Does using some software for research (intended for publication) count as &quot;public performance&quot;?
<p>A specific example is section 2.1.3 of the NVIDIA license agreement: <a href="https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/geforce-license/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/geforce-license/</a>, from which I quote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>No Sublicensing or Distribution. Customer may not sell, rent, sublicense, distribute or transfer the SOFTWARE; or use the SOFTWARE for public performance or broadcast; or provide commercial hosting services with the SOFTWARE.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So what does it mean for some software to be used for &quot;public performance&quot;?</p>
<p>Hypothetically, say I want to publish a research paper, and I use an NVIDIA GPU to obtain data/results (e.g. training neural networks), and put that data in my paper. Does this count as public performance and violate this agreement?</p>

<p>&quot;public performance&quot; is a term used in copyright law mostly for music, dance, drama, and audio-visual works, where it means to actually perform the work in front of an audience. For a  book it could mean to read the book aloud in front of an audience. It is not largely used for software.</p>
<p>I suppose that demonstrating or running the software in front of an audience would be a public performance.  Running the software and using its output in a publication would not be a &quot;public performance&quot; as I understand it. As long as the user has the right to access the software, which normally includes the right to run it,  the output may be used with no further or special permission.</p>

intellectual-property software licensing