Copyright question..

[Zhara]

I have scanned in a page from a book, and wanted to know if I can put it on my blog, or do I have to get permission from the publishers first? It is just a biography of a person. If so, does that mean I have to ask publishers permission every time I ever want to use content from books?!

I have not even made my blog yet, I will be discussing it in the blogging basics section soon hopefully.

Thank You.

[bkpkgene]

Originally Posted by Zhara

I have scanned in a page from a book, and wanted to know if I can put it on my blog, or do I have to get permission from the publishers first? It is just a biography of a person. If so, does that mean I have to ask publishers permission every time I ever want to use content from books?!

I have not even made my blog yet, I will be discussing it in the blogging basics section soon hopefully.

Thank You.

If it is a single page, you should be fine. I would feel a lot better if you just copied the text to the blog page. However you do it, you must make sure that you properly cite the page in your article.

[ChickenFreak]

Whether it's a copyright violation depends on a whole lot of things - the size of the excerpt, the size of the total work, the purpose for which you're using the material, whether that purpose falls under one of the fair use exceptions, etc., etc. If your host gets a complaint, they're not going to be in a position to decide one way or another, so they might well take your site down.

In general, facts cannot be copyrighted. So I'd recommend that to be safe, you use the facts from the biography but rewrite them in your own words.

[ChickenFreak]

Hmm. Suddenly I worry. I use very short quotes in some of my blog posts - usually less than two lines. If I were, say, writing a book review I'd be quite confident that that use would be perfectly legal under review/commentary/criticism/whatever-it's-called. But if an author just put something better than I could, and I say, 'As John Smith said, "Blah blah this is blah.'" am I all very nice and legal, or am I violating copyright?

Hmmm.

[Melody]

I think some of what we're talking about here is the "Fair Use Doctrine" under the law which allows limited use of a copyrighted material without permission from the copyright holder.

The idea is that small excerpts of copyrighted material, for the purpose of maybe teaching, or commenting upon, can be used without infringement.

There isn't any exact parameters here, but the smaller the excerpt of copyrighted material, likely the better off you are. By the way, I think that in both copyright and trademark infringement cases, the courts will heavily look at whether the person using the material had a commericial or non-commercial purpose. It won't save you if you're a non-profit, but it's a little more likely to be "Fair Use" is there is no commercial interest associated with the use of the copyrighted material.

[Zhara]

Thank You for your replies! This stuff looks quite complicated.

All I wanted to do is write up a biography of a person, and all the book is doing is simply stating the events that took place in there life. I could just write that up in my own words and summarise it, so just use the book as research and still cite it. Then I am covered?

The blog would be just to raise awareness of the visually impaired.

[The Envoy]

Originally Posted by Zhara

Thank You for your replies! This stuff looks quite complicated.

All I wanted to do is write up a biography of a person, and all the book is doing is simply stating the events that took place in there life. I could just write that up in my own words and summarise it, so just use the book as research and still cite it. Then I am covered?

The blog would be just to raise awareness of the visually impaired.

Yes. Well, many websites and newspapers columnists take quotes out of other works all the time. As long as you quote your source and its not a wholesale copy (say providing a pdf download of the entire book on your blog), it should be perfectly safe.

[joelchrisman]

as long as you cite your sources you should be good.

[ChickenFreak]

Originally Posted by The Envoy

Yes. Well, many websites and newspapers columnists take quotes out of other works all the time. As long as you quote your source and its not a wholesale copy (say providing a pdf download of the entire book on your blog), it should be perfectly safe.

Eh... "perfectly safe" may be an overstatement. "News reporting" is one of the specifically stated fair use exceptions, so a newspaper may be able to get away with more than a website can. And a website that exists for one purpose may be able to get away with more than a website that exists for another purpose. In general, I think that it's best to avoid using another person's copyrighted material when you can, and in this case it sounds like it's pretty easy to do so.

In response to a later post, citing sources may be a defense against plagiarism, but it's not a defense against copyright violation.

[ZCgaminglife]

When I link something from someone else I always put on the bottom, I do not take any credit for this (linked item).