Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with licensing

microsoft office volume licensing

alcahofa — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 07:54:54 -0800

how do i buy a microsoft office for the mac volume license? I need to buy 10 microsoft office licenses for macs for my small non-profit. When I get into the the interface on the microsoft site, they refer me to 407 value added resellers. None of the web sites for those VARs suggests that they sell volume licenses. I sent e-mails to 3 of them and they don't respond.

Has any one been able to buy volume licenses for microsoft office for a small business? If so, who did you work with?

Licensing art?

Liquidwolf — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 09:13:52 -0800

Any advice on how much to charge a music label for "unlimited rights" to album art that I created? I created album art for a fee of $2000. The label which is a major label, wants to know how much I'd charge for unlimited rights to use that cover art for whatever merch they want to make. They also want a fee for just shirts. This would be a flat rate, not royalties. Any advice on what to charge? thanks in advance.

What happens when you report an illegal rooming house in Toronto?

Anonymous — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:52:05 -0800

What is the likely result of reporting an illegal rooming house in Toronto? e.g. How often do they end up getting cleaned up, repaired, and properly licensed vs. shut down (whether by the inspectors or by an owner who doesn't want to bother fixing it up)?

Who owns the button patent?

shmegegge — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:08:50 -0800

Does anyone own a patent for the button? As in, the button you press to turn on your tv, or to dial your phone, or to nuke the planet from orbit. not the button on your shirt. I was once told that someone or some company owns the patent for the standard electric/electronic button, and that any company which uses one must pay a licensing fee to said company. is this true? if so, who? how much does one pay for this?

♪ How Hard Can This Be . . .

@troy — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 01:36:38 -0800

Licensing music for Guitar Hero-like app I'm interested in developing a Guitar Hero-like app that allows you to "play along" with an animated score and I'd like to license real music for this.

Preliminary searching is rather unclear as to whether a compulsory mechanical license is sufficient, or whether due to the AV nature a full synch license will need to be negotiated (thus killing the idea dead).

(It's my understanding that the majors went for synch licensing, but they are also going for sound-alike, while my idea is rather similar to basic ring-tone quality, which falls under mechanical licensing, and not a full repro of the song as recorded).

Bonus points for knowledge of licensing JASRAC-controlled IP for similar use here in the states and in Asia . . .

Movie Rental Licensing

Amby72 — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 06:20:20 -0800

How does Licensing work for DVD rental Outfits? Basically, do places like Blockbuster, Netflix, or Redbox pay a licensing fee for the DVDs they rent? After reading the recent article about the studios not playing nice with RedBox, I am curious how it works. DO the businesses pay a flat fee for the right to rent movies? Do they not have to license stuff, and just buy DVDs like a standard consumer? I have to believe the movie industry must have some way of getting an extra cut from this.

Hello RIAA, I'd like to give you some money

IanMorr — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 08:11:06 -0800

Is it horribly expensive to license snippets of music for videos that I share on my blog? I have a blog that I use to share pics and videos with my friends and family. I post, at most, 2 videos a month. They're usually about 30 - 40 seconds. Because the audio on these is usually my wife and I encouraging our kid to walk in the stupid tones you use when talking to kids, I want to replace the audio track with music.

I have a large, legal, personal library and can usually think of the right song to use pretty quickly. I'd much rather pay a reasonable fee to be allowed to add a bit of a commercial tune to my video than to spend time searching for an appropriate license free piece of music.

Is this an option? I don't want to do a bunch of paperwork every time I use a different song, I'm looking for some kind of central licensing body that can take, say $20 a year and license me to use bits of songs in my library on videos that are going on the internet where, in theory, anyone in the world could see them, but in practice would only be viewed by my mum and her cat.

How to license a small desktop application?

543DoublePlay — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 07:17:56 -0800

We have a small windows desktop business application designed for us by a local independent developer that we would like to market and sell to existing and new clients, but we neither we (nor our developer) has any experience of how to easily protect it using some kind of licensing method. The developer has used .Net to develop the application and ideally we would like to have it work for a trial period and then disable it so the user has to purchase a full license in order to continue using it. If we can prevent copying of it within an organization or between individuals once it has been licensed, that would obviously be ideal. One commercial hosted licensing option we have looked at is great but very expensive, especially as we are probably only looking at selling this for $50 per user without having any real idea of how many we would sell. Our free lance developer has never done anything to do with licensing and doesn't have any experience of coding something that manipulates the registry settings when a license is applied to it.

Is there a simple easy-to-integrate solution out there that someone has used (or just knows about) to license and protect a small .Net application?

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!

Black-Belt licensing wizardry

mathiu — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 04:18:21 -0800

Is there any restrictions on advertising consulting services using the term "six sigma". Do I have to be certified or pay licensing fees before offering consulting services on the topic? I know of the various institutions offering classes but don't know if going through any of these is cumpolsory before starting to use "six sigma" in advertising one's product to others.

YANML but you might know how this industry is set up. I am in Germany but information must not be limited to my home country.

Licensing Question

octomato — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:45:59 -0800

Licensing foreign films for commercial use follow up... Following up on this question:
How can I go about licensing foreign films (1940-1960s) for a web based commercial?
I have contacted various production companies but keep hitting a wall. Some of the films that are "rights free" are licensed in Europe, but not in the States. We have a few films in mind, how can we proceed?

Thanks!

Any Storm In A Port?

DWRoelands — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 15:10:24 -0800

Can I port an open-source project to another language without violating its BSD License? I'm writing a Twitter client and using a great open source library that's hosted at Google Code. Problem is that it's written in c#.

I'd like to port it to VB.Net, both for my own benefit and so that other VB developers who don't have C# chops can use it. m I also plan to host at Google Code under the BSD license.

I've contacted the project's founder but I have heard no reply.

Questions:
1. With his code released under BSD, can I port it without his express permission? I would, of course, credit his original work.

2. Does the BSD license give him the ability to "pull the plug" on my project since it's based on his work?

3. Does this sort of thing constitute a "fork"?

4. Am I asking for legal trouble or just plain drama if I proceed without his permission?

Thanks for your input.

Do you need to get licensing agreements for these things?

Submiqent — Thu, 14 May 2009 22:50:30 -0800

Image licensing and advertising on the Colbert Report Does Comedy Central or the Stephen Colbert show have to get licenses of every image he uses on the show? For instance in one segment, he says "back then, most people just prayed for more flavourful tar in their Chesterfields" accompanied with the relevant picture of a (presumably) copyrighted Chesterfields pack.

Also there's many prop food products he shows off which seems very clearly to be advertising, but due to the nature of his show, he may only react positively to the product and jokingly denounce it. I had the impression advertising companies were too uptight about negative comments to be into this kind of advertising?

Though he does a lot more obvious advertising with Doritos and the like, it's the small stuff that makes me wonder how they manage it.

Licensing a video

aerotive — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:01:48 -0800

I uploaded a video to a video-sharing site, and it's drawn a couple of offers to license it. What's a fair price? Any tips for this sort of thing? It's a 30-second-or-so, weather related clip. The companies that contacted me both produce what look like terrible reality compilation shows. One company I've never heard of, the other most everyone's heard of.

Both have said that they want a copy of the original video before proceeding further. Is that typical? (one noted I could watermark it before sending it in) Being a neophyte at this, is there anything else I should look out for?

Is a public library film festival via YouTube legal?

Knicke — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:40:11 -0800

I would like to put together a playlist of short films posted to YouTube and show them for a group of kids at my public library. Legally, can I do this? I am planning to use only original films that have not a whiff of copyright infringement about them and that are content-appropriate. However, I'm having trouble figuring out whether this is OK according to YouTube's Terms of Service. Lots of info about the API and the actual content of the videos...nothing about public performance/showing as far as I can tell.

Normally I'd just go ahead and do it, but I'm new to this job, my information law class was several years ago, and I really don't want something (even a minor something) to bite me in the butt after the fact!

Thanks in advance for your help.

Help me give Microsoft money!

gregvr — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 14:16:17 -0800

Is there any way that I can buy older versions of Microsoft software? Here's the deal. I have MSDN Ultimate/Premium/Universal (whatever they are calling it this year), so I have fully legal access to lots and lots of Microsoft stuff. We are currently using Visual Studio 2005 for all of our development.

We have a few non-MSDN licenses of Visual Studio 2005 for other developers who are not MSDN subscribers. We are (rightly) very strict on the terms of the subscription-- it's just for me, not for someone who is not me.

Here's the big problem-- how can I get a new developer up and running with our projects? Visual Studio 2005 is no longer offered for sale. Upgrading to Visual Studio 2008 is not currently an option, since some of the drivers we use are not compatible with VS2008. This may change in the future, but I need something now!

Imaging mac lab with Indesign--licensing issue

mecran01 — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 15:38:33 -0800

I just purchased 24 Indesign licenses, for OS X. I am planning to install Indesign on one mac, then copy the image to the others using Carbon Copy Cloner. Am I going to have to manually type in the license key for each installation of Indesign? I called Adobe but I got someone reading a script and they weren't that helpful. Our campus mac guy says I get to manually type in those license keys. Our machines are frozen with deep freeze, so it is going to be tedious if that is the case.

Using copyrighted music in a student film?

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 16:40:05 -0800

Submitting a student film for a local festival. Unlicensed music used. How should I clear this? I've produced a short movie for an introductory class at University and a friend recommended I submit it for a local film festival. However, I delved into my own collection of (legally-owned) CDs for its soundtrack.

The budget for this film was $0, and I have no intention of profitting from it in any way. Assuming it may be chosen (which is admittedly unlikely), what should I do to prevent the copyright police from knocking my door down?

I'm in Michigan, if it matters.

How can one explain software licensing regulations and requirements?

Anonymous — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 07:03:46 -0800

What can I use in explaining to my boss how software licensing regulations work? My boss seems to think that we can just borrow software from another department and use it for a project that we need to deploy. I know this is not ethical and I am pretty sure it is illegal, but I am almost certain that my boss does not understand this. My boss is not a computer savvy person and I am pretty sure that he does not understand how these things work. I want to be able to cite a law or something official that will help me convey why we cannot do this, how they catch people who do this (systems and software licensing audits) and what the penalties are when a corporation is caught doing this. What information is out there that will help me in this endeavor?

I, the accidental paparazzo: the celebrity I shot at Central Park wants to use my pictures

AnyGuelmann — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 21:46:35 -0800

I, the accidental paparazzo: the celebrity I shot at Central Park wants to use my pictures. Do I negotiate some financial compensation or just sign the release in exchange for having my name on the photo credits? A couple months ago I was, as I did most weekends during the summer, sitting on a bench in Central Park photographing people. I shot a very cute couple before I realized the guy was a singer. I put the photos, along with all others from that weekend, on flickr. I don't usually license my flickr photos under Creative Commons, so these are "all rights reserved".

Today I got an e-mail from someone producing this guy's next cd. They want to use my photos and attached the following release:

"I _____________________ am the sole and rightful owner of
the photos dated _________________. I agree to allow Xxxxx Xxxx Music, Xxxxx Xxxxx or his representative, full and
complete use of my photos for promotional, web posting or
merchandise purposes. I grant the permission free of
charge and with no conditions."

The pictures look good, but I am, at best, a pretentious amateur. The idea of having my photos on this guy's material is flattering and I would gladly do it just to satisfy my ego.
I realize there's very little possibility of getting payed, and I will sign the release if that is in fact the case, but I'd hate to be the sucker that didn't get any money while everyone else did.

How do these things work? Is there space for negotiating even though the release says "free of charge"? Do I flat out put a price on my photos?

"We don't serve your type here"

le morte de bea arthur — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 04:28:44 -0800

Somewhat convoluted font licensing question - see inside. Scenario: I'm writing a small publicly accessible web app. Part of what this web app does is to allow someone to enter some text, pick a font from a list, and download an image containing some text in that font.

Question: How should I proceed in terms of picking and licensing fonts for my web app?

Additional Details:

Ideally I'd like to make available the kinds of typefaces a designer might pick: Helvetica, Myriad, Gill Sans, Fruitger, Rockwell and so on. Even better would be to enable registered (i.e paying) users to upload and use their own fonts (i.e. they wouldn't be available to other users).

Now font licensing, from what I've read, can be rather complicated, and it's starting to look like what I want to do may require a budget I just don't have - my budget really just covers hosting and my own time. So can you think of clever ways I can navigate this potential minefield? And does anyone have the remotest idea what licensing issues there might be with allowing someone to upload a commercial font to my site, assuming they would be the sole user of that font.

Ideas I've had so far:
i) Use cheap (or free) 'clone' typefaces - how legal is this? - given that these would be used at relatively small sizes (up to, say, 20 pixels high), would these pass muster among 'real' designers?
ii) Attach restrictions to the font upload option - ask users to self-certify that they are not uploading anything for which they do not have copyright or appropriate permission.
iii) Just risk using my own bought copies of these fonts on my site - the reasoning being that it would be extremely difficult (maybe impossible) for anyone to determine the provenance of the fonts I'm using on the server. Yes, I know, very dubious, and this is specifically what I'm trying to avoid, so please keep the preaching to a minimum.

How to sell home baked goods?

Stagecraft — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 09:31:16 -0800

I am a culinary student in NYC studying the art of Pastry. I would like to start a small home business and make pastries to sell at local craft fairs. Does any one know how to go about this? How do the laws and regulations differ for home baking versus commercial baking? Is it even permissible to bake at home and sell at craft fairs? Would it be easer to rent out commercial space and then sell at the fairs? Help would be appreciated. Thanks! My wife is a crafter and sells at craft fairs in NYC. I would like to make chocolates and other baked goods for her to sell and I am just wondering how to go about it.

Can poets make money?

minifigs — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 03:40:56 -0800

How much does a writer make when their work is included in a school book? For instance, an Irish leaving certificate poetry book would contain roughly ten poems by each of the ten compulsory poets on the course as well as about forty individual poems by various other poets. Roughly 60,000 students do the leaving cert each year.

How much would one of the compulsory poets expect to make? What is the licensing structure for poetry in these cases?

Swapping out a dying Sonicwall TZ170

bcwinters — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 09:50:29 -0800

Can Sonicwall TZ170's be swapped out after hardware failure like ordinary routers, or are things more complicated than that? We use two Sonicwall TZ170s to connect our two office locations via VPN. For the most part the two have been humming along with very little interaction. In the last few weeks though, one of them has been freezing up on an almost daily basis.

As our business is seasonal and we're right in the middle of crunch time, we want to replace the router that has been freezing rather than investigate a more up-to-date replacement system right now.

What I don't understand, though, is how Sonicwall's licensing works. I don't think we currently have any kind of open support contract with them and so I don't think we can get tech support from them.

I can easily handle just buying another TZ170 on eBay, exporting the settings from the old box & importing them into the new box. Will this work? Or does Sonicwall require some kind of centralized pairing between the devices or some kind of service contract extension to get this stuff working? Their system seems kind of opaque to me.

Any advice appreciated with the understanding that we can't tear the whole thing out and start again until our next budget cycle.

Legal possibilities for copying art's style for advertising?

Anonymous — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:20:48 -0800

In Alberta, does my business have the right to use/copy the "style" of a piece of artwork that we already paid to use when commissioning new artwork from a different artist? My retail shop's front awning features a large, prominent mural-type image. When it was originally installed, a local artist was paid to produce the image but my shop doesn't own the image - we've used it a very small number of times for stationery and advertising purposes, but each time we want to use the image in a new form we have to pay a licensing fee.

The original artist is talented but he's personally difficult for us to work with, and we can't even come close to affording his services for all the web & print work we have in mind for an upcoming campaign. I've approached other artists who are able to work within our budget, but I'm concerned about the legality of asking for artwork that deliberately and closely mimics the style of the existing store-front artwork.

I have no intention of completely snubbing the original artist on this matter, but his confrontational and profit-hungry nature mean I have to be sure of my footing before he catches wind of this.

For reference: The original image is a mural with the theme of "people enjoying food" - it has a few stylized painted people standing around with foods and foody images scattered artfully throughout the background and foreground. I'm not interested in copying the existing image, but I would like artwork that features painted people and food of a distinctly similar style so as to provide a continuity in the shop's image. The original artist is not well-known (to my knowledge) and the style isn't ground-breaking-ly unique or anything, so I doubt he could claim we were trading on his name or trademark, but since we don't own the original image, I'm afraid it could be inappropriate for some other reason.

Any advice, experience or (inexpensive) legal resources you could offer would be terrific. If it does come down to "Call a lawyer and pay him to research this", then I can arrange that.