Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with Copyrights

How do I negotiate licensing rights for printing copyrighted images on apparel?

seatofmypants — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:36:36 -0800

MY BUSINESS PLAN: Negotiate the rights to make apparel with images from a movie that is coming out in a couple of years. The movie distributor has the authority over these rights. EXAMPLE: So, say the movie was Spiderman, I would want to acquire the rights from Sony Pictures to make Spiderman t-shirts, jackets, caps, etc and then sell them to distributors, wholesalers and retailers. WHAT I NEED: Tips from insiders how to put my best foot forward in making this proposal to the movie distributor. What I have already done:

1. I have a deal with a friend of mine who is in printing and owns a t-shirt printing company.

2. I have contacted the movie distributor with my request and received a response requesting more information about my printing company. So the good news is: It seems that at this point the license is still available.

I am now at the point where I need to make a convincing case to the distributor so that they consider my company for rights (maybe exclusive?)

I would love to hear from someone who has been on the inside of either end of this type of deal or something similar so that I can get an idea of what they are looking for.

Thanks, friends!

Updating your own copyrighted work

hdh — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 07:01:27 -0800

I have written a number of songs that I have gotten copyrighted through the US Copyright Office. Each copyright runs between $35-$45 to have done. If I change the lyrics or add a verse to one of my songs, do I have to go through the whole process again to re-copyright the updated version of the song including paying the fee, or I am still safe because the original song is copyrighted?

How to pay copyrights for streaming music?

sinbarambam — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 14:35:26 -0800

First question posted. Hope you can help :-) Together with a friend we are working on writing some online educational materials. As part of this we want to use snippets of commercially available songs and their lyrics (up to 60 seconds) and make them available on our website for streaming (not downloading!). Learners pay for access to the site (on a cost-recovery basis). Learners would access the site from many different countries. We've been trying to find out how to deal with the musical rights issues but don't know who to contact and who to pay, especially since our learners will be from all around the world. How do we find out if, and if so where, we need to pay to whom, and what? Thanks!

Posting television transcripts on the web?

crickets — Wed, 09 May 2007 13:40:06 -0800

Is it permissible to transcribe TV shows and post said transcripts on the web? The copyrights to the TV shows in question do not belong to me. Does this fall under fair use?

Data Mineing

Xurando — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 12:32:32 -0800

Could I copyright or trademark my full name and social security number and would that be an effective strategy in protecting my privacy and reducing unauthorized use of my personal information? I was recently listening to an author on the radio talking about our almost non-existant right to privacy. He was talking about whether or not we own our own information. He didn't have an answer but obliquely suggested (as a joke) that we could copyright our own names and SS #'s as a way of reducing unauthorized use of our information.

Could I actually do this? If this were possible could I sue for unauthorized use? Could I warn big corporations that unauthorized use of my information could result in significant consequences?

Can I "borrow" a copyrighted thing?

dpcoffin — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 11:28:39 -0800

How does copyright work when the material is in a library? Specifically, I'm thinking of the contents of a CD-ROM that is supplied with a book on computer skills. There are presets on the CD that the owner of the book can install and use in the program under discussion, and these are copyrighted. But the book is in the library... Can I use the presets as a borrower?

Fighting the Man

trinarian — Sun, 17 Apr 2005 02:53:54 -0800

Has anyone tried to fight the RIAA and Movie Studios by arguing that copyrights can be interpreted laterally instead of just horizontally? A 128kbs mp3 carries around 10% of the original data density of the source material – we’re loosing all but the basic foundations of the song. What’s the difference between posting that and 20 seconds, full fidelity, of a 3-minute song (which is legal)? You're just cutting the data at different ends.

I'm working under the root assumptions that I know of copyright law, wherein you can distribute and/or alter a certain percentage of an artists work w/o permission and royalties.

Promoting a website

jeffbarr — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 06:23:10 -0800

What should be done (if anything) about a site that is capitalizing on my site's distinctive name and search engine ranking to popularize itself in a way that is totally unrelated to my site?

I run an RSS feed directory with a distinctive name, reasonably good content, and a decent rank in various search engines. Last night a "watch" application told me that 2 new sites now contain my site's domain name in their URLs.

I took a look at both of these sites, and they are simply embedding my domain name in their URLs so that they have a chance of matching on searches for the name. The actual pages are throwaway filler (as is the entire site).

I'm flattered and insulted.

My site's name is not a trademark (perhaps it should be), and I don't want to draw artificial attention to it by posting a link, and I certainly don't want to link to the offending sites.

Has anyone else had something like this happen to them? What can be done?

Copyright law and mistakes in text.

LeLiLo — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 13:58:51 -0800

I'm proofreading an OCR file of a 25-year-old book, and after I fixed it up the company (whose history it is) said I had to put back in all the original (non-OCR) mistakes (words spelled wrong, incorrect tenses, text inconsistencies, semicolons used miserably) for copyright reasons. I told them it's their copyright, and they can do whatever they want with it. No, they say, it's a historical record. It's also their money, so I'll do whatever they want . . . but are they right? Are misspelled words and poor punctuation a copyright issue? I ask this just out of curiousity. (That's one of the words they made me put back in.)