm not sure how it would be decided. It is almost certain that the worst case outcome would be an injunction requiring you to cease publicising the product, or perform reasonable checks prior to publication to ensure that the product of your program infringes on works; it would be unlikely that you would have costs ordered against you, especially if the program is truly random, and the random text was given as much, or more, publicity than the coherent text.
I'm assuming that you are in the UK, as you are talking about the British Standards Institue. In general the truth cannot be copyrighted but an expression of that truth can be, provided that it is creative or original to at least some extent. In this case the equations and constants you want to use are descriptions of scientific truths. If you translate them into another form (e.g. a computer program) then you are not copying the creative bit (the layout and arrangement of those equations and explanatory text), so you are not violating the copyright. Edit: I should also have said for (3) that their descriptions of the constants and variables will be copyright. You would have to avoid copying their words. However given that these are going to be terse descriptions of facts your words can still be pretty similar without infringing on copyright, because there are only so many ways of describing the acceleration due to gravity, or whatever. Take a look at some alternative references to see what words they use.