Hi! I have a question. What's with copyright? I see people using music that is copyrighted a lot or just programming a game which idea is copyrighted happens a lot too. Does copyright exist and can you get punished for using stuff that is copyrighted? Does the Scratch team take care of copyright? I have used copyrighted music before I think and I don't know if I could get punished for doing that. Can I create every game no matter what idea is and use every music no matter what music it is because I see a lot of people do it.

“Copyright” doesn’t exactly work on this website bc fair use for educational purposes. The do have to comply with dmca’s, though, but they don’t really get dmca’s- they’ve only gotten two in their history. Thus, you can do that within scratch, just give credit to those who made the content.

It would look bad on the composer's end if they copyright claimed a kid for using their music, besides they should be glad their music is being used.

scratchykit5743 wrote:

they’ve only gotten two in their history.

Just asking, how do you know this?

There are two described on the Scratch Wiki, but it never says that they were the only two, rather some of the most notable.

Ihatr wrote:

scratchykit5743 wrote:

they’ve only gotten two in their history.

Just asking, how do you know this?

There are two described on the Scratch Wiki, but it never says that they were the only two, rather some of the most notable.

They are most likely going off information from the Wiki.

9cjames1 wrote:

Ihatr wrote:

scratchykit5743 wrote:

they’ve only gotten two in their history.

Just asking, how do you know this?

There are two described on the Scratch Wiki, but it never says that they were the only two, rather some of the most notable.

They are most likely going off information from the Wiki.

I'm asking scratchykit, not you. I'd like an answer from the person I'm responding to, not somebody else who formulates a guess.

Ihatr wrote:

scratchykit5743 wrote:

they’ve only gotten two in their history.

Just asking, how do you know this?

There are two described on the Scratch Wiki, but it never says that they were the only two, rather some of the most notable.

The publicized ones, at least. Wiki data, yes.

Ihatr wrote:

9cjames1 wrote:

Ihatr wrote:

scratchykit5743 wrote:

they’ve only gotten two in their history.

Just asking, how do you know this?

There are two described on the Scratch Wiki, but it never says that they were the only two, rather some of the most notable.

They are most likely going off information from the Wiki.

I'm asking scratchykit, not you. I'd like an answer from the person I'm responding to, not somebody else who formulates a guess.

;-; k

TL;YSSPRIHTGTFP* of post below:

The default answer with anything to do with copyright is “Technically, it's not allowed. Practically, it is”. No company (bar a few exceptions) will demand a Scratcher take their project down, but they could theoretically do it if they wanted to.

*too long, you should still probably read it however to get the full picture

I'm going to approach this question from two points of view: the theoretical point of view (what should happen in theory, based on copyright law) and the real point of view (what tends to actually happen). Note that the following applies only to importing external copyrighted works into Scratch - if you're using an original creation already on Scratch, you are allowed to use that for any purpose (even if it's commercial and/or off of Scratch) as long as you comply with the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license, which essentially states that you can freely copy, distribute, remix, and transform licensed works as long as you credit the original creator, and give others the same rights that you had under the license.

Of course, copyright is complicated, so this answer is long. Please read it fully.

Theoretical:
Companies have the legal right to remove projects that infringe on their copyrights. The method that they use to do this is known as a “DMCA takedown request”, which is a system set up by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a 1999 update to copyright law in the US. This system allows companies to get infringing material removed without having to go through all the time, effort, and expense of filing a lawsuit. You can read more about it on Scratch's DMCA page.

Despite that, you may or may not be able to just use whatever copyrighted material that you want. US copyright law has a provision known as “fair use”, which says that in some cases, copyrighted material may be able to be used without the permission of the copyright holder. Fair use in the US is based on four factors:

1. The purpose of the use, whether it's commercial or nonprofit/educational. Most use of copyrighted work on Scratch can be construed to be educational in nature (of course, exceptions apply, such as projects meant solely to duplicate a copyrighted work, like “music sharing projects” - there's a reason the ST always takes those down).
   
2. The nature of the work, whether it is fictional or factual/informational. Works of fiction (movies except for documentaries if you even consider documentaries to even be a slightly accurate representation of reality, music, TV, video games) tend to receive higher protection under the law when compared to facts and information. Most use of copyrighted material on Scratch that I've seen has been of fictional works, so that would weigh against those uses being fair use.
   
3. The amount of the work being used. Of course, this will vary widely between individual projects, but generally, the less of the copyrighted work that is used, the more likely the use is to be fair use.
   
4. The effect of the use on the copyright holder's ability to exploit their work commercially. Although a skilled Scratcher could make a fairly faithful recreation of, say, Super Mario Bros., any such recreation will always be inherently inferior to the real thing due to the limitations of Scratch as a language, so most uses of copyrighted work on Scratch are probably not going to affect the original work commercially. Of course, exceptions apply, such as those music sharing projects I mentioned earlier - since those straight up duplicate the copyrighted work in its entirety, those could theoretically have an effect on the original and are not likely to be fair use.
   

Of course, there's just one little problem: Fair use is a defense. If your project is removed and you want it restored on fair use grounds, you must go to court and have a judge decide that the use was indeed fair use. Otherwise, that project is staying down.

What I didn't mention is that if you want to use copyrighted material anyway, it may theoretically possible to work out a licensing deal with the copyright holder, where you give them money in exchange for limited rights to use their copyrighted work in a certain way. However, due to the aforementioned Creative Commons license, which everything on Scratch is automatically licensed under, copyright holders would probably be reluctant to do that.

Real:
Do whatever you want 'cause a pirate is free because nobody seems to care about use of their copyrighted work (exceptions apply, keep reading) - DMCA'ing some kid's project probably doesn't look good, and besides, doing that probably costs far more time and money than it's worth, which is probably the primary reason why copyright holders (even ones as notoriously strict as Nintendo) don't care about what may amount to rampant copyright infringement on this site.

One notable exception is Bandai Namco (copyright holders of PAC-MAN), who has DMCA'd at least 2 PAC-MAN projects and gotten them unshared. So, as long as you're not ripping them off, you can pretty much get away with anything you want (as long as you're not ripping off entire AAA games or whole movies).

Should you make a project that gets DMCA'd, you will not be in any trouble with Scratch or the law, but you must never try to reshare the project, as that's a huge liability issue for Scratch, and a fast track to getting banned.

WARNING: I am not a copyright lawyer. The information provided herein is for informational purposes only, based on my interpretation of the law, and does not constitute legal advice or the creation of an attorney-client relationship. You should always consult a copyright lawyer for questions about copyright, especially if it has anything to do with money.

(Note that the following is my signature - it appears automatically below all of my posts. You can tell where a post ends and where a signature starts because there is a grey line separating them. You can put anything you want in a signature - including advertisements for your projects or forum topics. To get your own signature, follow the instructions here.)

Flowermanvista wrote:

I'm going to approach this question from two points of view: the theoretical point of view (what should happen in theory, based on copyright law) and the real point of view (what tends to actually happen). Note that the following applies only to importing external copyrighted works into Scratch - if you're using an original creation already on Scratch, you are allowed to use that for any purpose (even if it's commercial and/or off of Scratch) as long as you comply with the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license, which essentially states that you can freely copy, distribute, remix, and transform licensed works as long as you credit the original creator, and give others the same rights that you had under the license.

Of course, copyright is complicated, so this answer is long. Please read it fully.

Theoretical:
Companies have the legal right to remove projects that infringe on their copyrights. The method that they use to do this is known as a “DMCA takedown request”, which is a system set up by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a 1999 update to copyright law in the US. This system allows companies to get infringing material removed without having to go through all the time, effort, and expense of filing a lawsuit. You can read more about it on Scratch's DMCA page.

Despite that, you may or may not be able to just use whatever copyrighted material that you want. US copyright law has a provision known as “fair use”, which says that in some cases, copyrighted material may be able to be used without the permission of the copyright holder. Fair use in the US is based on four factors:

1. The purpose of the use, whether it's commercial or nonprofit/educational. Most use of copyrighted work on Scratch can be construed to be educational in nature (of course, exceptions apply, such as projects meant solely to duplicate a copyrighted work, like “music sharing projects” - there's a reason the ST always takes those down).
   
2. The nature of the work, whether it is fictional or factual/informational. Works of fiction (movies except for documentaries if you even consider documentaries to even be a slightly accurate representation of reality, music, TV, video games) tend to receive higher protection under the law when compared to facts and information. Most use of copyrighted material on Scratch that I've seen has been of fictional works, so that would weigh against those uses being fair use.
   
3. The amount of the work being used. Of course, this will vary widely between individual projects, but generally, the less of the copyrighted work that is used, the more likely the use is to be fair use.
   
4. The effect of the use on the copyright holder's ability to exploit their work commercially. Although a skilled Scratcher could make a fairly faithful recreation of, say, Super Mario Bros., any such recreation will always be inherently inferior to the real thing due to the limitations of Scratch as a language, so most uses of copyrighted work on Scratch are probably not going to affect the original work commercially. Of course, exceptions apply, such as those music sharing projects I mentioned earlier - since those straight up duplicate the copyrighted work in its entirety, those could theoretically have an effect on the original and are not likely to be fair use.
   

Of course, there's just one little problem: Fair use is a defense. If your project is removed and you want it restored on fair use grounds, you must go to court and have a judge decide that the use was indeed fair use. Otherwise, that project is staying down.

What I didn't mention is that if you want to use copyrighted material anyway, it may theoretically possible to work out a licensing deal with the copyright holder, where you give them money in exchange for limited rights to use their copyrighted work in a certain way. However, due to the aforementioned Creative Commons license, which everything on Scratch is automatically licensed under, copyright holders would probably be reluctant to do that.

Real:
Do whatever you want 'cause a pirate is free because nobody seems to care about use of their copyrighted work (exceptions apply, keep reading) - DMCA'ing some kid's project probably doesn't look good, and besides, doing that probably costs far more time and money than it's worth, which is probably the primary reason why copyright holders (even ones as notoriously strict as Nintendo) don't care about what may amount to rampant copyright infringement on this site.

One notable exception is Bandai Namco (copyright holders of PAC-MAN), who has DMCA'd at least 2 PAC-MAN projects and gotten them unshared. So, as long as you're not ripping them off, you can pretty much get away with anything you want (as long as you're not ripping off entire AAA games or whole movies).

Should you make a project that gets DMCA'd, you will not be in any trouble with Scratch or the law, but you must never try to reshare the project, as that's a huge liability issue for Scratch, and a fast track to getting banned.

WARNING: I am not a copyright lawyer. The information provided herein is for informational purposes only, based on my interpretation of the law, and does not constitute legal advice or the creation of an attorney-client relationship. You should always consult a copyright lawyer for questions about copyright, especially if it has anything to do with money.

(Note that the following is my signature - it appears automatically below all of my posts. You can tell where a post ends and where a signature starts because there is a grey line separating them. You can put anything you want in a signature - including advertisements for your projects or forum topics. To get your own signature, follow the instructions here.)

Thank you for letting me know! That explains a lot.

im tring to figure out if the copyright on a ip on this platform that i own will interfear with getting a stonger one and what can i do