Copyright only only provides protection from direct plagerism (taking credit for another artists work). Interpret the laws all you want the bare facts are simple, modifications are not protected under copyright permission is not needed, all one simply has to do is properly cite their sources before publishing anyone who has taken a college course knows this. Otherwise they would have jailed the entire pop art movement decades ago for stealing others art works and modifying them for their own gain. Or every student who wrote an essay based on somebody elses work would have to pay royalties for everything they quoted or paraphrased in their own publications and submissions for the academic gain.
If you write a book and Tommy in 8th grade English class writes a scathing essay about how crappy it is quoting or paraphrasing excerpts are you gonna demand payment because he stands to gain for his work?
Licensing a product is a separate issue to a patent, patents create a monopoly for a device and its physical design but do not protect the product from alternative uses as the consumer sees fit nor does it prevent another inventor from modifying a device enough to file a separate patent based on the original device.
Licensing is a private contract in this instance and not a law this is what is used by the creator to prevent a potential misuse that could lead to a loss of profit on the creators behalf all the licensing in the world will not protect the inventor from the consumers use and as far as credit scores go 300-500 dollars is a small threat to a credit score compared to filing a bankruptcy or defaulting on a house or car loan. Which are things that range in the tens to hundreds of thousands. All licensing is capable of at best is breaking the agreement to service the device by its creator.
But its a contract right it is the total authority? Yes and no contracts are binding, but only as far as the law allows--for example I can own slaves if I have a contract stating that a person or persons are my property for life(Hey I can buy me a basketball team!) or I can pen an agreement with a suicidal party to direct a snuff flick but there are laws that disagree with the issues for which the contracts are based.
Contracts can be invalidated where they conflict with other contracts and laws from local to federal levels. And even if a contract has a law backing it if another law exists that contradicts that law the legal problems will come up that may void the contract. There may even be no law related to a contract stipulation at all in those cases one could be sued and lose but that's a 50/50 chance.
You are 100% wrong. There is no "interpretation" necessary. "taking credit" is not required.
17 USC 106: (relevant portions)
Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
That is what the copyright-holder has the exclusive rights to. When you copy, modify, or distribute a copy, you are infringing the copyright-holders rights and you are committing copyright infringement. There is nothing in the statutes about "taking credit" for something or not correctly attributing something.
The examples you gave are "fair use." (which I mentioned in my last post) Fair use is a defense to copyright infringement (but not to the DMCA) created by the courts, and is not in the statutes. Fair use only applies under certain conditions; the amount of copying is small, the modification is transformative, you aren't competing in the marketplace with the copyright holder, etc. Jailbreaking may or may not be fair use; no court has yet opined on it as far as I know. However, that doesn't get you around the DMCA.
You are also wrong re: patents. As a patent-holder, I have a monopoly on the design AND THE USE of the product.
35 USC 271: (relevant portion)
(a) Except as otherwise provided in this title, whoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention, within the United States or imports into the United States any patented invention during the term of the patent therefor, infringes the patent.
Thus if you USE my patented invention without my permission (i.e. "authority" in the statute), you are committing patent infringement. And if the patent-holder says "you can use my patented invention as long as you stand on one leg" and you use it without standing on one leg, then you don't have the patent-holder's permission. If you have a license (authority) to use the invention, and you break the license agreement, it's possible you have no authority (depending on the license and other factors) and thus are committing patent infringement. The same applies to copyright - if I am licensed the right to create copies of an OS (e..g: to download it onto my harddrive and install it onto my iphone) that does not mean i have a license to modify it. And by breaking the license, I may not have any license at all.
Quit making up the law. You haven't the slightest idea what you are talking about.