So a ton of Scratchers use music that is copyrighted or just recreate games that are copyrighted and nothing happens. What up with copyright does it not exist on Scratch? Would I just be able to create a copyrighted game and use it's copyrighted music in it and share it?

It does exist. I'm pretty sure projects with copyrighted music sometimes get taken down.
I remember remixing a project with copyrighted music, and it was only a few weeks before it got taken down.

Will you get punished if your project gets taken down because of copyright

Games_Frosch wrote:

Will you get punished if your project gets taken down because of copyright

If you keep sharing projects with copyrighted music then yeah. The first offence is a warning.

One can claim “fair use” on Scratch which is an attempt of a justification as to why they can use copyrighted material in their Scratch projects. The copyright holders do have the option to submit a DMCA takedown request, forcing the Scratch Team to remove the project. If this happens, the user who made the project will not get in trouble (aside from an unshared project and an alert) unless they keep trying to use the material in their projects.

Provided that the project creator gives credit to whoever made the copyrighted material (which they should be), the Scratch Team usually does not remove projects solely because they use copyrighted material (unless a DMCA takedown request is submitted). It is the Scratcher's responsibility to know whether or not they have the rights to use a certain asset.

I guess music piracy happens so much that nobody does anything about it, not even the feds.

One thing to note is that the only time a business has reached out to ST to delete a project was in 2010 for a pac-man project (source) so it's not very common.

portalpower wrote:

One thing to note is that the only time a business has reached out to ST to delete a project was in 2010 for a pac-man project (source) so it's not very common.

That's incorrect; it is not the only time that has happened. It's probably just the most well-known case of it happening.

From my time as a Scratch Team member, I can recall at least 3 other times when another company/business/creator submitted a DMCA takedown request, with the Scratch Team unsharing certain projects as a result.

necropost

glitcX wrote:

necropost

Please don’t.