Copyright--movie quotes
Pete Spahn
copyrighted and off limits without obtaining permission. The LOC is
kind of
ambiguous when it comes to quotes and I couldn't find what I was looking
for on a google search either. I'm writing a novel and was going to
head some of the chapters with memorable (chapter related) quotes. For
example, can I use quotes like:
"Welcome, to the real world."
---Morpheus, The Matrix
or
"Time, give me some time!"
---Bilbo Baggins, The Hobbit
or
"Get your stinkin' paws off me, you damn, dirty ape!"
---Taylor, Planet of the Apes
Is this legal or am I looking for trouble? I've asked this question in
several different forums and can't seem to get a definitive
answer---half of the response say it is legal, the other half say it is
not. Is there anyone out there who knows for sure and/or has used movie
or book quotes in their own work (without reprisal)?
Thanks a lot,
Pete
Dorothy J Heydt
Pete Spahn <amy....@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>Hi all. I was just wondering if quotes from books and movies were
>copyrighted and off limits without obtaining permission.
There's this concept called "fair use."
You can quote maybe a paragraph or so from a book, or a few lines
from a poem, without getting permission. Particularly if you're
writing a review.
If you were going to preface each chapter with a different quotation
from the same book, you'd better get in touch with its publisher
and arrange permission.
You cannot quote even one line, or a title, from a modern song
that is still under copyright without getting permission.
Assorted agencies will come down on you like tons of bricks if
you do.
Alternatively, make sure all the things you're quoting from are
out of copyright. Anything before 1900 should be ok. unless it's
part of the Sherlock Holmes canon.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
http://www.kithrup.com/~djheydt
Dan Goodman
amy....@worldnet.att.net says...
> Hi all. I was just wondering if quotes from books and movies were
> copyrighted and off limits without obtaining permission.
Short answer: "fair use" is okay without permission. For something as
long as a book or a movie, this means that a sufficiently short quote is
probably okay. How short is that? If you're sued, whatever the judge
decides is short enough.
Longer answer: I think you have two alternatives here. One is to do
library research. Start by going to the nearest good public library, and
asking for books _and other information resources_ on the legal aspects
of writing.
Or you can quote from stuff that's out of copyright.
> The LOC is
> kind of
> ambiguous when it comes to quotes
Which probably means that they're giving a realistic, accurate picture of
the legal issues.
> and I couldn't find what I was looking
>
> for on a google search either. I'm writing a novel and was going to
> head some of the chapters with memorable (chapter related) quotes. For
>
> example, can I use quotes like:
>
> "Welcome, to the real world."
> ---Morpheus, The Matrix
>
> or
>
> "Time, give me some time!"
> ---Bilbo Baggins, The Hobbit
>
> or
>
> "Get your stinkin' paws off me, you damn, dirty ape!"
> ---Taylor, Planet of the Apes
>
> Is this legal or am I looking for trouble? I've asked this question in
> several different forums and can't seem to get a definitive
> answer---half of the response say it is legal, the other half say it is
> not. Is there anyone out there who knows for sure and/or has used movie
> or book quotes in their own work (without reprisal)?
>
> Thanks a lot,
>
> Pete
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
--
Dan Goodman
dsg...@visi.com
Jay Random
It's a very bad idea. Fair Use covers quotations made by a reviewer. It
does _not_ cover quotations of the kind you're suggesting. You can
expect to have to get permission in every case you mentioned, & you can
expect it to cost an arm & a leg. It has not infrequently happened that
an author would want to quote _one line_ of a popular song in a novel, &
be asked to pay a bigger licence fee than his advance for the whole
book! The authors whose practices I'm personally familiar with make sure
_never_ to take quotations from any source that's still in copyright.
Dan Goodman
Cautionary note: If you're quoting a traditional folksong, make sure
you're not quoting a version which is copyrighted.
--
Dan Goodman
dsg...@visi.com
Dorothy J Heydt
Dan Goodman <dsg...@visi.com> wrote:
>
>Cautionary note: If you're quoting a traditional folksong, make sure
>you're not quoting a version which is copyrighted.
If you get it out of Child's or Percy's, it will be safe.
Joel Polowin
> Pete Spahn wrote:
> > I'm writing a novel and was going to
> > head some of the chapters with memorable (chapter related) quotes.
> It's a very bad idea. Fair Use covers quotations made by a reviewer. It
> does _not_ cover quotations of the kind you're suggesting. You can
> expect to have to get permission in every case you mentioned, & you can
> expect it to cost an arm & a leg. It has not infrequently happened that
> an author would want to quote _one line_ of a popular song in a novel, &
> be asked to pay a bigger licence fee than his advance for the whole
> book! The authors whose practices I'm personally familiar with make sure
> _never_ to take quotations from any source that's still in copyright.
It can't hurt to *ask* the copyright owner for permission (and you
should
certainly do so before you use a quotation for something like this, just
to be safe). Yes, some owners will make impossible demands for
compensation; others will be happy to let you use a brief attributed
quotation. Don't expect that it will be easy to *get* permission,
though;
getting a reply from some people for something like this can take a lot
of time and effort.
I used such quotations on chapter-heading pages in my Ph.D. thesis, and
even though it was an extremely-limited-distribution work, I thought it
would be *polite* to ask permission, regardless of the unlikeliness of
my getting into any kind of trouble even if I didn't. It took a while
to get permissions from a couple of folks, but nobody refused permission
--
the hard part was getting some of them to reply.
--
Joel Polowin jpolow...@sympatico.ca but delete "XYZZy" from address
The Rohirrim honoured their families and their horses. But
even there, it was possible to take things too far; and
Eohippus son of Eomund is omitted from most of the genealogies.
Rosemary Lake
wrote:
/snip/
>Alternatively, make sure all the things you're quoting from are
>out of copyright. Anything before 1900 should be ok. unless it's
>part of the Sherlock Holmes canon.
Quite a few books up to about 1925 are ok, at least in the US, tho some are
not in UK.
I'm not sure what you mean about the Holmes canon. Are there Holmes books
before 1900 still under copyright?
Anyway, Project Guternberg is a good source for out of copyright texts,
some of them very popular and quotable. Most of Tarzan/Barsoom, most of
Baum's Oz books, E. Nesbit, /Wind in the Willows/ iirc, /Around the World
in 80 Days/....
Rosemary
http://www.sonic.net/mary/writing/My_original_stories.html
Dorothy J Heydt
Joel Polowin <jpolow...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
>It can't hurt to *ask* the copyright owner for permission (and you
>should
>certainly do so before you use a quotation for something like this, just
>to be safe). Yes, some owners will make impossible demands for
>compensation; others will be happy to let you use a brief attributed
>quotation. Don't expect that it will be easy to *get* permission,
>though;
>getting a reply from some people for something like this can take a lot
>of time and effort.
Datum: My story "The Song and the Flute" contained a longish
passage from Richmond Lattimore's translation of the Odyssey. I
explained this to MZB when she bought the story; she explained it
to Betsy Wollheim. Somebody at DAW contacted somebody at the
other publisher. They got permission; no sweat; I don't think
DAW had to pay for it and I certainly didn't.
Dorothy J Heydt
Rosemary Lake <r...@rosemarylake.com> wrote:
>On Mon, 27 Aug 2001 22:43:23 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt)
>wrote:
>/snip/
>
>>Alternatively, make sure all the things you're quoting from are
>>out of copyright. Anything before 1900 should be ok. unless it's
>>part of the Sherlock Holmes canon.
>
>Quite a few books up to about 1925 are ok, at least in the US, tho some are
>not in UK.
>
>I'm not sure what you mean about the Holmes canon. Are there Holmes books
>before 1900 still under copyright?
I'm not sure how it works, but apparently the Conan Doyle estate
has managed to hang onto the copyright to the Holmes works long
after it would have otherwise expired. Anyone know the details?
Brenda W. Clough
Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
Scholars and writers usually will give permission without too much huhu.
Don't try to quote song lyrics, however -- the people who manage those rights
do not answer mail except to refuse permission. It is easier to write your
own lyrics -- I am sure that is why Tolkien and Kipling did it.
Brenda
--
What do you do with a secret?
Whisper it in a desert at high noon.
Lock it up and bury the key.
Tell the nation on prime-time TV.
Choose a door . . .
Doors of Death and Life
by Brenda W. Clough
http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda
Tor Books
ISBN 0-312-87064-7
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
>or
>or
The attitude of most publishers I have worked with is, "Always ask for
permission to quote anything." I have used quotations from books and
songs, but generally only with permission. Most publishing contracts stipulate
that it is the responsibility of the author to make sure the work
contains no violations of copyright and that the publisher is not
responsible for any violations; a lot of publishers will
double-check because publishers are sometimes sued along with authors
even in the presence of such a clause in the contract.
I'd get to work asking for permission. A remarkable number of people
won't even charge you for it -- I was quaking in my boots when I
wanted to use a whole lot of Laurie Anderson quotations, but she
didn't charge me a cent.
The Yeats estate will charge you, though, and Random House charged me
fifty dollars for a few lines of a poem by A.S. Byatt.
I don't know how movie quotations work, since I've never used any.
I do know somebody who ended up taking out a couple of quotations from
movies because it would have cost too much, but this may vary
depending on who holds the rights and may not be a property of quoting
from movies generally.
The general form, for what you want to do, would be just to say that
you want to use the quotation as a chapter heading in your novel.
Provide the precise quotation you want to use and its source.
If the novel has been accepted for publication, you can say who
will publish it and approximately when, and what the format will
be; this for some reason seems to soothe some permissions
departments, though it does not notably impress musicians
one way or the other.
--
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet (pd...@demesne.com)
"I will open my heart to a blank page
and interview the witnesses." John M. Ford, "Shared World"
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
>Scholars and writers usually will give permission without too much huhu.
The Oxford University Press are splendid about it.
>Don't try to quote song lyrics, however -- the people who manage those rights
>do not answer mail except to refuse permission. It is easier to write your
>own lyrics -- I am sure that is why Tolkien and Kipling did it.
This is not a universal truth. I have quoted, with permission, huge
swathes of lyrics by Laurie Anderson and Archie Fisher. It was
extremely hard to get Archie Fisher to pay any attention to the
request and Jane Yolen, intrepid editor, had to track him down and
offer him cash -- which he didn't want -- but we did get the
permission. It depends on the artist. It's worth asking, especially
if you aren't looking at some hugely popular mainstream artist with
some huge label.
I think Kipling wrote his own because he couldn't not write poetry; I
kind of doubt the copyright situation he faced was remotely similar to
the present one.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> It depends on the artist. It's worth asking, especially
> if you aren't looking at some hugely popular mainstream artist with
> some huge label.
Oh yes. I'd really need some Leonard Cohen for the WIP, but I think I'll
just allude to the theme of the songs I need. No chance in hell of
getting _him_ to pay attention. Pity, though.
--
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
substitute tin for nit to mail me
http://www.fantascienza.net/sfpeople/elethiomel
"Hello, my name is Anna, and I write trilogies." -- Anna Mazzoldi
Peter Knutsen
Jay Random wrote:
> It's a very bad idea. Fair Use covers quotations made by a reviewer. It
> does _not_ cover quotations of the kind you're suggesting. You can
But are fictional characters subject to international copyright
laws? Keeping in mind that it's not the author who is quoting
verbatim from a movie or poetry or a song text, it's the
*character*.
Half joking...
--
Peter Knutsen
Richard Horton
Heydt) wrote:
>I'm not sure how it works, but apparently the Conan Doyle estate
>has managed to hang onto the copyright to the Holmes works long
>after it would have otherwise expired. Anyone know the details?
It might be that they've trademarked the characters. I really don't
know.
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard...@sff.net
Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.tangentonline.com)
Charlie Stross
as <djh...@kithrup.com> declared:
>>Quite a few books up to about 1925 are ok, at least in the US, tho some are
>>not in UK.
>>
>>I'm not sure what you mean about the Holmes canon. Are there Holmes books
>>before 1900 still under copyright?
>
>I'm not sure how it works, but apparently the Conan Doyle estate
>has managed to hang onto the copyright to the Holmes works long
>after it would have otherwise expired. Anyone know the details?
Not sure of the precise details in this case, but one mechanism is to
form a limited company and have the copyright holder (or their estate)
assign their copyright to it. The company is then the copyright holder,
and is still "alive" in the legal sense, so copyright continues as long
as it keeps filing its accounts.
This only makes financial sense for high-selling authors whose works
remain in print continuously -- there are overheads such as filing
annual company tax returns and keeping track of the company paperwork
that will eat into the royalties -- but I imagine it makes sense for,
for example, the Conan Doyle estate (what with ongoing movie rights
sales every few years).
-- Charlie
Brenda W. Clough
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet wrote:
>
> I think Kipling wrote his own because he couldn't not write poetry; I
> kind of doubt the copyright situation he faced was remotely similar to
> the present one.
>
Yes, I was being facetious. I will add that it is tremendously liberating to just
write your own verse headers and quotations. None of this messing about trying to
find the right one in BARTLETT'S!
Jim Bailey
>
>Stoned koala bears drooled eucalyptus spittle in awe
>as <djh...@kithrup.com> declared:
>
>>has managed to hang onto the copyright to the Holmes works long
>>after it would have otherwise expired. Anyone know the details?
That's a trademark matter now, not copyright. You could republish any of the
original stories now without problem, but *promoting* the work without stepping
on the estate's toes might be problematic. It's also a problem of trying to
create new works with the characters, though there's some disagreement about
whether the estate has a legal leg to stand on in that situation, nobody has
quite yet managed to test the case to destruction.
>Not sure of the precise details in this case, but one mechanism is to
>form a limited company and have the copyright holder (or their estate)
>assign their copyright to it. The company is then the copyright holder,
>and is still "alive" in the legal sense, so copyright continues as long
>as it keeps filing its accounts.
"Corporate" ownership of copyright (in the U.S. though I believe it's the same
in the E.U.) is strictly limited to 95 years (though from date of publication
or date of creation I'm not sure). In general, this will be a shorter term
than life+70, and it's this side of the equation that's the reason for the
extension in the first place (a lot of Disney properties, for one example, were
close to falling into the public domain...)
Best,
Jim Bailey
--
Elysian Fiction (Fantasy short story e-zine)
http://www.elysianfiction.com/
First Issue now available
Dan Goodman
> Scholars and writers usually will give permission without too much huhu.
> Don't try to quote song lyrics, however -- the people who manage those rights
> do not answer mail except to refuse permission.
Not quite true. Some will freely give consent; Pamela Dyer-Bennet was
lucky enough to encounter one such. Others will sell permission to
quote, at fees ranging from reasonable to -- well, I understand there's
at least one history of rock which doesn't quote any Rolling Stones
lyrics, because there was no way the author could afford it.
--
Dan Goodman
dsg...@visi.com
Dorothy J Heydt
Dan Goodman <dsg...@visi.com> wrote:
>In article <3B8B1006...@erols.com>, clo...@erols.com says...
>
>
>> Scholars and writers usually will give permission without too much huhu.
>> Don't try to quote song lyrics, however -- the people who manage those rights
>> do not answer mail except to refuse permission.
>
>Not quite true. Some will freely give consent; Pamela Dyer-Bennet was
>lucky enough to encounter one such.
Yes, but I think what was meant above by "song lyrics" was
"lyrics to songs commercially recorded and registered with ASCAP
or whoever." *Those* are impossible to get permission for
without paying megabucks.
Others will sell permission to
>quote, at fees ranging from reasonable to -- well, I understand there's
>at least one history of rock which doesn't quote any Rolling Stones
>lyrics, because there was no way the author could afford it.
Yes, that kind of thing.
It must be a serious problem for many people. Here you are
writing a book, and you want to quote the lines that have been
significant and memorable in your life. Well, if what's been
significant and memorable in your life is rock, you are SOL,
because you can't use it nohow. Unless you are Emma Bull and
write your own. I am fortunate in that most of the stuff that's
been significant and memorable for me is at least four hundred
years old.
Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor
Jay said:
>It's a very bad idea. Fair Use covers quotations made by a reviewer. It
>does _not_ cover quotations of the kind you're suggesting. You can
>expect to have to get permission in every case you mentioned, & you can
>expect it to cost an arm & a leg. It has not infrequently happened that
>an author would want to quote _one line_ of a popular song in a novel, &
>be asked to pay a bigger licence fee than his advance for the whole
>book! The authors whose practices I'm personally familiar with make sure
>_never_ to take quotations from any source that's still in copyright.
I agree, but I'd also like to point out that an awful lot of modern
quotes are re-hashes of ancient sayings, and you may be able to make a
similar point by quoting the Bible, Shakespeare, classic literature etc.
So do make a good search of a quotation dictionary! If you're lucky, you
might even find a quote by that most famous of authors "A.Non".
--
Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor
http://www.ratbag.demon.co.uk/anna/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"This is the sort of English up with which I will not put"
Sir Winston Churchill (on E.Gowers "Plain Words")
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho
> It must be a serious problem for many people. Here you are
> writing a book, and you want to quote the lines that have been
> significant and memorable in your life.
One would hope we'll have transclusions and transcopyright soon.
(Don't work for dead-tree publishing, but xanadological media might actually
become viable for online publishing - once it exists. I'm told it's RSN.)
--
%%% Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho % ga...@iki.fi % http://www.iki.fi/gaia/ %%%
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
wrote:
>some of them very popular and quotable. Most of Tarzan/Barsoom
Been looking into this, not very deeply. Yes, the Tarzan books are on
Project Gutenberg, but I think that there is some copyright, because I
saw a movie page that says "Tarzan (etc) © of ERB Estate".
vlatko
--
_Neither Fish Nor Fowl_
http://www.webart.hr/nrnm/eng/index.htm
vlatko.ju...@zg.hinet.hr
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
>Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet <pd...@gw.dd-b.net> wrote:
>> It depends on the artist. It's worth asking, especially
>> if you aren't looking at some hugely popular mainstream artist with
>> some huge label.
>Oh yes. I'd really need some Leonard Cohen for the WIP, but I think I'll
>just allude to the theme of the songs I need. No chance in hell of
>getting _him_ to pay attention. Pity, though.
I wouldn't be so sure. It doesn't cost very much to ask, though
postage from Italy is obviously more expensive. But you know, there's
a Leonard Cohen Concordance on the web, so he can't be unalterably
opposed to anybody's ever using his words for anything.
Dorothy J Heydt
Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho <gaia...@iki.fi> wrote:
>
>One would hope we'll have transclusions and transcopyright soon.
>
>(Don't work for dead-tree publishing, but xanadological media might actually
>become viable for online publishing - once it exists. I'm told it's RSN.)
Define terms, please?
Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho
> In article <slrn9onqsk.f...@kukkaruukku.keltti.jyu.fi>,
> Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho <gaia...@iki.fi> wrote:
>>
>>One would hope we'll have transclusions and transcopyright soon.
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>
>>(Don't work for dead-tree publishing, but xanadological media might actually
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>become viable for online publishing - once it exists. I'm told it's RSN.)
>
> Define terms, please?
(Actually, xanadological should be xanalogical.)
The terms come from Ted Nelson, one of the pioneers of hypertext (the guy who
coined the term and the director of the original hypertext project). He's been
working on solving the problems with online publishing since the 1960's. His
solution for now (paraphrased by me, may contain minor errors):
- All information is stored in "information pools": every new keypress gets a
permanent, globally unique address within the pool. Parts of the pool are
private, parts are public. Parts of it require micropayment for access.
- As stored, documents consist of pointers to the information pools. These
pointers are called "transclusions".
- To retrieve the actual text or other piece of media from the pool (for
example to display it to the user), the user's software may have to
negotiate a micropayment with the original publisher of the information.
(Note that this is not pay per view; it is pay per download.)
- It is the document viewer's software that assembles the actual document
from material in the pool according to the transclusions in the stored
document.
This is the xanalogical model of media, originating from Nelson's Xanadu
project.
Transcopyright is a convention that allows anybody to transclude material from
other people into their own documents without asking separate permission and
without a separate fee.
If you want to view a document done this way, the total cost for you is the
the fee required by the publisher of the document plus the fees required by
the publishers of any transcluded material. This may be anything from
zero to a million euros, or more.
This is the transpublishing model.
Parts of this technology already exists, even in multiple implementations.
You may want to read http://www.sfc.keio.ac.jp/~ted/TPUB/TPUBsum.html, but note
that Ted is not always the best one to explain his ideas :-) (Something we hear
in conferences sometimes: "What, you've made something _real_ from Ted's ideas?
Wonderful!") Also his examples in that page are, sadly, a poor imitation of
true transpublishing (and he knows it).
Heather Rose Jones
> Scholars and writers usually will give permission without too much huhu.
> Don't try to quote song lyrics, however -- the people who manage those rights
> do not answer mail except to refuse permission. It is easier to write your
> own lyrics -- I am sure that is why Tolkien and Kipling did it.
I've always rather figured that Tolkien and Kipling wrote their own
lyrics (for inclusion in their prose) because they were poets.
--
*********
Heather Rose Jones
hrj...@socrates.berkeley.edu
*********
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> I wouldn't be so sure. It doesn't cost very much to ask, though
> postage from Italy is obviously more expensive. But you know, there's
> a Leonard Cohen Concordance on the web, so he can't be unalterably
> opposed to anybody's ever using his words for anything.
No, I'm sure he's an amiable fellow, but he's converted to buddhism and
from what I know, is very serious about it, to the point that he's quite
annoyed at his preceding career interfering.
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
>Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet <pd...@gw.dd-b.net> wrote:
>> I wouldn't be so sure. It doesn't cost very much to ask, though
>> postage from Italy is obviously more expensive. But you know, there's
>> a Leonard Cohen Concordance on the web, so he can't be unalterably
>> opposed to anybody's ever using his words for anything.
>No, I'm sure he's an amiable fellow, but he's converted to buddhism and
>from what I know, is very serious about it, to the point that he's quite
>annoyed at his preceding career interfering.
Well, if he has any sense he has delegated the giving of permissions
to somebody or other.
I don't know if he has any sense or not.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> Well, if he has any sense he has delegated the giving of permissions
> to somebody or other.
Probably. Well, you people know agents better than me... but my idea is
that they are a lot less likely to let go of rights. But one should
check up first, of course. :-)
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
>Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet <pd...@gw.dd-b.net> wrote:
>> Well, if he has any sense he has delegated the giving of permissions
>> to somebody or other.
>Probably. Well, you people know agents better than me... but my idea is
>that they are a lot less likely to let go of rights. But one should
>check up first, of course. :-)
Well, they're *supposed* to do what they're told. In any case, the
right they are letting go of is pretty small; it's more as if they are
exercising their own rights. I don't have permission to just go
quoting various lines of Anderson or Fisher anywhere I like; I have
permission to have quoted them in very particular stories published in
very particular circumstances, so long as I say that I have that
permission, sometimes in language that they themselves have dictated.
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote:
(Leonard Cohen)
>No, I'm sure he's an amiable fellow, but he's converted to buddhism and
>from what I know, is very serious about it, to the point that he's quite
>annoyed at his preceding career interfering.
Well, it seems his bad past caught up with him, because he's releasing
a new album, AFAIH. :-)
I don't think he's Cat Stevens, anyway.
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
wrote:
>at fees ranging from reasonable to -- well, I understand there's
>at least one history of rock which doesn't quote any Rolling Stones
>lyrics, because there was no way the author could afford it.
OBSF: Ask Howard Waldrop why he doesn't have any lyrics in "Flying
Saucer Rock'n'Roll".
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> On Tue, 28 Aug 2001 22:59:15 GMT, ada...@nit.it.invalid (Anna
> Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote:
>
> (Leonard Cohen)
> >No, I'm sure he's an amiable fellow, but he's converted to buddhism and
> >from what I know, is very serious about it, to the point that he's quite
> >annoyed at his preceding career interfering.
>
> Well, it seems his bad past caught up with him, because he's releasing
> a new album, AFAIH. :-)
Does he? I know they managed to drag him into a recording studio to add
two new unreleased tracks to the latest collection, but he came very,
very grudgingly. I'm glad though. The world needs more Leonard Cohen.
> I don't think he's Cat Stevens, anyway.
Vade retro. Brrr. :-)
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
>Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet wrote:
>> I think Kipling wrote his own because he couldn't not write poetry; I
>> kind of doubt the copyright situation he faced was remotely similar to
>> the present one.
>Yes, I was being facetious.
Sorry -- having been recently hit over the head with just how little
just so many people understand about copyright law, I didn't want to
let even a joke just lie there for somebody to take seriously; but I
shouldn't have forgotten to laugh.
>I will add that it is tremendously liberating to just
>write your own verse headers and quotations. None of this messing about trying to
>find the right one in BARTLETT'S!
Where I want a specific quotation, I already know it for the most part
and I want that particular one for a lot of complex reasons, so
writing my own wouldn't work. But I don't do chapter headers in
verse; I can see that that would use up one's backlog of memory pretty
quick.
Brooks Moses
> Transcopyright is a convention that allows anybody to transclude material from
> other people into their own documents without asking separate permission and
> without a separate fee.
>
> If you want to view a document done this way, the total cost for you is the
> the fee required by the publisher of the document plus the fees required by
> the publishers of any transcluded material. This may be anything from
> zero to a million euros, or more.
>
> This is the transpublishing model.
This sounds like it's got a really bad flaw. Suppose that I create a
work and want to include some bits from someone else's work, based on an
estimation at that point in time that they're inexpensive enough to be
reasonable for my readers.
At that point, I give the original author of that included text a
tremendous power over my text. They can, at any point in the future,
decide that they want to make that part of the document far more
expensive, or for that matter make it unavailable entirely. Which would
amount to making the whole document unavailable, or to taking part of it
out.
In the current model, on the other hand, permission is granted at the
beginning and is nonrevokable. This provides a distinct guarantee for
the author that included material can remain included, and that there
will not be later problems with the work being compromised or destroyed
because the owners of the included material change their minds.
To me, not having a guarantee of future availability of a quote (in this
model) is as much of a reason not to include it in my work as it being
too expensive in the current model. So this wouldn't help in those
cases, and would hurt things in cases where using it under the current
model is possible.
- Brooks