In the USA, no one is allowed to publish or use another written work without permission from its rights holder. The writer holds all rights until contracted with a publisher, who pays for rights to publish under specific terms. No one else may reproduce the work without asking for the right. An attorney can represent a particular set of rights.
(An exception to needing to ask for permission is fair use, which rarely involves money going to the writer. Fair use is like quoting a line for commentary or like copying then dissenting a news article in a classroom.
No. Fair use is not a grant of right;
it's a potential legal defense in court. Fair use is determine by a court. It's expensive. It's time consuming.
There is no quantitative unit (words, or lines, for instance) that automatically qualifies as fair use.
It's decided by a judge, and often, a judge and jury. Even if you win, your purse will lose.
If a work is still under copyright then
ask permission; it's quite likely that you will obtain it, and depending on your use and the circumstances, you might pay only a token fee.
- - - Updated - - -
In the UK was have an organisation called ALCS they collect money from people who use your work. For example, we write a lot of magazine articles and then once a year we get a payment from ALCS (a lot of money). The USA doesn't have the same system in which for example libraries/universities have to log and pay when they make copies of your work. However, they do appear to have a system in which if you publish in the USA and that work is the used in the UK (or other counties that reimburse) then you get payments. However, I can only see organisation that do this for music and art work and not the written word.
Does anyone know anything about this? Is there an organisation in the USA that covers the written word that I'm missing?
Thanks
Nope; we don't have that in the U.S. U. S. authors can, however, register for their ALCS payments for works loaned by U.K. libraries.
There are, usually used only for academic purposes, by faculty for educational use, copyright clearance compaies and services, but the author has to specifically register each work with such a service.