Lawyers are expensive. Suing someone who uses it as a ringtone will probably be bad for public relations.
this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2026
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Cost benefit analysis.
How much will an entity spend on Lawyers, compared to what will you receive in damages.
Well, in Switzerland pirating for personal use is pretty much legal.
Same in slovenia, I've seeded terabytes of media and never received a copyright notice
Seeding/Uploading is actually not covered by this, but is still not being enforced. I still use a VPN for that, just in case.
Yet you still can't smoke a THC rich joint legally (yet, unless you're participating in the pilot), and women didn't have full voting rights until the 90s.
Not judging, just thought (as an outsider) this was an odd contrast when most of what I knew about Switzerland until recently was how permissive they were about piracy. Beautiful and interesting place, would love to visit again but it's so f'ing expensive.
Yet you still can’t smoke a THC rich joint legally
Sure, but depending on the canton, it it's pretty much tolerated. If see people smoking weed a few metres away from a police station every other day.
In the USA there is a fair use doctrine/clause to copyright laws which excludes noncommercial works. This also stems from the English common law's fair dealings doctrine.
17 U.S. Code § 107 - Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include—
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
(Pub. L. 94–553, title I, § 101, Oct. 19, 1976, 90 Stat. 2546; Pub. L. 101–650, title VI, § 607, Dec. 1, 1990, 104 Stat. 5132; Pub. L. 102–492, Oct. 24, 1992, 106 Stat. 3145.)
That said, Judges generally have the final say and have decided cases wildly differently from each other in either direction in the past on what is and is not copyright infringement.
The examples mentioned are definitely not fair use
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
Pretty sure these two lines cover most of the examples OP mentioned. Using a sound effect or VO line from a videogame for noncommercial means is both a tiny portion of the totality of the work, and will likely have no effect on the market or value for that work.
As @finitebanjo@feddit.online quoted, fair use only applies
for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research
Of the four criteria for fair use, the first one is pretty much that it should be one of those purposes. (https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/#%3A%7E%3Atext=Courts+look+at+how+the+party+claiming+fair+use+is+using+the+copyrighted+work%2C+and+are+more+likely+to+find+that+nonprofit+educational+and+noncommercial+uses+are+fair. details these criteria. The first criterion also includes favoring saying that really transformative and creative use is fair use hence sometimes sampling doesn't need permission.) IANAL but this is what we see in case law and case law doesn't seem to support a noncommercial personal use exemption, even if undistributed. (to answer OP's question, it's technically illegal but nobody gets sued for it because 1. nobody knows if you don't punish your crime 2. lawyers cost money so why bother such a PR scandal)
Here's a good Tom Scott video covering the allowed purposes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU
Ringtones and notifications are different because they are legal public performance of something still copyrighted: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/10/court-rules-phones-ringing-public-dont-infringe-co
FALSE, THIS USER ABOVE IS LYING.
ALL TYPES OF NONCOMMERCIAL USE CAN ALSO BE FAIR USE. (Until the judge says otherwise and it doesn't get overruled).
This does not mean, however, that all nonprofit education and noncommercial uses are fair and all commercial uses are not fair;
Edit:
Until the judge says otherwise
Well, yeah, according to the criteria I've detailed with sources above.
Courts look at how the party claiming fair use is using the copyrighted work, and are more likely to find that nonprofit educational and noncommercial uses are fair. This does not mean, however, that all nonprofit education and noncommercial uses are fair and all commercial uses are not fair; instead, courts will balance the purpose and character of the use against the other factors below.
On its own, a noncommercial use is fair use, unless other factors get in the way of that. I will ammend my previous comment to be less absolute.
Your phrasing sounds like fair use is the default case for non-commercial when really it just makes it "more likely" legal. The most obvious example is Hachette v. Internet Archive. US copyright is so pro-business that you never know until the gavel is down.
Well obviously printing copies for free is illegal, thats just how antipiracy laws work, but the courts clearly stated even in that link that if IA had made sure the print to copy ratio was 1:1 or that notable changes to make it considerably transformative then it would have been fair use.
Then your criteria isn't "noncommercial but "noncommercial and transformative" ("the first factor, the purpose and character of the use, disfavored fair use because although the use was noncommercial, it was also not transformative"), which OP's examples aren't. Using film music for your videos isn't transformative. Law doesn't have a "I didn't distribute my video" exception either unless that's how the music was licensed to you.
Fair Use at its core requires you are creating something and not making copies. Its an integral part of the conversation. Therefor it is heavily implied.
Thus it doesn't apply to OP's examples, that is my point.
(FWIW you can make a copy of a copyrighted image to extensively critique it as long as the copy is not unreasonably detailed.)
The critique itself is the new content, and the copyrighted image is an accessory to that.
Only if you do separate them and do not distribute the copyrighted image.
also by editing it, it's no longer the original work. there is a lot of Grey area around the concepts of sampling.
otherwise all speech recorded intentionally or unintentionally would violate such.
The post title includes "non-commercial".
Copyright infringement is committed by the provider, not the receiver. If you're just an end-user of the content, they can't really go after you unless you acquired it via a peer-to-peer network and also seeded it to others. (And they have, in fact, infamously gone after people for that.)
That was more common in the US than in other jurisdictions. In Canada, they capped out torrenting at $500 for all instances prior to the suit, which means the lawyers were losing money for the copyright holders. Also, it was determined that if you didn't store the files, i.e., streaming, it wasn't illegal at all. After that, I stopped hearing about non-commercial copyright infringement cases in Canada (and I can't legally justify torrenting).
In most countries distribution of the copyright content is the illegal part not acquisition.
So people running those ring tones orgs in the early 2000s would be the one that gets chased not some bloke who has it as their ringtone.
Money for lawyers
I think the lawyers only care if someone's making money from it. And even then, it depends on how much.
The law itself really only cares if someone is making money from it. The fair use doctrine covers a chunk of non-commercial use.
Probably because these days, it's often found via scripts/bots. Either it's found via content-ID (it scans a video, finds a match for audio) or you included some trademarked term in your title or description (and I wouldn't be surprised if this gets non-related stuff too, especially when they do it in bulk for places like Github, itch, gamejolt etc). In some cases it might be from popularity or news coverage.
The obvious connection is that how would they even know you're using it as your ringtone etc.? Unless maybe you are in the room with a Nintendo lawyer for some reason. And also this might seem frivolous if word ever got out if something like this were tried (not that I think it'd stop them).
Though I should say that non-commercial "infringement" is pursued. They don't actually care if you're making money or not, just as they don't care if it's parody/transformative or not (they can DMCA anybody, the only punishment they get is if you fight it in court... but they have more lawyers than you). Distance yourself from their IP at all costs, even if you think they're "cool", and again if you've made all your own assets at least keep it out of titles and descriptions.