Is an adaptation or translation of a public domain hymn also in the public domain? In Christian hymnbooks today it is common to find hymns that were written in the 1700s or 1800s. However, most of the time these hymns have been adapted, to modernize older language, or to adjust the meaning of a phrase for a broader audience. According to current copyright law in the United States, printed works published before 1923 are in the public domain. Are the adapted versions of pre-1923 hymns that appear in current hymnbooks also in the public domain? What about translations? An example is the hymn "How Firm a Foundation." Different texts can be compared here: https://hymnary.org/text/how_firm_a_foundation_ye_saints_of/compare I am interested mainly in the United States copyright / public domain law.
According to US law according to Cornell, copyright applies to derivative works. A derivative work is an original work based on a previous work (Definitions), so the adaptations would be copyrightable unless they were held to be unoriginal. In general, the courts don't require much creativity to consider a work original. Translations are original works. Therefore, the adaptations are almost certainly under copyright, while the originals remain public domain.
Copyright Prominent at the bottom of the page is: © RealClearPolitics 2015 This is nice because it tells you who you have to approach for a licence. If it wasn't there the material would still be copyright you just wouldn't know who owned the copyright. Questions So: If I'm looking to build an app or write a book and I wish to use statistics, am I allowed to basically use their numbers as long as I cite where it is coming from? No, unless what you do constitutes fair use and I don't think it does. If I do make a profit from it, do I owe any royalties to the original scientists/surveyers? No, but you would owe whatever licence fee you negotiated with the copyright holder, ostensibly RealClearPolitics. Must I ask them for permission? Yes, unless you are OK with running the risk of being sued. Commentary I see books reference hundreds of studies all the time This is because they are generally protected by Academic Fair Use public polls should be open information to everyone The only public poll that I know of is an election and that information is available. What you are looking at is a private poll commissioned by and paid for by RealClearPolitics and it is their intellectual property; why should that "be open information to everyone"? commercial interests may be legally entangling Always
There is no special exemption where academic work is unprotected by copyright. You can quote from academic sources to the same extent that you can copy from non-academic sources, without getting permission. In fact, it is legally impossible to tell if a source of &quot;academic&quot; versus &quot;non-academic&quot;. Attribution is not particularly relevant for copyright, what matters is permission (when required). It may be that a copyright holder will grant permission for an extensive quote provided you attribute the source, and it may be that academic publishers or authors are more willing to grant permission than other publishers / authors. On the other hand, many academic works are very expensive, so that distributing the text for free may have more &quot;effect on market&quot;, and may result in disinclination to grant permission to quote. On the third hand, such quotes are more likely to be squarely directed at the &quot;commentary&quot; motivation behind fair use law. The point here is that there isn't a special law about just academic sources.
Musical compositions can be, and if recent almost always are, protected by copyright. This is separate from the copyright on a recording of a performance of the work. If you reuse a musical passage, the new work may be a derivative work, that is a work based on an earlier work. Or an extended musical quotation could be considered to be copyright infringement. If this is in the united-states the use of a section from a previous work might be considered to be a fair use (fair-use). This is a specifically US concept in copyright law, although several other countries have a concept of fair dealing which is somewhat similar, although narrower. Whether a use is a fair use is an inherently fact-based determination. There is no clear and simple bright line for what is and is not a fair use. US law (17 USC 197) specifies four factors which are to be weighed by a court in considering the matter: The purpose and character of the use. If your use is commercial that weighs against fair use, but does not at all preclude it. This factor also includes whether the use is transformative or not. A transformative use is one that takes the part used for a very different sort of purpose than the original. Parodies are normally transformative, for example. A quote for purposes of commentary and analysis, or criticism is normally transformative. Transformative uses are more likely to be considered fair uses. The nature of the copyrighted work. Creative works such as fiction and music are more strongly protected than works such as textbooks and news stories. This probably weighs against fair use in the case described. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole. If only a short section of a longer work is used, that weighs in favor of fair use. However very short quotes can still fail, to be held to be fair uses. In Harper vs Nation a quote of about 300 words from a 500 page book was held not to be fair use because it was &quot;the heart of the book&quot;. The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. A use that significantly harms the market value of the original, or serves as a replacement for it, weigh strongly against fair use. This was a major factor in Harper vs Nation. Each case of claimed fair use is evaluated by looking at all four factors, and the specific facts of the case. From the description in the question, such a use might well be held to be fair use. Musical quotations often are. But there is no way to be sure unless a court evaluates the specific case. A lawyer specifically experienced in not only copyright law, but copyrights on music, might be able to give more specific advice. Or you could, of course, seek permission from the copyright holder, quite likely the original composer or artist. If you get permission, there is no further issue. There might be a charge, but when the use is minor, and has no commercial effect, the charge might be small or even zero provided that the source is acknowledged.
No Copyright protects expressions of ideas but not ideas. A song with the words if a poem set to music would generally require the permission of the owner of the copyrighted poem. An instrumental score “inspired by a poem” would not remotely be using the same expression, or a derivative of, the poem. Titles are not subject to copyright and there are many books with identical titles. Try “The Gathering Storm” as a book title.
I gather that Fischer can claim copyright on its written form of public-domain music because the company adds interpretive markings to its sheet music, and those markings themselves constitute creative content? They can probably also claim copyright on editorial content. For example, a piece may have multiple sources that do not agree with one another, and the editor's choice of how to reconcile these inconsistencies is subject to copyright. Even the layout and typography or engraving are subject to copyright, so if the score is nothing but a faithful transcription of the composer's only manuscript, making a photocopy of the score is infringement. In that case the only contents of the sheet music covered by copyright would be whatever unique musical markings Fischer adds, and not the notes set down by the original composer? The notes themselves are not protected by copyright if the composition has passed into the public domain, but to make a score that does not infringe the copyright in the Carl Fischer edition, you would have to find another source. A copy made by hand might be okay because it would not reproduce the layout and other graphic design elements. Is there any reliable way to determine which elements of a work like classical sheet music are covered by a copyright claim, other than to infringe and have the claimant reveal that at trial? You can consult the sources that the editor used. Anything that isn't in the sources is editorial and therefore protected. If you can't find out what sources were used, find all the sources you can. Anything that's present in a source that is old enough to have passed into the public domain is in the public domain.
Is an article licensed under an Open Access license equivalent to a public domain work? No. Intellectual property practitioners and professors often describe copyright as "a bundle of sticks." This means that intellectual property laws grant the creator of a copyrightable work a large number of rights, and the creator can grant or deny others each of those rights individually. So, for instance, an author can grant a publisher the right to publish his or her book in one country, but not in another, or to copy it verbatim but not to alter it. The purpose of a license, any license, is to specify which of those rights pass to the licensee (the end user) and which stay with the licensor (the creator). This is true of creative commons just as it is for any other license. For example, many open access publishers publish under the Creative Commons CC-BY journal. This is an attribution license; it requires as a term of the license that you give credit to the original creator. This is something you would not have to do with a public domain work. In addition, under CC-BY, you have to include a copy of the license with each copy you distribute, and you cannot add your own copy protection to any copies you distribute. Again, these sort of restrictions do not apply to a public domain work. In short: the purpose of a license--any license--is to define the ways in which you can, or can not, use the licensed materials. Any license that contains any provisions restricting the licensee's use is going to be more restrictive, by definition, than the use of something in the public domain.
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.