copyright software
Are products made from illegal software also illegal?
<p>Say a piece of software was aquired, and used, completely illegally, like a license key was hacked online or something, and many other products (say, for example, videos) were made with this illegal product. Are all of those products now also illegal? </p>

<p>For example, if they are videos, would they legally have to be removed from YouTube, since they were made in an illegal way? Why or why not?</p>

<p>Presumably by &quot;is illegal&quot; you mean &quot;violates copyright law&quot;. Copyright infringement is simply &quot;copying / distributing without authorization&quot;, which refers to the original work and not some other work. The act of originally writing a book is not &quot;copying&quot; (likewise &quot;taking a picture&quot;, etc), so the act of writing a book using pirated software is also not copying and not infringement. Nevertheless, the scope of remedies for the original infringement is not limited to just the cost of the infringed work. Under <a href="https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html" rel="noreferrer">17 USC 504(b)</a>,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The copyright owner is entitled to recover the actual damages suffered
by him or her as a result of the infringement, and <strong>any profits of the
infringer that are attributable to the infringement and are not taken
into account in computing the actual damages</strong>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is sufficiently open-ended that profits from the sale of an original work created using infringed software could be attributable to the infringement.</p>
