copyright laws and quoting excerpts from books and songs

Psychubus

Psychubus

Ex-Bluelighter
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Feb 14, 2006
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What is the law on quoting other people in a novel? The people I'm quoting are Plato, TV on the Radio, At-The-Drive-In, Tears for Fears. am i allowed to use excerpts, or do i have to pay royalties? who the hell do i contact if i wanna use a plato quote? lol...

also what about other books as well, such as translations of the i ching (but it is available publicly on the internet at eclecticenergies.com). what about quoting websites?

PS I live in the usa
 
I'm an English major and can give you a bit of advice from what I've been told.

Even if you quote an author that is dead, the publishing company holds rights to the book that you are using. Contact the publishing company and ask about quoting the selections that you wish to use. Some may not have you pay royalties, I am not really sure on that. You need to cover yourself when you cite ANYTHING. Quoting websites is the same... you need to contact either the webmaster or the person who posted such a message on the website.

If you are publishing a book, you really do need to look into getting a lawyer. It will cover your ass and there are instances that can say "So and so could not be reached at publishing time" and therefore shows you tried to contact the person you wanted, but couldnt get them for one reason or another. A lawyer can make sure you do everything in your power legally to cover yourself, because it is not a nice thing when an author comes after you for plagiarism, which is essentially what you would be doing if you did not use the means to contact the people that you were quoting.

To be on the safe side... get a lawyer. That's my best advice for ya.
 
hmm well aside from this quoting, are there any other laws i could possibly be breaking? i can only think of using certain people in some of my pictures, but from what i understand, if "girls gone wild" is legal, then as long as the photos are actually MY material i can use them, right?
 
You can quote Plato all you want. Copyright has an expiration date, and his has long passed. <--- CORRECTION, SEE THE NEXT TWO POSTS, BELOW.

As far as the more current material, this would be a good place to start on copyright, generally. It will take you some time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright

For the photos, you might need to get a model release from each person whose photos you want to put in the book. Here is a page I found on Google put up by a professional photographer about model releases:
http://www.danheller.com/model-release.html
 
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Johnny1 said:
You can quote Plato all you want. Copyright has an expiration date, and his has long passed.

As far as the more current material, this would be a good place to start on copyright, generally. It will take you some time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright

For the photos, you might need to get a model release from each person whose photos you want to put in the book. Here is a page I found on Google put up by a professional photographer about model releases:
http://www.danheller.com/model-release.html
Click to expand...
I dont know any specifics about Plato's works, but I assume you will be quoting Plato in English right? So that would be a translation, which itself may be copyrighted. So the copyright on the translation of Plato's works may still be valid despite Plato's original works never having been copyrighted.
 
IANAL but I am a legal librarian and we get trained in copyright stuff and I worked for a while doing copyright clearances so I have some knowledge.

Duration of copyright
The lyrics to the bands you mentioned would definitely be in copyright.

The I Ching and Plato would be out of copyright, but the translations might still be in copyright, so you might have an issue here (Johnny?).

It makes no difference whether something is online or not, it is still in copyright.

Now, actually using stuff:

There's a doctrine called fair use that says you can use limited amounts of other people's work for commentary, criticism, scholarship, etc. There are no hard and fast rules about how much you can use. In theory, there's a good case that you should be able to quote a line or two from song lyrics without problems. HOWEVER, practice is quite different. If you look at books that actually do quote song lyrics, in many, many cases they will acknowledge the copyright holders and say 'this quote used by permission'. So the practice is that publishers are seeking permission.

I second the suggestion that you get a lawyer (or talk to your publisher's lawyers) and clear it with the publishers of the song lyrics.

For quotes on websites, you're probably good if you keep it short and acknowledge the source - e.g. "on the website bluelight.ru, Sim0n gave some stupid advice about taking the drug ecstasy 'as long as you take it once a month or so, you're alright'. This advice is dumb, you should never take drugs". You might want to contact the website owner though.
 
9mmCensor and Sim0n, thanks for the pickup. The copyright on the translation completely slipped my mind. Mea culpa.
 
As for pictures you would need a release from anyone in the picture... I was a movie extra in a scene and had to sign a release form... so I would assume the same would be for pictures that are being printed.

So if anyone watches the movie 11:59... I was in the club scene, lol
 
There's an exception to the copyright requirement, called "Fair Use":

http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

There are several criteria listed there; the more of those you can meet, the stronger your claim to fair use.

Practically speaking (meaning "in the real world"), it's all about money. If you're making lots of money off other peoples' stuff, they're going to come after you. If not, the worst case scenario is they send you a letter and tell you to stop publishing it. That's when you have to worry about whether to fight it or not. And most people aren't going to sue you unless: 1)they can get some money out of it, or 2) they can stop losing money by suing you.
 
so, if i use pictures of me at a rave with some other people, i would have to make them sign a release? what if some are people i have no way of contacting or ever seeing again?

is it legal then, if i blur their eyes out?

what about videos like "girls gone wild"? then how is that legal?
 
what if a line from a song is written into a short story published in a magazine? is the copyright legality the same?
 
Does anybody know what the legality around publishing a short story in a magazine with lyrics from songs in it would be?

Say the story reads something like this:
"Jim Bob rides his bicycle down the street and sings quietly to himself "And she's climbing the stairway to heaven!"

No mention of the song, no mention of it being a zeppelin song etc. Just like I said. Is that plagerism?
 
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