Copyright: Part 3 - Fair Use

Recently, a college professor friend called to ask my advice. One of her students created a PowerPoint presentation for a class project. She wrote the text and used artwork she copied from a Web site to illustrate her presentation. My friend asked if I thought that use of the artwork fell within “fair use” since the student was using the art for a class project and not selling it or even making it publicly available. Absolutely not!

One of biggest misconceptions about copyright may be the idea that copyrighted works can be used if the user doesn’t recognize monetary gain from the use. Copyright gives the author complete control of how the work is used, whether or not the user realizes any value from the use. A blogger who copies a post from another blog and gives the author credit is still infringing copyright because the author no longer has complete control of the work. A student who copies artwork to use as illustrations in a class project is still infringing even if no one but the student and the professor see the project.

The Copyright Office offers a fact sheet on fair use. Criticism, news reporting, research, and teaching are among acceptable uses. However, whether a specific use of copyrighted material is fair use or infringement depends on several factors, including 1) the purpose of the use, 2) the nature of the copyrighted work, 3) the amount of material used in relation to the total work, and 4) the effect of the use on the potential market or value of the work.

There is no standard for fair use. Some institutions and organizations have internal policies, such as ten percent of a copyrighted work can be used for academic purposes. However, those criteria are arbitrary and may not hold up in court. Ten percent of one work may have little effect on the value of the total work, but ten percent of another may have a significant adverse effect on the market.

The best policy is to ask permission of the copyright holder if there is any doubt that the use is fair use. The author has the complete control over the work and can choose how much or how little to allow to be quoted. Authors can transfer copyright or grant exclusive or non-exclusive rights for any amount of time, for a fee or for free. The author might grant the exclusive right to one publication to publish the work first, then grant to other publications non-exclusive rights to publish the same piece after the first rights period ends.

Most bloggers believe it is fair use to post a brief excerpt with a link to the full article on the author’s blog or Web site fair use. However, the law does not state this. The law states that the four factors listed above be considered to determine whether the use is fair use under the copyright law.

Let’s compare two hpothetical cases of use by those criteria.

Hypothetical Case #1: A blogger posts a brief excerpt of the piece with a link to the complete post:

1. The purpose of the use is likely educational rather than commercial, even though the quote might improve traffic and income. 
2. The copyrighted work (a blog post) is intended to be read online by the public, and a link from another blog would likely increase the number of people who read the article. If the author earns income from advertising or product sales, the opportunity for that income is still there.
3. The excerpt is a small portion of the total work.
4. The use isn’t likely to damage the potential market for the work. In fact, linking to the post could possibly make the work more profitable if the author earns income from advertising.

Hypothetical Case #2: A blogger publishes the complete post, giving the author credit and linking to the author’s blog:

1. The line blurs between educational and commercial use. The material does educate readers, but the blogger posting another writer’s work is likely receiving commercial benefit from advertising.
2. The copyrighted work (a blog post) is intended to be read online by the public, and publishing the material for another audience would likely increase the number of people who read the article. However, if the author earns income from advertising or product sales, the opportunity for that income is lost.
3. The post is the entire work.
4. The use will reduce the value of the work because the author loses the opportunity to earn income from readers.

This is my personal analysis of the two cases. Since the law is unclear, fair use or infringement can be determined only in court. Asking permission prevents any future problems.

Writers will often freely give permission to quote part of an article and link to the complete work, and they may give permission to publish the entire article on another site or in another publication. However, the right to grant or not grant permission belongs to the author and no one else.

What do you think constitutes fair use of a blog post or article? What about books and other long works? Share your thoughts in comments, and be sure to read other comments to carry on the conversation.

Copyright: Part 2 - US Copyright Law

Copyright law varies around the world. Since I live in the US and am not familiar with copyright laws in other countries, this post will cover the basics of US copyright law. I’m a writer, not a lawyer, so don’t rely on anything I say if you have a legal issue over copyright.

My goal is just to give a brief overview of how copyright works for materials written and published in the US today. Work written before January 1, 1978 come under an earlier version of the copyright law, which is quite different.

For more information, visit the US Copyright Office online.

1. literary works
2. musical works, including any accompanying words
3. dramatic works, including any accompanying music
4. pantomimes and choreographic works
5. pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works
6. motion pictures and other audiovisual works
7. sound recordings
8. architectural works 

You cannot copyright titles, slogans, logos, standard information such as calendars or height and weight charts, ideas, methods, or discoveries. You can copyright descriptions or explanations of methods and other items that cannot themselves be copyrighted. Some items that cannot be copyrighted (such as logos) can be trademarked.

According to the Copyright Office, “Copyright is secured automatically when the work is created, and a work is ‘created’ when it is fixed in a copy or phonorecord for the first time.” If you write a poem on a napkin, you have created the work, and it is automatically covered by copyright. You do not have to put the copyright symbol on it. You do not have register it. You do not have to write “copyright” on it.

Of course, if anyone challenges your copyright, you must be able to prove that you created the work. That’s why many writers mail a copy of their manuscript to themselves sealed and date-stamped by the Post Office. The writers keep the unopened package to use as evidence in case their copyright is ever challenged.

Registering a publication with the Copyright Office makes it easier to defend copyright since the registration itself is a public record of the copyright claim and is evidence in your favor if you are ever involved in an infringement lawsuit. Registration is voluntary unless you sue for infringement. You  must register before suing, and the amount of damages you can receive in a court case is greater if you register copyright within three months of publication. Copyright registration makes sense for books and other works that have a large income potential. It isn’t feasible for blog posts and short articles because of the time and expense involved.

“Mandatory deposit” is a stipulation of the copyright law that two copies of all “publications” be deposited with the Copyright Office for the Library of Congress, whether or not the copyright is registered. There are a number of exemptions, but essentially “publications” are works offered for sale to the general public. If you publish an e-book for sale, you are required to provide two copies for the Library of Congress. If you publish an e-book to give away on your Web site, you are not subject to mandatory deposit.

Copyright gives the authors of “original works of authorship” the right to control how their work is used. The author is the person who created the work unless it was work for hire. If the work was written for hire, the employer is considered to be the author and copyright owner.

Copyright extends for the life of the author plus 70 years. Work-for-hire copyright lasts 95 years from creation or 120 years from publication, whichever is shorter.

Next, we’ll talk about what constitutes “fair use” of copyrighted material.

Remembering My Parents

Five years ago today, my mother departed this earth to join my father in Heaven, where he had resided for more than eight years. Today, I still thank God regularly for the blessing of being born to these two remarkable people.

By the standards of the world, they never accomplished much. Neither had more than a high school education until Mama trained to become a Licensed Vocational Nurse after the youngest children were in high school and the others had left home. Daddy ran a small farm, but for many years he had to supplement his income by working as a rural letter carrier, a.k.a. mailman. I never realized we were poor until I learned I was eligible for financial assistance for college because we were below the poverty level.

Yet Mama and Daddy were two of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and, more importantly, the kindest, most generous, and most loving. Their world revolved around their six kids. They had high standards for behavior and school performance, and Daddy wouldn’t hesitate to enforce his standards with a spanking. However, I - and I believe all my siblings - were less concerned about being punished for misbehavior than seeing the look of disappointment on my parents’ faces.

Daddy was born on the farm he grew up on, and he lived there his entire life except for three years in the Army and the last few years of his life in a nursing home. Mama was born in California and moved around with her parents who were migrant workers. When she was in high school, she moved to Utah to live with her grandmother after her grandfather died.  She and Daddy met while Daddy was stationed in Utah in the Army.

After the war, Mama left her family and her Mormon religion and moved to Texas to marry Daddy and join his church (Methodist). Just a little over nine months later, I was born, the first of six children. They raised their children, worked their farm, befriended their neighbors, and served their community together for nearly 50 years.

They were simple, unassuming people, but they both had a wonderful sense of humor. You can see their proud smiles in this photo with me as a tiny baby, but the camera didn’t catch Daddy’s mischievous grin that he characteristically wore.

Daddy loved walking through the farm checking on the cattle he knew individually. When I was growing up, south Texas was going through a terrible drought. Daddy found a way to keep going. He couldn’t grow crops or raise cattle, but he discovered that caged chickens didn’t need rain … so he went into the egg business with 20,000 chickens. After the drought ended, he went back to farming crops and cattle.

Patients in the hospital and nursing home loved Mama because she was sweet and thoughtful. She worked for many years as a nurse’s aide before training as a nurse, and in both capacities, she cared for the emotional needs as well as the medical needs of her patients.

Daddy was a whiz at math. He could work any problem in his head, but he couldn’t tell you how he arrived at the answer. As a kid, I used to test him.

“How much is 1,392 times 847?” I’d ask as I punched the numbers into a calculator.

“1,179,024,” Daddy would answer before the calculator processed the problem.

“How did you know that?” I’d ask when the calculator agreed with him.

“That’s just what it is,” Daddy would say.

Mama loved to read and do crossword puzzles and word games. She always had a novel or two along with several puzzle books and pencils handy.

When I was in high school, I was president of the Methodist Youth Fellowship (MYF) Subdistrict (a group of several churches in a small geographic area). Back in those days, churches, like everything else, were segregated. I was invited to speak to the MYF at a black church in San Antonio (nearly a hundred miles from the rural area we lived in). I was thrilled at the invitation but was flabbergasted at the response when I told my parents and asked them to take me. 

Daddy said, “I’m not going to any n- church.”

I think my mouth must have dropped open in shock. I had no idea my father was prejudiced. He did business with and was friendly with many Hispanics at a time and place where there was a lot of prejudice against Mexicans, as Hispanics were called then. There were no black people anywhere around where we lived, so Daddy wasn’t prejudiced against blacks from personal experience. It seemed to be just “the way things were” back then.

My mother, on the hand, was completely different. When she was a child, her father had become very ill and the family couldn’t afford a doctor. A black family in the migrant camp, who must have been just about as poor as my grandparents, helped them out. So my mother had a totally different reaction than my father. She may well have talked to him in private about his reaction, but she would not have done anything he didn’t agree with.

But the thing I so admired about my father was that in spite of his own prejudice, he didn’t pass it on to me. He didn’t forbid me to speak to the black youth group. He even drove me the nearly hundred miles to attend. However, he wouldn’t get out of the car. He and Mama drove around and around until I was finished.

I don’t remember any details of the event except that I was very happy about it. But I will never forget how my father helped me do something he couldn’t bring himself to do because he knew he was wrong (though he would never admit that).

No one on either side of the family had attended college, but all of us kids took it for granted that we would go to college. I’m sure my parents must have worried about how that would happen, but they never discouraged us. All four of the girls eventually earned college degrees, though two dropped out of college and returned much later in life. The two boys had technical training and have gone to professional careers in real estate and technology. This picture is our family the year I left for college.

During my first year of college, my family’s house caught on fire in the middle of the night. Mama woke up smelling smoke and herded everyone outside, though one of my brothers kept trying to get back in bed and go to sleep. Daddy managed to get in and rescue a few business records from the file cabinet in the front room, but then the fire was too hot to save anything else. Everyone sat in the front yard watching the house burn while they waited for the volunteer fire department to arrive from the town seven miles away. Daddy looked around and counted kids.

“There’s only five kids here,” he screamed. “Someone’s missing.” He started to run back into the house, now an inferno in full bloom.

Mama had a hard time making him understand that I was away at college and not in the burning house.

The rest of the family had only the night clothes they were wearing. Everyone in the family wears glasses, and all the glasses burned up in the fire. My parents and siblings spent the rest of the night at my grandmother’s, just a few hundred yards away on the same farm. The next morning, when the school bus stopped at the end of the lane, someone (maybe my grandmother) notified the bus driver that the children wouldn’t be going to school because of the fire. That afternoon, the bus stopped again, this time filled with clothing and household goods that the townspeople had donated. For several months, the family lived in the “egg house,” the building that was used to grade and pack eggs for market. Daddy bought an old frame house, moved it on to the farm, and renovated it for the family’s new home.

My folks didn’t let that fire—or any of the other difficulties they encountered in life—shake their strong faith or change their positive, kind, and loving personalities.

I will always be grateful for being blessed with their love, faith, and nurturing.

Copyright: Part 1 - Just Because It’s Online Doesn’t Mean It’s in the Public Domain

A post by Jeanne Dininni at Writer’s Notes got me thinking about copyright. She had her work posted on a Web site without permission though the site owner gave her credit and a link to her site. Another piece was actually plagiarized. Be sure to read the ongoing conversation in comments as well as Jeanne’s post.

Jeanne differentiates between the unauthorized use and the plagiarism, and I agree they are different. Plagiarism is deliberate theft; unauthorized posting of work with credit and a link is most likely the result of ignorance.

I’ve never had the experience of having my work stolen. As common as unauthorized use of content is, the only reason I can think of that I’ve been spared is because no one has found my work worth copying.

Joking aside, unauthorized use of content is a serious problem - and not just online. Most people are ignorant about copyright. Here are just a few examples from my own experience:

• Several clients have asked me to use something they found online in a document I am preparing for them. In some cases they plan to credit the source; in others, they just want to copy the material without credit. When I tell them the material is copyrighted, they respond, “No, it’s not copyrighted. It’s online.” Many people sincerely believe that if it’s online, it’s in the public domain.
• One client wanted me to include some material from another publication in a manual I was creating for her company. I explained that would be a violation of copyright. “But I wrote it,” she said. This lady is highly ethical and would never think of stealing money or property, but she just didn’t understand that she would stealing the rights of the copyright owner if she used the material she had written as work for hire.
• I even encounter this in editing my church’s newsletter. Just this week, a church member submitted two articles for publication in the newsletter. Both were copyrighted - one was a newspaper column and the other had a copyright notice on the page along with “used by permission.” I explained that the copyright to the newspaper column was probably owned by the newspaper unless the author was a syndicated columnist who owned the rights. And even though the other document said “used by permission,” the permission was granted to the source where the submitter got the material, not to us. Again, this is a man who tries to live out his faith and operates at the highest standard of integrity. Yet out of ignorance, he asked me to violate two different people’s copyrights in our church newsletter.

Even if the person doesn’t know any better and thinks he is giving the writer the ultimate compliment by posting the work, writers need to be diligent and require copyright violators to remove the work. If we allow our work to be used without permission, we are contributing to the deterioration of our rights. We need to protect our work by educating people about copyright.

Flag Day in the US

Two Years Old Already?

A Writer’s Words, An Editor’s Eye was born two years ago today. Many bloggers celebrate the anniversary of their blogs, their blogiversaries. However, since this blog is my baby, I’m celebrating my baby’s birthday and the following highlights:

• 376 posts, including 15 series of 2 to 15 installments
• Nearly 3200 comments, which have educated, entertained, and inspired me far more than my posts have done for my readers
• Nearly 70,000 spam comments caught by Akismet in 18 months (I didn’t have any spam control in the first 6 months … and got little spam)
• More friends than I can count - many of whom are listed in my blogroll

On my blog’s first birthday, I reviewed how my understanding of blogging had changed.

I discovered that my blog is not just a place to share what I’ve learned. Blogging is a large city with hundreds of small neighborhoods. It’s a place to make new friends, a place to learn and share. It’s synergy that makes the whole more than the sum of its parts.

My understanding of blogging as community has developed even more in the last year. The number of blog posts increased about 35%, but comments increased by more than 500%.

I said last year I was going to work on SEO and promote my blog better … but I didn’t. This blog is pure fun for me, and SEO and promotion isn’t fun to me. I’m glad I have a handful of subscribers and some loyal readers. If I were serious about blogging, I’d focus on the topic of writing rather than covering whatever interests me at the moment. But that would be too much like work. So I’ll keep having fun and hope you’ll come along for the ride.

Thanks to each of you who subscribe or read regularly and to those of you who visit occasionally. I appreciate each one of you, value every comment, and love our friendly little neighborhood in the big city of the blogosphere.

Put on your party hat, have a slice of birthday cake, and release a balloon to say “happy birthday” to A Writer’s Words, An Editor’s Eye.

Now I just hope my blog isn’t going to start having tantrums like a Terrible Two!

[tags]blogiversary, blog birthday[/tags]

Research

 

Writers often have to conduct research for their writing projects, and all of us have to find information we need on a regular basis. A question from a client reminded me of an article I wrote several years ago, Finding the Information You Need — Research Tips for Your Family, Business, or Personal Pursuits.

Research doesn’t have to mean looking through microscopes in laboratories for science projects or reading musty history tomes for term papers. Learn how to find the information you need—whether it’s knowledge critical for your family’s health, intelligence important for the success of your business, facts useful in making buying decisions, or simply lore you want to know. Discover how to evaluate the reliability of the data you gather as well.

In addition to research tips, the article includes a number of resources to make it easier for you to find the information you need.

You’ll find this and more free how-to articles at Your Information Center.

 

 

What I Learned from Animals

My husband’s Dobermans used to curl up at his feet and put their heads in his lap. The dogs and I weren’t best buddies, but we got along until the morning I was running late for work.

This was back in the days when I showed up at my interior landscape company by the time the doors opened, before I learned to trust my managers.

This particular morning I was already behind schedule when I remembered I had to stop for gas. As I was backing out of the driveway, my husband, who had worked all night on a law enforcement job, pulled in beside me. I asked him to call the office to tell them I would be late. Instead, he said, “You call them, and I’ll get gas for you.”

After he pulled away, I realized the house was locked and my key was in my purse … on the front seat of the car. I went into the backyard to get the spare key out of its hiding place. Dobie, the male dog, who been chained to keep him away from the female in heat, had broken the chain and was engaged in … er … amorous activities … with the female. Without thinking, I walked up to him and gave him a light kick to get his attention.

Fortunately, it took him a few seconds to … disconnect, giving me time to turn around. He came after me, knocked me down, and started biting me on the top of my head. I tried to fight him off, but my resistance led only to bites on my arms.

After what seemed like forever, I thought I would surely die. I prayed, Lord, it looks like I’m about to meet You. I don’t want to be fighting when I enter Heaven. Forgive my sins and take me into Your Kingdom. Then I went limp, at peace and ready to die.

As soon as I went limp, Dobie let me go. He stood and watched while I got up and walked around to the front of the house. When Jack returned, he saw me standing in the carport, covered in blood. He wanted to take me to the hospital emergency room, but I preferred my family physician, who has a minor emergency clinic. We got there before opening, but one of the staff saw us through the door and took me to the emergency room to lie down.

Dr B arrived in a few minutes and gave me pain medication, but he delayed stitching the wounds until he talked to a plastic surgeon. He said my skull was exposed in an area about the size of a quarter, and he thought I need skin grafts. The plastic surgeon told him, “Stitch her up as best you can. We’ll do the grafts later because dog bites almost always lead to infection. Let’s get the infection cleared up before we graft.”

The pain was so intense that I couldn’t sit up. Dr B and his nurses used pillows to raise my head enough for him to reach the wounds. He took more than 50 stitches in my head and several in my arms. As he sewed, he said, “You’re lucky he got your head. If he’d got your carotid artery, you’d be dead now.”

Dr B prescribed antibiotics and told me to see him every day to clean the wounds and check for infection. Although I spent several days in bed with excruciating pain, the wounds healed with no infection and no grafts.

Twenty years later, the only physical evidence of the attack are two scars on my right arm - one in the shape of a five-pointed star and the other in the shape of a crescent moon. But, as usual, the lessons remain.

• Plan ahead - if I’d filled my car with gas on the way home the day before, I wouldn’t have been in the back yard that morning.
• Never come between true love … or true lust … in the animal world.
• An aggressive animal may seem tame, even loving, but it hasn’t lost its aggressive instincts.
• Head wounds bleed A LOT.
• Dog bites cause excruciating pain, the worst I’ve ever experienced.
• It’s difficult to feel comfortable around dogs after being attacked.

But, most importantly, I learned sometimes the best thing to do is to let go. I believe that if I had kept fighting, Dobie would have continued to attack until I was dead. Our natural instinct is to fight back - and many times, we need to fight back. But if you seem to be fighting a losing battle, maybe it’s time to go limp, let your enemy think you’re dead … and live to tell the story.

This post is my entry in What I Learned from Animals at Middle Zone Musings and High Callings Blogs.

Photo: “© Emmanuelle Bonzami | Dreamstime.com”

[tags]What I Learned From Animals, dog bites[/tags]

Eight Random Facts

isabella mori at change therapy tagged me to share 8 random facts about myself. I’ve done several similar memes before:
More Than You Ever Wanted to Know: Eight Things About My Writing and Me
Eight Random Things about Lillie
Seven Random Things
Five Things

To keep this relevant to my blog - and to come up with something that I haven’t shared in the above posts - I’m going to share 8 facts about my work habits and attitudes.

1. When I’m working on a project, I sit at the computer for hours on end to avoid interrupting the process - not good for arthritic bones! I’m trying to force myself to get up and move around at least once an hour, but I’m not doing a very good job of it.
2. Though experts in productivity often recommend you do the most important projects first, I work more efficiently if I first read my e-mail and do small tasks that may not be urgent but bother me if left undone.
3. Because of the odd hours I work, a client can send me a rush project at the end of her work day and have it waiting in her inbox when she starts work the next day.
4. Since I don’t like to talk on the telephone, I communicate by e-mail whenever I can.
5. I’ve been accused of being a perfectionist and a control freak, for which I plead the fifth.
6. My dream and fear is to get caught up on all my work: What would it be like to have few days with nothing to do? But what if those few days turned into an extended drought?
7. I seem to have missed the vocabulary lesson on the word “no.” When someone asks if I can do something, my automatic response if “of course.”
8. Taking Sunday off is a high priority for me though I work long hours the rest of the week.

Since not all bloggers participate in memes, I’m not tagging 8 people as the meme instructs. If you’d like to share 8 random facts about yourself, leave a comment so I can read your post.

[tags]meme, 8 random facts[/tags]

Guest Post at Poewar: Get Rid of Ugly Wordiness

John Hewitt of Poewar.com Writers Resource Center is taking a vacation and has lined up 21 guest bloggers for the month of June. My post Get Rid of Ugly Wordiness: How to Cut Your Novel Down to Size appears today.

John wrote:

[The guest bloggers] are involved in a friendly competition to see who can get the most response, so please be kind to them. Read their articles. Leave lots of encouraging comments. If you find an article you particularly like, link to it or promote it through your favorite social media. The article that gets the best response wins $250, so I know these bloggers will appreciate any help you can give them.

I hope you’ll visit Poewar and read my guest post (as well as the other posts throughout the month).

[tags]Poewar, editing[/tags]