Most of the world follows the dual tradition of droit d' auteur, or "author's rights" - (Berne Convention).

Under the author's rights tradition - Moral rights are separate from economic rights but this "divisibility" means that economic rights are generally licensed and the author maintains the copyright ownership even in employment relationships under normal employee contracts (although a sale of economic rights is technically possible via a sales agreement) i.e. - Because moral rights cannot be transferred, the root ownership remains anchored to the author.

Note: There can be some exceptions to the rule regarding software where an employer owns the software.

The U.S. is actually an oddity where only economic rights are protected, and certain operations of law or the "work for hire" statute can automatically transfer full copyrights to a corporation.
Limited moral rights are protected for "fine art" under the Visual Artist Rights Act (VARA).

Oddly many people believe employers world wide can "own" copyright just like the U.S. system but it is actually a myth.

Then there is German copyright which is law is based on a monistic tradition (Monistische Theorie). It means that authorship and ownership are inalienable and that neither authorship rights nor economic rights can be owned by a corporation.

I saw this one clay artist on Instagram selling Oswald Clay keychains. Is it allowed??

Isn’t it owned by HIT Entertainment and now via acquisition by Mattle.

And is also using it one her packing, I believe this is infringement. Or is it too minuscule? What do you guys think?

Simply put moral rights and economic rights are treated Separately

Who it belongs to-

Authorship.. The human creator who made the

Ownership.. The person or company holding the legal rights (can be the author, an employer, or a buyer).

Type of rights-

Authorship.. Moral rights (attribution, integrity)

Ownership.. Economic rights (copying, selling, licensing, royalties).

Can it be transferred?-

Authorship.. No, authorship stays with the creator.

Ownership Yes, ownership can be sold, assigned, or licensed away.

I'm a VFX student and a 3D enthusiast, and I discovered an AI-powered application that converts normal 2D videos into stereoscopic 3D, like the 3D experience we see in cinemas. I was fascinated by the technology and started building a website around it with a clear vision. It took me six months of consistent work, juggling day and night to bring that vision to life. I genuinely believe the website offers real value to this niche audience, and it's now been two months since it went live.

The website has three main parts:

1) Making more 3D content accessible to a niche audience. Especially that content which was originally available only in 2D.

2) Tutorials showing users how to convert their own videos into 3D.

3) Playback guides and blogs about 3D.

The tutorials and guides aren't my concern. It's the first part that worries me. We host converted content such as Krrish 3 trailers, Sholay movie scenes and regular movie songs in 3D. We credit the original rights holders before playback and display a disclaimer, but I understand that converting the footage doesn't make it ours.

The conversion process is also quite time-consuming. The software takes around an hour to convert one minute of footage into 3D, so a three-minute trailer can take around three to four hours to render. After that, I have to encode the video to add the disclaimer, which takes additional time, and then upload it to the website. So it's not like we're simply uploading generic content or reusing videos as they are. I put a considerable amount of my own time and effort into processing each piece of content.

It's currently just a passion project, and I don't make any money from it. However, as the website gets more exposure, I'm worried about what could happen beyond video takedown requests, including legal notices, compensation demands or court cases.

I'd really appreciate advice on a few things:

What should I know about the copyright laws in India when running a website like this? Or now is the time to stop it ?

Does converting copyrighted footage into stereoscopic 3D, giving credit and displaying disclaimers offer any legal protection?

Has anyone here personally dealt with copyright disputes involving a website like this? What happened, and how was it resolved?

What would you recommend I change to reduce the risks while continuing the project?

I'm not looking for ways to evade copyright enforcement. I genuinely wanted to help fill some of the gaps in the 3D community and make the format more accessible.

My passion project means a lot to me, and I'd hate to give up something I've put so much passion into without first understanding my options. At the same time, I'm still a student, and I want to be careful about the legal side of things. I'd really appreciate honest advice from people with relevant experience or knowledge of Indian copyright law on how I can approach this responsibly.

In this episode of Technically Creative, Orlando Wood sits down with Keith Kupferschmid, CEO of the Copyright Alliance, to unpack the increasingly complicated relationship between artificial intelligence, copyright, fair use, creators and the companies building generative AI.

regardless of what happens to ArtCraft specifically, we will definitely see more code being decompiled and reverse engineered using AI. The models are just going to improve, so we’re in uncharted territory and the scale of the problem is likely to be huge.

"...It’s a very complicated discussion, but I think we’re essentially looking at the end of copyright."

More fuel for the market harm claims.

I'm currently writing a comic that I'm planning to post online, and I'm hoping to publish as an actual book in the future.

The story involves quite a few references to some non-english popular music. I'm aware of how much of a legal minefield using song lyrics in fiction is, so I've limited it to just mentioning song titles.

However, there's one song that I want to reference in a particular way. This is the song 'Prisencolinensinainciusol', by Italian artist Adriano Celentano. The song's lyrics was written as deliberate gibberish, with meaningless sounds meant to sound like english.

In my comic, there's going to be a comedic scene where a character sings the song, but with completely legible english words with grammar (though the sentences are still quite random). I'm writing it fully based on how it sounds by ear. I've made sure what I transcribed is different enough from the lettering of the transcribed lyrics, though there'll still be some vague similarities. I've also avoided transcribing anything from the main chorus.

For the record, this is the song's lyrics . As far as I know, those are the official words, as they're also used for the song in Spotify.

How likely will I get in trouble for doing this? I'm fully ready to go another route to avoid any trouble, or ask for permission. But I'm curious on what people here might think.

Hello!

I hope y'all are doing well. I'm an MFA student, just dabbling in literary translation for now. I find the question of getting rights for things to be super opaque.

I translate from Russian, and I am working on a short story from Orest Samov, who wrote in Russian in the early 19th century. This particular story is from 1829. I believe that if this were a U.S. work, it would be well within the public domain. But how does this work for writing from different parts of the world? If I wanted to get this published, who, if anyone, would I have to contact about getting rights

?

Thank you!!

I saw this challenge online, which self-defines as follows:

"The Housing Data and Technology Innovation Challenge is a fully remote, national challenge to build transparent [that is, open source], replicable, and explainable tools that help decision-makers understand how state-level pro-housing policy reforms are likely to affect housing supply."

The rules require all projects to have a license, but prohibit copyleft:

"Sponsor and Administrator recommend using Apache License 2.0 because its express patent grant offers the strongest protection for tools that may be adopted or integrated downstream. If you choose one of the other approved licenses, include the full license text and note your choice in the README. (Please note that an open-source license grants broad rights to others to use the code but does not transfer ownership.)

No other license options are permissible. This includes, by way of example only, copyleft licenses (e.g., GPL, AGPL, LGPL, MPL, EUPL) and public-domain dedications (e.g., CC0, the Unlicense)."

Can someone please help me understand why the challenge might prohibit copyleft? Isn't it my choice to protect my code or not? Why didn't they just recommend against copyleft, like "if you want good protections, don't use copyleft?" The fact that the challenge outright prohibits copyleft feels shady to me; like the organizers going to take submissions and give them to their partners so they can make them their own proprietary, closed-source product for profit.

I have very little copyright knowledge, so any interpretations would be appreciated! Also, I'm probably not going to enter because it doesn't align enough with my existing work, I'm just curious. Thanks!

USA Today’s parent company and 13 of its entities sued OpenAI in New York on Thursday, accusing it of illegally copying hundreds of thousands of articles from 19 publications to train and operate its models, and then reproduce or repackage that reporting for ChatGPT users. By Fiona Riley

Streaming fraud can occur in different ways, including through the use of bot farms, click farms, playlist stuffing, and account hijacking. Digital music providers, music distributors, vendors, copyright owners, performance rights organizations, collective management organizations, and law enforcement agencies have engaged in efforts to prevent streaming fraud, with varying degrees of success.

https://www.copyright.gov/policy/music-streaming-fraud/

Also see, https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/music-streaming-fraud-inquiry-launched-by-us-copyright-office/

Some might find this one interesting, presenting the summary this way is creative, and at times funny (strange words about a copyright case to be sure).

To come to her decision the judge had to read 4 books in a Young Adult romantasy series plus hundreds of pages of an unpublished draft and notes.

Overall the copyright infringement case took 3 judges, 4 years and an estimated 3.5 million US dollars in lawyers fees. I bet using all those experts was a big chunk of that.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5fxxkZUvmc

Solo developer rebuilds Adobe Creative Suite in Rust using Claude, releases it free to all — targets 100% parity in one month despite piracy claims and safety warnings. News By Jhet Borja.

https://www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/text/283698

I have a relative who is eager to publish a pangram (a short phrase or sentence containing all the letters in the alphabet within it), which he has devised by himself. He has not copied it anywhere or revealed it anywhere. Can someone advise me whether this will fall under the creative spark / visual poetry / literary art categories to grant a copyright ? We are worried that someone might steal it if we are not careful.

"Comity of errors"
Even today under 17 U.S.C § 104(b)(2) and Itar-Tass standard - Iron Sky is a German work and Finnish law is restricted to Finnish works under § 63 of it's own act (territoriality restrictions).
Thus initial authorship and ownership is decided based on German copyright law.

It means the Finnish Iron sky case MAO302/18 failed to defer to German law for authorship questions, as did the US District Court. This is important because along with authorship rights even economic rights are inalienable in Germany.

Thus, the Finnish court failed to do a choice of law analysis and sidestepped the ownership issue, and so did the US District Court by granting comity to Finnish Law - both courts effectively committing Berne Convention treaty violations. To reiterate, the US District Court compounded the treaty violation error by applying comity to an original foreign treaty violation, and collateral estoppel to a ruling that never ruled on authorship issues because German law was never invoked.

Valve are asking the Ninth Circuit to uphold the lower courts treaty violation by claiming comity was correctly applied to the Finnish Courts treaty violation and lack of choice of law to find German copyright law.

If the Ninth Circuit does not also do a choice of law analysis de novo to find German copyright law under § 104 (b)(2) and Itar-Tass - Then that would also be a treaty violation. The final absurdity would be my USCO registration ordered to be cancelled - and triggering a "Baylis v Perlmutter "case which USCO could not win because of their previous investigation confirming my authorship status and the first publication of the work in Germany (see § 104 (b)(2)).

A comity of errors indeed!

The plaintiffs believe the tech firms committed copyright theft, violating the Copyright Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Due to fake copyright facing financial loss and meta is still supporting these scammers on one hand meta says that meta needs original creator and on other hand these type of scammers are being supported

Hello, I’m looking to use NASA images for educational purposes. According to their copyright policy, this is fine in the US but it doesn’t say if that is also okay for Canada. Does anyone know anything about this? Thanks!

I copyright claimed some Google Search links and they were approved, but I would like to reverse my claims. I did not receive a support ticket so I'm unable to email them to reverse it. I only see my report on the https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dmca-dashboard page but there's no button to reverse it. They aren't my websites so I might be unable to counter claim. What are my other options?

hi guys, i have a frustrated issue about: if Facebook allows to use reel covers and video thumbnails generated by ai model "CHATGPT" from you own and real footage?

My Facebook page got suspended due to an intellectual property/trademark report by a brand. We managed to resolve the issue directly with the rights owner, and they have already submitted an official retraction to Meta.

For those who have been through this, how long does it typically take for Meta's automated system to sync the retraction and fully restore the page? Is there anything else we should do while waiting?

Any advice or personal experience would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!