Copyright ?

I'm no copyright lawyer, but my sense is that brief quotes would be covered under fair use as long as you cite the source (ie, the person who said it). What are you using it for?

Kristen

Many amateurs make the howling error of assuming that "old stuff" is beyond copyright control. Then they cite Aristophanes or Flaubert or someone... quoting from a recent translation, without so much as a passing acknowledgement.

When I borrowed a piece from Niccolo Machiavelli, I actually went back & made my own literal translation from the original text. My Italian's terrible (I'd had a little exposure to medieval Italian for a previous project), but it matched up well enough with three other translators.

As to the more general question. Mentioning a snippet in an academic work is a bit different from quoting in something that's intended to be sold for profit. The "fair use" provisions go very grey when it involves quoting others for commercial purposes. So, it's generally best to get explicit allowances, hence the "used by permission" notes you see on copyright pages. They usually don't cost anything, but you'll need to get a signed permission slip to prove that. Even if you don't do that work to protect yourself, you gain a measure of shielding from fully citing where you found it.

I have the same questions, but more specific. I'm new here, and didn't want to post them separately, because I figure they belong in the 'copyright' section.

I would like to quote two lines of lyrics from an old rock song. How can I get permission?

If I write an article for consideration by a newspaper, can I just site all the places I think I need permission to quote, and say these permissions are available, or do I have to get them first, before sending? Same for pics? Will the editor help out and tell me if I need any other permissions?

Thank you!

Quotes

As long as you're quoting a person's speech, you can generally quote anyone, at any time, in any venue, for any reason. "To be or not to be" is Shakespeare, of course, and is not at all recent.

But if the President says something, you're free to quote him. We wouldn't have many newspapers if you couldn't. If your mom says somethign, you're perfectly free to quote her.

Speech is only copyrightable at all if it's put in written form, and then it's the written speech that's protected, not brief quotes.

And information, of course, can't be copyrighted in any way.

The old rule is "Never say anything you don't want to see in print."

The reason you see quotations and quips everywhere is because they either are not protected at all because they were impromptu statements which cannot be copyrighted, or they fall under fair use.

Thank you, James. I suppose that means I can quote Web bloggers freely.

What about song lyrics, though? Surely they don't count as speech?

I'd be careful about "quoting Web bloggers freely", unless of course you mean with proper attribution and under fair use provisions. I'm sure someone who knows more about it will enlighten us shortly.

I always thought "quoting" implied attribution. Otherwise, it's plagiarizing, not quoting. You can quote whoever the heck you want--you just have to attribute the information to its source.

Kristen

Good point, Kristen. I guess I've been spending too much time on the wrong side of the internet, because I'm starting to read "quote" as "reproduce" without any other qualifications and that's not right on any level.

Hey, it happens. :]

I'm pretty sure you can't quote any song lyrics (not even a SMALL bit) without getting permission. Try contacting the music publisher or even the artist to ask.

MelRandall

Fair use allows the quoting of short phrases as part of a larger work that in some way analyses of is informed by the quoted work. Unless you are lifting a paragraph or not attribtuing in full I don't see any problem. Just look at any academic work to see examples.

Academic works & reviews cannot be directly be compared to works intended for commercial markets. Even many book-length studies often have a few pages of "used by permission" notes.

The similarity is that the quote is embedded in non-fiction addressing the broader concept the quote expresses or is an example of. That's what falls under fair use whether written by a prof or a buff.

Fair use is determined by courts; and lately, even academic presses are being punctillius about permissions. Keep track, very carefully and specifically, of where you obtained your source; photocopy the source page, with full bibliographic data.

Let the publisher tell you when the ms. has been submitted and accepted. You maybe told "no problem," they may see "get permission," or they may say "send us the source and we'll ask."

ssuussaann said:

Thank you, James. I suppose that means I can quote Web bloggers freely.

What about song lyrics, though? Surely they don't count as speech?

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You can never use song lyrics or lines from poems without permission. And "quoting," of course, means using a specific example from that person's speech, and with attribution.

You can quote web bloggers, but you can't use or reproduce their work. You can't just use the entire speech or article. You can only quote snippets in fair use manner.

A web blog does not count as ordinary speech. Under the law, anything written down, whatever the form of the writing, is instantly under copyright protection. Web blogs are written down.

As an example, a reporter can interview someone, and print everything that person says because what that reporter is quoting form is oral speech. There is no copyright protection on oral, extraneous speech. Should, however, that information be written on a piece of paper the interviewee hands to the reporter, the reporter will then need permisison to publish it.

You can't even quote all Web blogs; some have very specific copyright statements that prohibit quoting. I know it seems contradictory, but it takes all kinds.

The canard that one cannot quote any song lyrics without permission is one that I wish would go away. It's wrong, no matter how much the evil Harry Fox Agency and its allies try to make people believe it. Merely because something is a song lyric does not somehow exempt it from fair use.

Most of the time, permissions will be required because the publisher doesn't want to go through the headaches of asserting its fair use rights against Harry Fox et al., and especially not in the Sixth Circuit (which has the narrowest view of fair use of any appellate circuit… and just happens to include Nashville). It's not a legal requirement, but a pragmatic business decision. Anyone who claims otherwise can [disturbing and anatomically impossible descriptions of non-family-publication-friendly acts omitted].

Despite looking for such a case assiduously, I have not found any reported (or even unreported) case holding that quotation of two lines or less of a single song exceeded fair use, unless (in the three older cases in question, two of which are probably no longer good law) those two lines themselves quoted the song title or contained a proper name.

Hi Jaws!

Good info to know; thanks! Am curious about this...

Jaws said:

unless (in the three older cases in question, two of which are probably no longer good law) those two lines themselves quoted the song title or contained a proper name.

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You mean it was a problem that the lyrics included the song title? In other words, I could pretty safely quote, "But something touched me deep inside/The day the music died," but not "Bye, bye, Miss American Pie/Drove my Chevy..."?

Any significance to that ruling? I'm wondering how it makes sense.

If you have an hour or so to read a 5,000-word article with a couple of hundred footnotes, I'll be glad to explain why…

What? No takers?

The two cases involving the title embedded in the quotation for two-line-or-less quotations were decided under the 1909 Copyright Act by trial courts (and, therefore, are not binding on any other court), and appear to be limited to their facts. One is clearly no longer good law—it relied on a line of cases rejected by the Supreme Court in 1991—and the other is probably no longer good law. (Technically, the latter case may have been as much a matter of discovery abuse as of copyright, but it's extremely difficult to untangle the two on those facts.)

The point I'm actually making is that fair use is a mixed question of law and fact, not the concrete question of law that extremists on both sides of the issue claim. Much longer, more-extended quotations can be fair use; the Supreme Court explicitly held that, because of the balance of the statutory fair-use factors in that specific instance, 2Live Crew's raunchy parody of Roy Orbison's insipid "Oh, Pretty Woman" was fair use—even though the 2Live Crew version quotes around 40% of Orbison's song in the lyrics, and "quotes" a similar proportion in the "music." You can compare the two versions of the lyrics in the appendices to the Supreme Court's opinion in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U.S. 569, 594–95 (1994).

Ultimately, no mixed question of law and fact lends itself to a concrete statement of the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable. For that reason alone, the blanket statement that one always must obtain permission to quote song lyrics fails.

For that reason alone, the blanket statement that one always must obtain permission to quote song lyrics fails.

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Except publishers tend to say "No, You Can't," or "Our Counsel tells us You Can't," or "Get Permisssion," or "Get Permission and Any Fees are Your Responsibility."

They're not so much interesed in the legal accuaracy of their policy, as in, well, covering their assets, whether or not said assests are in need of covering.

Jaws said:

...Roy Orbison's insipid "Oh, Pretty Woman" was fair use—

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Roy Orbison insipid? Oh, my.

Hi Jaws,
I'm really getting confused now. I've been all over the web for months looking at the laws for using song lyrics in a book and all say selling a book with lyrics quoted does not fall under fair use, the operative word-selling. It's not for critique or educational purposes etc. I've also emailed authors who have said the cost for permissions is astronomical, and since I am self-publishing the book there is no way I could pay for the permissions. You are saying I can use a couple of lines of each song without repercussions? I live in the Nashville area, and music is one of the themes of the book. The best I can hope for is to use the song titles as chapters and hope the readers can read between the lines on what lyrics I would have used. This is holding up my whole print and sell thing, along with the invasion of privacy issues I've also been reading about, as it is a memoir. It was 33 years ago and I still don't think I waited long enough, but I just can't wait anymore. Please help clarify what you know! Thank you so much!!!

Penny, so much of this stuff is on a case-by-case basis that it's impossible to say that someone can definitely do XYZ without repurcussions. If the person who owns the rights isn't going to prosecute you no matter what you do, that's a far different case from someone who's going to jump on the most obvious of fair use cases no matter what. You need to consult an intellectual property rights lawyer in your area.