Do I Need a License? (DINAL?) is a web-based tool that offers quick, free guidance to creative people who want to use someone else's potentially copyrighted work in their own. Based on an algrithm that weighs substantive law, court-decision data and user input, DINAL will return one of three states:
- Green Light - there are significant defenses to a copyright action
- Yellow Light - there is some defense, but there are factors against you
- Red Light - very little viable defense
DINAL will initially be based on a very small sample: under 40 SCOTUS and 9th Circuit cases. With time, we hope to develop the data, algorithm and design to make the product more sophisticated.