&gt;<i>I think you may be misunderstanding something. The owner of the copyright has exclusive rights to prepare derivative works (or authorise someone else to do so). There are certain exceptions. What&#x27;s unclear about this?</i><p>The fact that &quot;certain exceptions&quot; weren&#x27;t mentioned in the first comment. I quote: &quot;the copyright owner of the original work has the exclusive right to prepare derivative works, regardless of whether the derivative work is published, distributed or used in any other way.&quot;<p>There was no reference to &quot;certain exceptions&quot;, &quot;fair use&quot; and the possibility of &quot;minimal&quot; (and thus allowed) changes.<p>That, plus the use of &quot;used in any other way&quot; (a &quot;standard legal language&quot; as you say) as part of a casual language comment, left the impression to the reader that only the copyright owner or someone with permission from them can create derivative works, period.<p>So while this is cleared out now after the extra explanations, the initial comment was quite unclear.