Update

copyright.md

@@ -52,6 +52,7 @@ Next, STOP ASSUMING WEIRD COMMON SENSE THEORIES, that's not how law works, law i
 - "The author died so no one has copyright on it now." NO, copyright typically lasts at least 70 years after the author's death
 - "[AI](ai.md) (or insert any new technology) was involved in this so we have no idea about how copyright works here." NO, AI IS LITERALLY A COMPUTER TOOL, WE HAVE 100% IDEA ABOUT HOW COPYRIGHT WORKS HERE
 - "I used some convoluted process (such as letting 1000 monkeys type random things for 1000 years) to produce a derivative work of a copyrighted work so I bypassed the rules and it's not a derivative work haha." NO, IT IS DERIVATIVE WORK, DERIVATIVE WORK IS ONLY BASED ON SIMILARITY, NOT THE PROCESS OF CREATION (see below)
+- "I found this 50 year old piece of decorative furniture in a yard sale, surely it cannot be covered by copyright, I can happily use it as a 3D model in my game." PROBABLY NOT, 50 YEARS IS TOO NEW
 - "I bought this texture (font, soundfont, image, sound effect, ...) so I can use it in my libre art." NO, you probably bought a license to use the texture in a certain way but it most likely doesn't allow literally making the texture free, i.e. literally making it free as in freedom for everyone on the planet (which is required for every part of a libre work), that would completely break the whole business of the seller on the spot
 - ...
 
@@ -59,7 +60,7 @@ Now suppose we have an intellectual work *W*, such as a picture, video game, an
 
 Now let's examine the intellectual work's status in terms of copyright. Again, we will now make a simplification (that often holds in practice, but not always) and suppose the work is NOT further burdened by other intellectual property such as patents or trademarks, so we're assuming that the only form over the work *W* that can now be present is copyright. We'll ask who holds the copyright, if the work is free etc.
 
-**Who has the copyright over work W (i.e. who "owns" it)?** If the work is copyrightable (see below), then that who created it (even multiple people or a company etc.) automatically has the copyright (without registering it or declaring it or anything, also note that sometimes the creator sells the copyright to someone else, e.g. a recording studio, and so transfers the copyright to someone else), UNLESS the work is a **derivative work** of some already existing copyrighted work, in which case the creator of the original work has the copyright on the "copied" parts while the creator of the new work has copyright over the independent, newly added parts only. Derivative work PRACTICALLY means that the work was "not created from scratch", i.e. that it is rather a modification of something else and so that who created it can't own it as a whole, it contains something "owned" by someone else -- for example a fan fiction of [Harry Potter](harry_potter.md) is a derivative work because it's heavily based on an existing copyrighted work of Harry Potter, so the owner of Harry Potter now also own parts of all Harry Potter fan fictions, ok? However anything "completely new and original" (such as a completely new invented character) that was added to the original work can SEPARATELY be considered an original work owned by the creator of the derivative work (the fanfiction). Makes sense, right? There is a (sometimes quite subjectively drawn) fine line between a derivative work and a work merely lightly inspired by something that already exists, the latter of which is NOT considered a derivative work: no one can really tell you where the line is exactly, but a basic helper is asking for example "Am I only borrowing trivial, non-copyrightable parts of an existing work?" -- for example borrowing a name of a fantasy race from an existing work may be fine because words are non-copyrightable (but again, if you borrow too many of them it may be a violation because a collection or a whole terminology may already be considered a non-trivial work). Also ask this: if my work were to be judged a derivative work of another work, what consequences would it have? For example if a court judged that you borrowing names of fantasy races from Harry Potter was more than just mere inspiration, then they would also have to admit that the author of Harry Potter was also violating other older works (such as Lord of the Rings) in exactly the same way and so can't have copyright on them, so me doing so is most likely OK, the author can't (well, shouldn't be) able to sue me for doing *X* if his work alone (and furthermore basically 99% of all other existing works) is based on the assumption that *X* is legal.
+**Who has the copyright over work W (i.e. who "owns" it)?** If the work is copyrightable (see below), then that who created it (even multiple people or a company etc.) automatically has the copyright (without registering it or declaring it or anything, also note that sometimes the creator sells the copyright to someone else, e.g. a recording studio, and so transfers the copyright to someone else), UNLESS the work is a **derivative work** of some already existing copyrighted work, in which case the creator of the original work has the copyright on the "copied" parts while the creator of the new work has copyright over the independent, newly added parts only. Derivative work PRACTICALLY means that the work was "not created from scratch", i.e. that it is rather a modification of something else and so that who created it can't own it as a whole, it contains something "owned" by someone else -- for example a fan fiction of [Harry Potter](harry_potter.md) is a derivative work because it's heavily based on an existing copyrighted work of Harry Potter, so the owner of Harry Potter now also own parts of all Harry Potter fan fictions, ok? However anything "completely new and original" (such as a completely new invented character) that was added to the original work can SEPARATELY be considered an original work owned by the creator of the derivative work (the fanfiction). Makes sense, right? There is a (sometimes quite subjectively drawn) fine line between a derivative work and a work merely lightly inspired by something that already exists, the latter of which is NOT considered a derivative work: no one can really tell you where the line is exactly, but a basic helper is asking for example "Am I only borrowing trivial, non-copyrightable parts of an existing work?" -- for example borrowing a name of a fantasy race from an existing work may be fine because words are non-copyrightable (but again, if you borrow too many of them it may be a violation because a collection or a whole terminology may already be considered a non-trivial work). Also ask this: if my work were to be judged a derivative work of another work, what consequences would it have? For example if a court judged that you borrowing names of fantasy races from Harry Potter was more than just mere inspiration, then they would also have to admit that the author of Harry Potter was also violating other older works (such as Lord of the Rings) in exactly the same way and so can't have copyright on them, so me doing so is most likely OK, the author can't (well, shouldn't able to) sue me for doing *X* if his work alone (and furthermore basically 99% of all other existing works) is based on the assumption that *X* is legal.
 
 Important note: **the status of derivative work is only based on similarity**. Derivative work is defined simply as a work that is "too similar" to an already existing work, it doesn't matter at all if you LITERALLY made your work based on something or if you accidentally made something too similar to something that already exists because proving HOW the work was made is impossible, it is assumed that if you make something too similar to something else (which is older), it couldn't have happened by chance (even if there is a non-zero probability of it being possible and even if you could prove you made it independently), there would be a mess of two conflicting copyrights and shit, it will just be declared you copied the work even if you didn't and everyone knows it, it's just the rules. So don't try any tricks here. Imagine the world of intellectual works literally as a land: if someone creates something, he basically farms a piece of unoccupied land and by that starts owning it, and along with it also some NEARBY AREA he didn't farm yet (the land of derivative works) -- no one can simply use that nearby area without his permission, no matter by what way he gets there (intentionally or accidentally, in good faith or not), the original farmer simply owns the land by the virtue of having farmed a nearby land first. Again it's a mega retarded rule but it's the rule that exist because without it copyright couldn't work (anyone would be able to bypass copyright by just changing a single pixel in a picture for example).