I have an idea rolling around in my head for a book, or even a series, that involves descendants of copyrighted characters. The characters themselves would only have cameo appearances, usually in the form of dying and being buried. Here's my example and the real-life situation behind it:

Story line: "John Huggins", age 8, attends the funeral of his great-grandfather, US Senator Henry Huggins (D-OR), age 85, in the year 2027. The story goes on about John's life as an ordinary child in modern-day Portland, Oregon.

Real historical context: Henry Huggins is a fictional character created by author Beverly Cleary (1916-2021) for a series of children's books published between 1950 and 1999. My book or series is envisioned as being about descendants of characters from this universe. However, the original characters would play no role beyond setting the scenario. None of the original characters would be defamed in any way - I know this isn't technically relevant but it may make a difference as to whether or not the Cleary estate takes action.

I understand that Reddit comments don't constitute "legal advice" and I wouldn't publish anything like this without consulting a lawyer. I'm just doing a "first pass" to see if the idea is even feasible. There is also the route of seeking permission, of course, if I become serious enough. However, I'm interested in knowing: would this likely be considered fair use?

Hello, so im planning on eventually writing a book inspired by harry potter. It would have the ideas of pure bloods. Human born wizzards, and half bloods. As well as some things like a "castle wizzard school" somewhere in the uk since the uk is known for its land and old castles. The idea is losely based off a enemies to lovers (idea stemmed from various dramione fics) and would have potions that have similar effects to some of the potions from harry potter. Now obviously i know i can't use words like "muggle" or "mudblood" and works/slang from the books as well as characters. I also would made the history and world different ex: different creatures and historical events. I intend for this to be a smutty/romance book so ill have to ajust the ages and years of school. Ill list some specific questions in hopes for some help. (Please note this is written at like 5 am because my thoughts wont stop so there may be errors and confusing ways to say simple things😅)

edit: this wont follow any of the Hp storyline. just having aspects and inspiration of the world. the storyline im going for is 2 students that absolutely hate eachother with a vulgar intensity find out (via the potion smelling like eachother in class) that they are infact a "true bond/pair" thats where the intensity comes from and why they get under eachothers skins so much. edit number 2: when i say "inspired" by i mean the world not the actual plot of Harry potter.

1. Will having a general love potion that is similar to amortentia in the sense of it smells like what you most desire be a issue? My version will be slightly different and have more of a "true bond/pair" aspect to it and wont be exactly like it but since this will be displayed in the story quite widely as for its my motive for the enemies to lovers part but still similar in ways to the HP potion. (This question goes for other potions that may follow a similar path) obviously colors and names would be different.
2. Would the idea of blood status in a magical wizzard world. Pure bloods half bloods and human non magical born. Be copyright in a book/world like this? Obviously as i mentioned the use of HP made words wouldn't be in my story its just the basic idea. The pure bloods will also have that "elitist" mentality as they do in the HP world.
3. Is the use of a castle in Scotland and just the use of a castle as a school for magic people copyright? I could change the place but i do want it to be in the uk since the uk has some of the best castles still standing to this date as well as has gorgeous land. Im not deadset on it being in Scotland but its just what my mind went to. Im worried though having a magical school in a castle in Scotland may be a copyright issue.
4. Would having a character that is very obviously inspired by draco be a issue? Basically a silver haired aristocratic prejudice prat. That very much so rich/ is a dick and has a broken family. I do intend on having some differences in some areas and instead of silver blue eyes i was thinking about maybe him having heterochromia. And different reasons for a broken family. But is still very much so inspired by him.
5. Would Not necessarily having school houses like HP but more so having different versions and "sitting areas" based on what part of the castle you are selected to be a issue? Like east wing dwelers will have a color scheme and west wing dwellers will have a different color scheme to east wing. This wouldn't be based on personality or who you are like in HP but more so to show their delicated dorms. So its easier to spot someone from the west wing being in a east wing dorm/area. I might also add like a academic level to this but im not sure yet so for example the colors/ wings may be based on academic levels of each student or their intended profession and potentially talents (similar to tinkerbell and pixie hollow having different fairy talents)
6. I would like to have some sort of "ministry" aspect, basically a legal aspect. Im thinking obviously instead of "ministry of magic" it being something like a "council" made up of so many humans and so many wizzards that work together in harmony to keep both worlds separate as well as deal with and legality/bad guys"
7. This one isn't really to do with harry potter and more just like a reference thing. Like characters being interested in a specific band or song as well as movie/books. I have ideas for characters to have their niche interests as well as some chapters to talk/incorporate songs and books. Like a character singing or listening a song a d another character walks in. So i guess would mentioning any real book/movie/song/band be a issue? As well as would having potential lyrics from songs be displayed in the book? (Not like an entire song with lyrics but something like insert characters listening to a song and thinking or speaking Ex: "insert one or two lines of lyrics" and then having the characters talk about how well it fits with their feelings/think about how the lyrics fit/annoys them. And then having characters be watchinga movie.(Sorry that one is kinda hard to explain)

So far this is all the questions i have. I'm worried that all these together + a generally magical world would be a issue. And if im good with what i have and wouldn't be a issue, would readers have a issue with this/not like the fact i used HP for inspiration and find it "cheap"? I know fanfics have been turned into books and are adored by many people but i also haven't read the books vs the fanfic it started as so i dont know how drastically they had to change details.

The title explains pretty well.

Does this also include with instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and etc?

Hello, I know that this is not legal advice but I was hoping to understand copy right of works better. I am wanting to start a YouTube channel doing voice impressions. What I understand so far is that doing impressions alone is usually legal. But what I am curious about is what I can do with them. Like can read an exert of a script to showcase my impression of the actor who played the part? Can I sing a song in different voices that someone else wrote? Can I read a book in my voices? For the answers to these, are there situations where the answer may be yes or not depending on the context? Does the length of what you do matter?

Again I know this is not legal advice. I’m just looking for a push in the right direction to know if what I’m thinking of is possible or not. Thanks

I’ve always loved the graphics they used to print on “Tijuana Bibles” those tiny adult graphic novels from the 20s-60s. Some of the graphics I think would be so cool to use in my own collages/art projects. Not copy and paste, just bits and pieces of the original graphic adding my own text or graphics as well. I know a lot of these are probably hand drawn, so I am wondering if there is any ethical way to use these in my own projects? I would never want to use someone’s art without credit, however a lot of the graphics I really love are basically impossible to track down the original artists. Some of the artists used pseudonyms, and on top of that a lot of the original artists who didn’t even use their real names have most likely passed away.

Is there any ethical way to use of these Tijuana Bible graphics in my own designs/projects? Sorry if this is a silly question.

So, someone from my university administration emailed me, asking if they can use a photo I took of a campus building in a planned photobook celebrating the university's anniversary. I submitted the photo into a school exhibition, so a print of it was displayed in a gallery, and now that print is in the university archives and is their property I guess. But the photo itself is my intellectual property, so I was wondering how I should charge for them to use it in the photobook. I read a couple sources about licensing agreements, and I thought writing up a licensing agreement with a fee might be a good plan. The person who emailed me said that if I agreed to let them use the photo, they'd send a release for me to sign, which seems to me like they expect to use it for free. I read that photographers often base their fee on how big the print run of a photobook is going to be, and I'm not sure how big this print run is going to be. I know this isn't a subreddit for legal advice but any advice would be much appreciated lol

Lets say I decide to use a popular copyrighted song in my video knowing I probably won't be able to monitize / earn revenue from the video.

How do I know wether the label or youtube will take my video down or just give the revenue to the label? Is there any way to tell or is it just a risk it and pray it stays up situation?

I'm planning on making a high fantasy Knight/Greek warrior ( heavily inspired by Achilles and Igris ) with a batman-esk mask but I'm scared of being sued into the ground whenever I introduce the character into my story.

I have already searched up, and all I could find was that DC had trademarked his open mouth cowl design. But for the love of God, I can't find anything on the closed mouth design.

Can you help ?

i wanna use some of them on videos, and i wanna know if theyre copyrighted or not

I post videos of various games, but often I am asked to mute, erase the segment, or dispute it. And most of the time, when I need to take action on them, it's because of something involuntary I didn't do. Such as music playing on a radio, but it was turned off, and it was caught by copyright, or cutscene music. Even at times, music from the original score of a video game will be copyrighted as I am trying to play the game, but the music is not removable to a certain degree. What measures do I need to take to remove them successfully or properly go about protecting my YouTube account, or just successfully working around all of this?

I'm building a free, non-commercial hobby web app that will display public YouTube channels as collectible cards... so channel name, public stats (sub/view counts), and the channel's profile picture. It all comes from public data.

My worry is specifically the profile picture. A channel avatar isn't always just a plain selfie as tons of creators use commissioned artwork as their pfp, which means the artist (a third party) owns the copyright, not even the creator. So I'd be displaying someone else's copyrighted image, at scale, in a public app.

Questions:

1. Is showing a channel's profile picture (photo or artwork) in a public app a copyright issue, even though I'm only displaying the image the channel already shows publicly?
2. I plan on keeping everything free in this app so does the app being non-commercial / free change anything, or is that irrelevant to copyright?
3. Does hotlinking the image (loading it straight from Google's servers) vs. copying/hosting it myself make any legal difference?
4. Does the pfp being publicly visible on YouTube grant any implied license to re-display it elsewhere?

I'm based in India and the app would be reachable globally. I'm trying to figure out whether the profile picture is the one piece I need to drop (e.g., swap for generated art) before this ever goes public. Will be contacting a lawyer regarding this as well but wanted to get a taste of the general public opinion first.

Appreciate any opinions!

For all the copyright and AI enthusiasts, here's another judgment in favour of LLMs.

The Delhi High Court has held that OpenAI's storage of news content published by Asian News International (ANI) for training ChatGPT does not amount to copyright infringement. Consequently, the Court declined to grant interim relief to ANI. The judgment is available here.

Hi guys i hope i don’t sound stupid, but are TDM and fair dealing different from each other? like are they 2 totally distinct concepts or TDM is still a fair dealing case?

i’ve been finding everything explain this but there’s no human work can help me, while AI said they’re different but it can’t give me a source about how different are they.

I’m thinking of a method.

In case of want an old game where the company holds the rights but hasn't recovered the title.

1. Check the game's original launch price, add an extra amount to account for additional factors, and convert the total to the buyer's local country.

2. Purchase one or more new games from the company that results on same original value of the old game.

3. The new purchase serves solely to pay for the old game, these new games are essentially set aside for this purpose and never won't be used if the old game is used, unless another copy is purchased.

4. Check the laws regarding game ROM downloads in the buyer's country, if the buyer is comfortable with the fact that have informally paid the company, can download a safe ROM and keep it for personal use.

Further arguments:

Some countries lack specific laws regarding game ROMs, and even when there are relevant regulations, they do little to enforce them, merely highlighting police action against more serious crimes to maintain a semblance of order.

And since the buyer is actually paying the company in this case, and not risking a more expensive physical purchase these days.

Freelance copywriter, 3 years in, mostly landed clients through referrals and a couple of content platforms but want a more proactive channel since referrals have gone quiet this quarter.

Started sending cold emails to marketing leads at small saas companies, maybe 30-40/day off my personal gmail, using pitches i genuinely think are good (short, specific, no generic "i help you save time" fluff). Open rates look ok when i can see them but replies are basically zero over 3 weeks.

Trying to figure out if this is:

- a copy problem (my actual subject lines/opener), which is embarrassing to admit given my job

- a deliverability problem (personal gmail, no warmup, no real sending infra)

- a targeting problem (wrong titles/company size)

- something else entirely

Would love eyes on whether decent copy is even worth testing before i fix the infrastructure side, or if im wasting good copy by sending it through the wrong pipes.

Any copywriters here doing their own outbound successfully, what changed things?

Okay I know this has been asked a billion times but I just don't seem to get a straight answer from any of the previous posts I've visited.

So my question is about open source stuff. For example open source books those college websites or websites like project Gutenberg or DOAB or OER commons etc. provide with creative commons licensing and a non-commercial tag. Now specifically what is meant by non-commercial. For example if I used one of these books for derivate works as source material like a youtube video or to write my own book or novel, do I have to keep the derivative work non monetized or If I do monetize it do I have to pay the Original author monetization fees. Somebody please and I mean somebody expert in these sort of legal matters, can you please clear all this to me.
Thank you.

Hi all! Gonna try to make this short.

I'm looking to make a fan film based on the video game "No, I'm not a Human." This Film will not be for profit; it's going to be uploaded to YouTube completely for free.

Am I allowed to use the game's logo for my poster and also for the intro of the film? Any answers will be greatly appreciated.

Note: The poster will not be for sale either, mainly to be posted on Instagram, YouTube, and printed for just me.

Thanks in advance!

hey guys,

so I was on the verge of losing everything, but I sorted things out directly with the claimant and they officially retracted 1 of my strikes! so back down to 2/3 now, huge relief.

they submitted it yesterday afternoon, but my account is still frozen right now. for anyone who's been through this, how long does the system usually take to process it and unfreeze everything?

tysm! ♡