united-states copyright youtube
What is the deal with software copyright?
<p>This is sort of a large range of questions but please explain. Also keep in mind that the only thing I will be doing is using software. I am wondering first about copyright in free software. If I make a public video with me using free software can that be flagged as copyright?</p>

<p>I am sure different software have different policy's but how about open source or more specifically , GNU public license v.3.0</p>

<p>The short answer is, <strong>it's complicated.</strong> Now for the long answer:</p>

<p>In principle, if portions of the software are being directly included in the video (e.g. the art assets of a video game), then this can give rise to liability as a derivative work. This is true regardless of the license, unless the software is in the public domain.</p>

<p>In practice, allowing fans to upload videos of video games (colloquially called a "Let's Play" because the title is often "Let's Play [name of game]") is a commonly-accepted norm in the video game industry, regardless of what the law has to say about it. This is the case for a variety of social and economic reasons which are out of scope here, but in short, video games are hard to objectively review, and Let's Plays are usually a poor substitute for them, so an LP is more likely to encourage sales than suppress them. You should not assume that every publisher will always respect this norm, but it is commonly accepted by most publishers. It is commonly, but incorrectly, believed that these videos are categorically fair use; this is not necessarily the case because fair use is an intensive, fact-bound inquiry. It might be true, but there isn't case law to that effect, so it would be imprudent to make such a categorical claim at this time.</p>

<p>(Videos which consist mostly or entirely of cutscenes, with no gameplay or commentary, are more of a gray area. Some publishers may not be happy if you post something like that, although in my experience, enforcement tends to be either lax or nonexistent.)</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>I am sure different software have different policy's but how about open source or more specifically , GNU public license v.3.0</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The subset of people who release their software under an open source license are (usually) not very interested in suing people for this kind of secondary use. As a courtesy, I would suggest linking to the public repository or website where you downloaded the software, identifying it by name in the video, and taking any other reasonable attribution steps which the authors have publicly requested. This is not a legal requirement, but most projects would likely appreciate it.</p>

<p>As described above, they <em>could</em> construe your video to be a derivative work of the software and ask that you license it under the GPL. But I've never heard of that actually happening, and people do upload Let's Plays of (for example) <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=battle+for+wesnoth+let%27s+play&amp;tbm=vid" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Battle for Wesnoth</a> all the time without getting into legal trouble. All content in Battle for Wesnoth is under <a href="https://wiki.wesnoth.org/Wesnoth:Copyrights#The_Battle_for_Wesnoth_-_Code_Contributions" rel="nofollow noreferrer">a copyleft license</a> (either GPLv2 or CC-BY-SA 4.0).</p>

<p>It is quite unlikely that a video of you using software infringes the copyright on the software. The exception would be software with lots of copyrighted training videos built in the app, and you take a video showing these training videos. And it would be likely infringing having a video of you playing a video game. Especially if only the video game in the picture, not you. </p>
