Yeah, I know, its my 3rd time posting on froums today. But I was wondering, how do you know if something you put on a Scratch project is copyrighted?
Will you be banned for using copyrighted images, music, or other things without knowing?

No, you won't be banned. Loads of people use copyrighted stuff. I'm not a copyright lawyer, but I think Scratch is protected by a licence of some sort. However, if a copyright owner wants a project taken down, it'll have to come down. That rarely happens though.

II don't know any of this 100%, so hopefully somebody else gives a better answer.

Thank you!

Bluebatstar wrote:

II don't know any of this 100%, so hopefully somebody else gives a better answer.

I'm not a copyright lawyer either, but I believe myself to be a little more well versed in this sort of thing (apologies in advance for the wall of text):

Bluebatstar wrote:

No, you won't be banned. Loads of people use copyrighted stuff.

Of course, just because a lot of people do it doesn't necessarily make it legal or allowable - but US copyright law has a provision known as “fair use”, which allows for use of copyrighted material without the permission of the rightsholders (the people who have the legal rights to the copyrighted material), particularly if the used material is a small subset of the copyrighted work, if it is done for noncommercial educational purposes, and if the use does not affect the rightsholder's ability to exploit their work commercially. Most use of copyrighted material on Scratch falls under these categories, and thus most use of copyrighted works on Scratch constitutes fair use. And yes, it's true that you probably aren't going to be banned for using copyrighted material on Scratch (something I've done many times myself) - of course, this has its limits, but as long as you aren't ripping off whole movies or AAA games you'll probably be fine.

There's just one little problem, however - fair use is a defense. Essentially, this means that if a company got your project taken down, you would have to go to court to get it to go back up on fair use grounds, and have a judge decide that your use of the material was fair use. Currently, I know of no copyright suits involving Scratch projects (although it would probably only take one to set a precedent, good or bad).

Bluebatstar wrote:

I'm not a copyright lawyer, but I think Scratch is protected by a licence of some sort.

The “license” you speak of is the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.0 license (CC BY-SA 2.0 for short). It is a copyright license that, if you apply it to your work, allows people to freely copy and distribute your work, and make derivative works, provided that they do the following: they must attribute (give credit to) the original creator, they must state if it was modified, and they must give everyone else the same rights to copy, distribute, and modify their work as the original creator gave them.

Where it gets more interesting is this: Any project or text that you post on Scratch is automatically licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0, under the Scratch Terms of Use. This allows anyone to freely create and remix projects on Scratch. You can remix anyone's project, no matter what they say - in fact, saying things like “you're not allowed to remix this” or “if you remix this I'll report you” is actually a reportable/bannable offense, and you are encouraged to report people who say such things.

Bluebatstar wrote:

However, if a copyright owner wants a project taken down, it'll have to come down.

Yes, this is indeed true - under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA for short (which is a set of extensions to US copyright law that was passed into law around 1998, hence the name), Scratch must respond to any complaints from rightsholders that a project or projects on Scratch is infringing their copyrights.

If you go to any Scratch page, scroll down, and click the “DMCA” link at the bottom of the page, you'll learn more about the process: a rightsholder files what's known as a DMCA takedown request, requesting Scratch to take down infringing material on the platform. When a request is filed, Scratch will review its validity, and if it is valid, Scratch will unshare the offending project or projects. This will not result in any penalty towards the person who shared the projects, unless they try to re-share them without removing the infringing materal (which, as you could imagine, is a huge liability issue!).

The perk of complying with this is that Scratch gets to take advantage of something known as the DMCA safe harbor provision, a section in the DMCA that states that sites that host user-generated content, like Scratch, are not legally responsible for copyright infringement committed by their users, as long as the infringing material is removed when rightsholders complain about it.

Hopefully, this answers all of your copyright questions about Scratch. Now go and be creative - program something, draw something, write something, whatever your preferred creative method is, Scratch on.

edit: Minor revisions on the fair use bit, and also, effect/affect? Who designed this? Who thought this was a good idea? I hate this language!

Flowermanvista wrote:

There's just one little problem, however - fair use is a defense. Essentially, this means that if a company got your project taken down, you would have to go to court to get it to go back up on fair use grounds, and have a judge decide that your use of the material was fair use. Currently, I know of no copyright suits involving Scratch projects (although it would probably only take one to set a precedent, good or bad).

I know this doesn't really add to the discussion, but I think that this has happened before. I'm not 100% if this is the same situation as you said didn't happen, but like I said, my knowledge on this kind of thing is very low.

Thank you for clarifying what I wrote, I know my post wasn't incredible.

Bluebatstar wrote:

Flowermanvista wrote:

There's just one little problem, however - fair use is a defense. Essentially, this means that if a company got your project taken down, you would have to go to court to get it to go back up on fair use grounds, and have a judge decide that your use of the material was fair use. Currently, I know of no copyright suits involving Scratch projects (although it would probably only take one to set a precedent, good or bad).

I know this doesn't really add to the discussion, but I think that this has happened before. I'm not 100% if this is the same situation as you said didn't happen, but like I said, my knowledge on this kind of thing is very low.

I think that was just a DMCA takedown, not an actual court case.

neh. CC-BY-SA-3.0 pretty much makes copyright useless, you just have to credit.

(VILE FRICKING DARNIT! 60-second rule….)

scratchykit5743 wrote:

neh. CC-BY-SA-3.0 pretty much makes copyright useless, you just have to credit.

(VILE FRICKING DARNIT! 60-second rule….)

That license is a one-way relationship, others can take what you made and share and adapt them, but that doesn't mean you can take copyrighted material and get away with it.

fdreerf wrote:

scratchykit5743 wrote:

neh. CC-BY-SA-3.0 pretty much makes copyright useless, you just have to credit.

(VILE FRICKING DARNIT! 60-second rule….)

That license is a one-way relationship, others can take what you made and share and adapt them, but that doesn't mean you can take copyrighted material and get away with it.

that's not what i said. i said you do have to give credit.

scratchykit5743 wrote:

fdreerf wrote:

scratchykit5743 wrote:

neh. CC-BY-SA-3.0 pretty much makes copyright useless, you just have to credit.

(VILE FRICKING DARNIT! 60-second rule….)

That license is a one-way relationship, others can take what you made and share and adapt them, but that doesn't mean you can take copyrighted material and get away with it.

that's not what i said. i said you do have to give credit.

CC-BY-SA-3.0 pretty much makes copyright useless

Well, what exactly did you say?

Bluebatstar wrote:

I think Scratch is protected by a licence of some sort.

Yep: Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (CC BY-SA) as well as Fair Use

the chances are like winning the lottery but never zero

No, unless you reshare the copyrighted material after it has been taken down.

SquirreIstar wrote:

Bluebatstar wrote:

I think Scratch is protected by a licence of some sort.

Yep: Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (CC BY-SA) as well as Fair Use

sorry for necroposting but although Scratch has it's own Creative Commons license, could I make my own CC license for a specific Scratch project?

Frankiethecat678 wrote:

Yeah, I know, its my 3rd time posting on froums today. But I was wondering, how do you know if something you put on a Scratch project is copyrighted?
Will you be banned for using copyrighted images, music, or other things without knowing?

this topic already exists!
https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/736202/

chippysmall4 wrote:

this topic already exists!
https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/736202/

I thought that this topic we are on was older than yours

gdfsgdfsgdfg wrote:

chippysmall4 wrote:

this topic already exists!
https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/736202/

I thought that this topic we are on was older than yours

But A Former ST Member Posted On It
And Therefore Is More Accurate.

uh oh
3 necroposts
Reporting to be closed