For instance, you are free to add a copyrighted song to a family vacation slideshow only intended/accessible to your family offline. IF your son leaks the said video,are you to blame?
No, there is no such exception in US copyright law. Internal use of material falls under the same rules as anything public facing.
> you are free to add a copyrighted song to a family vacation slideshow only intended/accessible to your family offline
That's murky. It is not automatically legal. It is probably illegal if you're including your extended family and intend for them to copy & save your slideshow.
> IF your son leaks the said video,are you to blame?
Yes, if your son is less than 18 years old, you are legally responsible for his copyright violations. You can get sued for it, and some people have been. Maybe you missed the rash of RIAA lawsuits a few years ago? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_group_efforts_against_fi...
Internal vs. external use will in most cases materially impact at least one of the fair use criteria (effect on market for the protected work), so while it's true the same rules apply, it's not true that those rules necessarily produce the same results if that is the only element that changes.
> Yes, if your son is less than 18 years old, you are legally responsible for his copyright violations.
As a parent as such, probably not; neither copyright law nor general federal law on civil liability has a parental liability provision which would have this effect. State tort-law parental liability provisions generally aren't expansive enough to cover most (or in many cases any) copyright claims, though something like Hawaii’s particularly expansive parental liability rules might, if they applied to the act in question.
> Maybe you missed the rash of RIAA lawsuits a few years ago?
Maybe you can cite even one where a court upheld the parental liability theory you articulate; none of those referred to in your source seem to (the only one that mentions a minor infringer seems to mention the amount minor’s direct liability, but not any parental liability.)
But the creator says: "A fair amount of my footage has been licensed for internal use only"
Doesn't this mean that this violation does impact that market?
Right, and I was only talking about the legality. It's not any more legal for Google to infringe copyright internally, even if the material impact might be less.
> neither copyright law nor general federal law on civil liability has a parental liability provision which would have this effect. State tort-law parental liability provisions generally aren't expansive enough to cover most (or in many cases any) copyright claims
Federal and state issues of parental liability are discussed a few places. You're right that it's not super clear cut, though many states do have general parental liability laws that hold parents accountable for damage.
https://www.newmediarights.org/copyright/are_parents_liable_...
https://www.eff.org/document/parental-liability-copyright-in...
https://www.mwl-law.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/parental-...
Worth mentioning that in some cases the RIAA filed suits against minors directly. Also worth noting that many families settled before any ruling on liability or even guilt. Being sued under plausible sounding rules can be damaging even if there's no actual law to back it.
Regardless of the technicalities here, @mankash666's question wasn't necessarily a legal one. The real answer to that question is that you are at least partially to blame for files being shared if you make videos using unlicensed music and share it with your son who then shares it online. Even if you don't get caught or fined, it's still kinda your fault.
Therefore only the legal entity that is the company needs to have rights to the content, not the employees.
For instance, you can install windows on computers at work (which definitely is distribution), without the rights to do so. Only the company needs said rights.
That's why "the rules are different" for companies. They're not different, they just apply to different legal entities.
This is not true. Copying material internally to a company is distribution. If you (person or company) don’t have the rights to copy, then it is illegal. If you do have a license, then it's legal distribution.
It seems like you’re conflating copyright rules with licenses. The copyright rules are not different for companies than for individuals; without the right to copy, no entity, person or company, other than the copyright holder and license holders, can do so legally. It’s fairly simple.
> That's why "the rules are different" for companies. They're not different, they just apply to different legal entities.
Also not true. Copyrights belong to the author/creator of a work, they protect the author, they grant the author exclusive right to copy the work. This protection does not differentiate or change based on who wants to copy the work.
Licenses are what apply differently to different legal entities.
> The internal employees actually watching/changing the content are simply acting as the agents of that legal entity.
That’s only true when the content has been licensed to the company for company-wide internal use. If the content was licensed to an individual and then distributed internally to a company, co-workers might not be allowed to consume that content, depending on the license. Furthermore, some content can be licensed to an individual at a company, such that the same individual is not allowed to use that content outside of work, and no other individuals at the company can use it either.
It's only distribution if access changes from one (legal) person to another. If a company gives access to employees acting as agents for that company, that's not distribution.
But yes, one would hope that there was a license for the thing being distributed, to the company, before this happened.
> That’s only true when the content has been ...
In the sense that licenses are contracts, and can contain any restrictions you want. On the other hand, if you buy a boxed copy of software at a store, and then regularly let whatever employee happens to be available actually use it (e.g. letting a copy of word get used by whichever secretary the temp agency sent this week) is perfectly legal, and very, very, very common.
Again, the only way what you said is true is after the company is licensed to copy, and specifically for company wide use. Before the company is licensed, copying anything internally to any other employees, even agents of the company, is distribution, and illegal, always.
People are legal entities from the copyright law perspective, and the right to copy belongs to the author. So, it doesn’t matter if a person in a company is an agent or not, it’s a copyright violation when anyone else makes a copy of the work without permission, and it’s distribution and a copyright violation if that person shares with any other people inside their company. Being an agent of the company is irrelevant to a company that doesn’t have permission to copy.
> if you buy a boxed copy of software at a store, and then regularly let whatever employee happens to be available actually use it is perfectly legal
No, that’s not necessarily legal unless the software’s license explicitly allows sharing. If the software is copied to the other person’s computer, and multiple people use it simultaneously, then it is illegal. If you copy it to the network and let anyone use it any time, then it’s illegal. If you let someone use your copy on your computer, then that’s legal. If you loan it to someone else, and erase it off your own computer while they have the software, then it’s legal.
> and very, very, very common.
That might be true, has no bearing on the legality. Sharing of music and movies and software is incredibly common, and also illegal.
You should go through your claims, determine what they fall under, and how they are enabled (and limited) by the domain of law they fall under.
Since you requested it, I’ll oblige. Here are all the claims in this thread so far, and which of those three domains they fall under:
- Philip Bloom claims Google copied his films without having obtained a license, thus violating copyright law.
- @mankash666 claims internal distribution of material without a license is legal and does not violate copyright. Not true, falls under copyright law.
- I claim internal distribution of material without a license is illegal. I claim distribution of unlicensed music to extended family is illegal. Both of those are covered by copyright law.
- You claim that internal distribution is not distribution because people in a company are agents, so copying from one person to the next isn’t copying because it’s all one legal entity, the company. This is not true, and it falls under copyright law when the company is not licensed, and contract law when the company is licensed. It is not true that company agents are a single person for the purposes of determining copyright when the right to copy has not been attained. You also claimed incorrectly that only the company entity needs to attain a license, which depends entirely on the license, and is far from always true. You've confused both copyright law and contract law here.
May I add at this late stage you’ve also played fast and loose with the idea of legal entities and agents of a company. Employees of a company are not normally legal agents of the company. No people are ever equivalent to the company, but some may act on behalf of the company. There are different kinds of agents, but the kind of agent status you're talking about is usually reserved for lawyers and C-level managers, and may require a contract, registration with the state, power of attorney, etc.. Thus, your argument about distribution not applying to employees fails almost always, even when the company is licensed to copy some material. This is well beyond the scope of either copyright or contract law.
- I claim that copyrights belong to the author of a work, and they don’t differentiate between any kinds of legal entities, they grant rights to the author and deny rights to all other legal entities. This falls under copyright law.
- You claim that distribution is only distribution when the legal entity changes, not the person. That doesn't fall under any law because it's not true. You claim (again) that internal distribution is not distribution under copyright law. You confused copyrights with contracts here. Internal company copying is distribution under copyright, but under a license it may be legal to distribute. You claim that sharing boxed software is always legal, without specifying what kinds of use you’re talking about. This falls under both copyright and contract.
- I claim that agent status is irrelevant to copyright law, it only applies to contract law. I claim that copying boxed software internally to a company is not always legal. The first sale doctrine allows me to erase my copy and give the box to someone else, which I said above. The license may allow me to make a 2nd copy to share with someone else, that would fall under the license, or contract law. If the license doesn’t allow sharing, then sharing copies of the boxed software falls under copyright law, and it’s illegal both inside and outside of companies.
If you meant in any of your examples above that you intended “copying” to mean transferring software under the right of first sale, then I agree that’s legal. I didn’t see that anywhere. And having reviewed the entire thread, I can’t see a single claim you’ve made that is generally true, without needing qualification or assumption. Feel free to do the same exercise yourself and point out specifically where you think I confused copyright & first sale & contract. It’s entirely possible I’m wrong somewhere, but I don’t see it, and I’m not convinced.
That's again, contract law, not copyright law, but oh well. I find it very hard to believe that what was done violates that incredibly broad license that Mr. Bloom granted them, because, well, it allows them to do pretty much whatever they want.
Let me add to the legal concepts you might want to look up: legal personhood, and perhaps incorporation laws (that a company defines a legal entity that counts as a person in all places in law that don't explicitly refer to a "natural" person)
[1] https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms or if you prefer it digested http://tubularinsights.com/youtube-copyright-ownership/
Go tell that to farmer Filburn.
> you are free to add a copyrighted song to a family vacation slideshow only intended/accessible to your family offline.
I'd question whether you can in fact do this. Obviously the rights holders aren't going to sue, but even so the law probably doesn't allow this. (It doesn't in the UK, even if we ignore the format-shifting).
Which would seem to suggest that any internal workplace transmission would constitute a "public" performance of a copyrighted work.
There are some extremely limited exceptions based on your reasons for copying it (things like parody, commentary, new reporting), these are very tightly defined exceptions called "fair use".
There are no blanket exceptions for "non commercial" use.
Keep in mind, the creation/ownership of the work gives the copyright holder unlimited authority to ban _any_ use of the work. If I write a song or make a video, I 100% have the right to say "Nobody can use this for any purpose" - then the _only_ legal uses other people can make of it are those tightly defined exceptions permitted by copyright law.
"Fair use" _is_ a legal right to use copyrighted work without permission, but it's possibly one of the least understood and most violated laws in existence... And no - it does not give you any rights to "play something on a large screen in a public park"...
Here you are allowed to show owned copyright material to family and close friends[0]. Schools are not allowed show bought copyrighted meterial to students, a bar can not play bought songs to customers, and indeed a company can not play bought music to employees. Its goes even beyond this in that the same goes to play public radio in speakers, and its demanded that companies pay "public performance royalties" if they do. Its general known that restaurants and stores really do pay this cost, through large companies with many employees has been reluctant. Schools are also so cash striped that teachers often openly claim that they could not do their job if they had to stay within the legal constraint of copyright.
During the direct connect ages, some groups claimed that they were within the legal line because they stayed small enough to be within the "family and close friends" exception, through I doubt any such group actually succeeded in that defense.
[0]close friends are undefined in law but usually agreed as less than 5 people.
As an example, if you're a church and you want to be able to play movies, you can go through CVLI: http://us.cvli.com/
You also need a license to play music at the workplace, and the PRS or equivalent will chase you endlessly about it.
Doesn't this hinge around if Google legally acquired the film in the first place? Assuming they did that, wouldn't the only other violation be if it was distributed?
The act of showing it privately, on the other hand, is fine.
Yes. That's the whole point.