I am an animator producing a video of dancing cicadas, and would like to use a copyrighted song. Under what conditions is it excusable? To be clear, this is me fooling around—I am making zero money off of this. I also believe that the band for the song I'm thinking of—specifically Caravan Palace—can and definitely should receive all benefits from any use of their music. (They're brilliant, and I'm a fellow artist and big fan.) This is most certainly not about dodging copyright claims. It's about working with them. I'm midway through a project involving animated, dancing Brood X cicadas, and would like to put it to music. This will involve a good bit of animation work, as it needs to be to-the-beat. In the worst case, I might use something old enough to be beyond significant copyright concern, or mix something together myself from licensed sounds; but if I wanted to use this particular track, what would my concerns be? Granted, I'm not making anything but reputation off of it, but that doesn't mean that the band and its producers shouldn't receive income from their work regardless of context. So, I'm not sure whether this qualifies as &quot;fair use&quot; or not. If I did get a hold of the record company, what could I be expected to pay, or agree to, for licensing? I'm sure this isn't the first time this issue has come up. I've published a lot of material on YouTube so far and I'm quite familiar with the copyright checker; and it's never had anything to complain about with my videos before. I want to do this right, or find another option. I heard once that it's possible for the video, given an established interest, to send ad revenue to the copyright holders instead of me, which would be fine; but I'm not entirely sure how I would rig that. Since we're talking about potentially a couple of weeks of work, I would like to figure this out sooner rather than later.
An audio recording clip of recorded music is almost never fair use, outside of a music performance review or in a music appreciation class.
The lyricist and composers already have copyright. Copyright exists for the moment of creation: registration is not necessary to enforce copyright rights and to grant licences. Registration in the US is merely useful if you want to prove that you own the copyright which otherwise would require providing evidence of the date of creation, priority etc. Most countries do not have copyright registers. Similarly, you will have copyright in the derivative work of the soundtrack from the moment of its creation.
No If YT#1 gets a license from artist A, that permits YT#1 to do whatever copying and reuse is stated in the license. It might be narrow or very broad. Usually such a license will only grant permission to the person who asked. Unless the license also grants permission to YT#2, or to some broader group which includes YT#2, YT#2 cannot claim any rights under such a license. Assuming that the license does not include him or her, YT#2 has the same rights as any member of the public would, but no more. In general, pitch raising a piece of music is a way of creating a derivative work. In the US, under 17 USC 106 one needs permission from the copyright owner to create a derivative work. Otherwise doing so is copyright infringement. The laws of other countries, and the Berne Copyright Convention have similar provisions on this point. Creating a derivative work requires permission in all countries that I know about. &quot;Piggybacking&quot; is not a thing in copyright law. A copyright owner can give permission (usually called a license) to any person or group of persons that the owner pleases. The permission does not extend to anyone else. This is true in all countries. I should be clear that YT#2 needs permission from both YT#1, and from A. The way the question is worded I have been assuming that YT#2 had permission from YT#1, but a comment from grovkin made it clear that I needed to be more explicit about this. It is possible for a license to permit a person to pass on the license to others. For example, all CC licenses and all copyleft and most open source licenses do this, and others could. But the license must explicitly grant such permission. The one way in which a person might create a derivative work without permission and without it being infringement is if an exception to copyright applies. In the US the main exception to copyright is fair use. See Is this copyright infringement? Is it fair use? What if I don&#39;t make any money off it? for more detail on fair use. Fair use decisions are made on a case by case basis, and generally depend on the detailed facts of the ase. But based on the limited info in the question, this would not qualify. It seems to use the whole piece of music, which tends to weigh against fair use. The new work does not seem to be transformative, that is, it seems to serve the same general purpose as the original. The new work might harm the economic value of the original, or might if many people did this. The original is creative, not factual. All of those weigh against fair use. Different countries have very different exceptions to copyright, and I do not know all of them. But the use described in the question does not seem to fit any that I know of. In any case, an exception to copyright applies to anyone, and does not depend on another person's license. It is thus never a form of &quot;piggybacking&quot;. By the way, the question describes pitch raising ads &quot;illegal&quot;. Making an unauthorized derivative work gives the copyright owner grounds to sue. If the owner does sue, and wins, s/he might be awarded money damages, and the court might issue an injunction ordering the infringer not to infringe again. But it would not normally be treated as a crime, and law enforcement would not be involved. In the US, only bulk copyright infringement, carried out as a business, is usually prosecuted (for example a factory churning out unauthorized music CDs).
Not only can’t you trademark it, you can’t use it The original logo is covered by copyright which belongs, prima facie, to the original artist. It doesn’t matter that they are based in Russia; Russia and the US are both signatories to the Berne Convention which means they protect each other’s copyright. That means you can only use it if it is fair use (it isn’t) or if you have the copyright owner’s permission (you don’t). Could I still use the logo I bought and trademark it in the US granted that the seller had made some revisions to the stock photo he found? Not if the seller didn’t have permission to make those changes. Creation of a derivative work is one of the exclusive rights copyright gives. The seller had changed up some parts of the stock image, this includes color scheme, orientation, and made the picture look a little low poly. See above. The original artist of the stock photo is based in Russia and as far as I can see there is no registered copyright on it and don't think they could apply for US copyright anyway. They already have copyright. They would need to register it in the US before they could sue but there is no impediment to them doing so. While I'm not sure where the seller (located in Pakistan) officially downloaded the logo, I had nothing to do with the final design of it or downloaded anything from a stock photo website myself, so I'm not sure if I'd be bounded by any terms of the stock photo website Makes no difference. Just because you didn’t steal the car, that doesn’t make it ok for you to drive it. The stock image is very niche and a bit random. Across all the websites the artist has published it on, it has about 5 or 6 downloads altogether. Not relevant at all. As far the copyright of the seller's work goes, the Fiverr terms state that buyers have all the copyright, though I don't know if this is nullified by the use of the stock image. You can’t sell something you don’t own. If the seller had no right to upload the photo (as it seems they didn’t), the terms of the website don’t matter. The true owner never agreed to those terms and isn’t bound by them.
The Harry Potter company and John Williams may or may not want credit, but they almost certainly want money. You have to get their permission, at least for their creations. In the case of Für Elise, you can freely use the original score to &quot;rework&quot; that piece, but you can't &quot;rework&quot; a version that is itself a recent &quot;reworking&quot; (known as a derivative work). Anything that Jon Williams created is protected by copyright, so you need to negotiate a license to create a derivative work, and he/they get to dictate the terms (like, half of the 69 cents per copy). That might include some attribution statement such as &quot;with permission, copyright Warner Brothers&quot;, or whatever is stipulated in the license agreement.
general things on copyright Copyright law is very similar globally, due to the Berne convention on copyright. Ány country's copyright law grants the copyright to an author. Copyright is the exclusive right of an author to authorize (&quot;license&quot;) copies, performance, and derivative works. In case multiple authors jointly create a work, they own the right in their respective parts, or jointly. The copyright holder can deny making derivatives. If a derivative is made without authorization, it is copyright infringement. If the author was asked, denied the authorization and it is made anyway, it is wilful copyright infringement. Relinquishing your rights in the altered work does not make it not copyright infringement. The only way to not commit copyright infringement is to get a license. Naming the original author of a work you adapted is not just politeness, it is mandatory in all copyrights that follow the Berne convention on copyright. Licensing Fees The Verve's agreement to get the license was specifically to pay all the proceeds to the Rolling Stones, but that was an extraordinary case. License fees for recording a cover version (with the unaltered lyrics!) are usually mandatory to be available. for example in the united-states, it is mandatory to grant a mechanical license to create cover recordings for a licensing fee, for which for example the Harry Fox Agency is collecting and distributing the required payments and royalties. Those Royalties are about 9.1 cents per copy for a sub-5-minute song's recording. This license does not allow to alter lyrics. However, synchronization (tone and video) is not mandatory to be granted, and those start at a flat 4-digit and are rather open-ended. Without a sync license, you may not make video recordings of a work being performed. A public performance of a work requires a different license. A performance license is required for any public performance, and those are not regulated either, but typically not too expensive - yet alteration again is not within the scope of such a license. Granting a performance license is typically handled by Performing Rights Organisations such as ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC, taking the required fees and distributing the royalties. Making an adaptation or alteration is a derivative work. Making a derivative work requires a license that is different again. Those can only be granted by the copyright holders, and if they say no... Close the folder. The price of copyright infringement Wilful copyright infringement, especially after you were told no, can be super expensive: In the US, the rightsholder can get 150 000 USD and the lawyer fees for willful infringement. The rightsholder can sue in the US if they are there. Recoverable costs plus damages are also available in the UK, capped at 60 000 GBP for costs and 500 000 GBP in damages.
Is it a violation of copyright to publish a computer program that exactly produces such a piece, without containing the piece itself in the program? Yes. A program that reproduces a particular work is functionally a derivative work and is a copyright infringement. A program that composes music not tied to a particular work would be patentable, but the algorithm would not be protected by copyright, although derive works based on the code implementing the algorithm might be protected by copyright. Of course, this assumes that the person devising this algorithm knows about the original work that it will produce. If the person devising and the person using the algorithm are ignorant of the existence of the prior work that it produces, it is not a copy or a derivative work and is not infringing. The source of the creation of an allegedly infringing work in relevant in copyright law even thought it is not relevant in patent and trademark law. Copyright protects independent inventors of the same work from infringement liability, although this may be hard to prove. In theory the burden of proof to show copying is on the personal bringing the lawsuit alleging infringement. But, a copyright infringement plaintiff can meet their burden of proof in a copyright case by inferring that copy was made from the circumstantial evidence of the allegedly infringing work's similarity to the allegedly infringed work without direct evidence of copying or deriving the work from the original work.
Even if I give credit to the composer, and I will make no profit from the performance, will it still be illegal to use my transcription? This definitely infringes the composer's performance and derivative work rights under the composer's copyright. There is a mandatory right to cover someone else's composition outside of a movie or TV show (roughly speaking) for a statutorily fixed royalty, but the bureaucracy is such that it would be impractical to do here. Whether or not the &quot;fair use&quot; defense applies in this case is a &quot;colorable&quot; argument, but really, when you perform the entire work as written except for transcription, winning a &quot;fair use&quot; defense in a infringement action would be a long shot. The fact that it is somehow connected to an educational activity would be the strongest argument in this case. Also, as noted in a comment, your school may have obtained express permission to cover the work: Your music school may have a license with a PRO (performing rights organization) that covers your song. You might make some inquiries with the administration as to whether this is the case. Radio stations obtain similar licenses to play a large catalog of music without individually obtaining licenses to use each work separately from the author. This said, this kind of activity is often done, despite the fact that it is a copyright infringement, and most of the time, if the performance isn't too widely broadcast, most copyright owners will never pursue copyright infringement claims over something like this and indeed often won't even consider doing so. Still, copyright is an absolute bar to infringing rights without permission, even if there is absolutely no money received for the work and even if there is full attribution of its author. I'm not a great fan of the law as it is, and it is often disregarded, but that is the law. Also, this answer is based upon U.S. law, but there isn't much international variation in this part of copyright law in countries that meaningfully enforce copyright laws in their courts. But, as another answer notes, in some countries the mandatory right to do a cover of songs in the U.S. is much easier bureaucratically, in some other countries: In several countries, there are organizations that deal with the copyright issue globally. That means you pay a certain (quite small) fee to be allowed to perform a piece of music publicly, and the organization deals with the individual right owners. That makes reusing works much simpler.