One of the most frustrating aspects of being a working writer is having your work stolen, misappropriated, or otherwise pilfered. With the proliferation of the Internet, the sickness of copyright infringement has become as widespread as the common cold. I thought we all learned about the basics of copyright in middle school and high school (and hopefully we learned stealing is wrong by pre-school), but, sadly, it seems as though many adults who should know better simply don’t. Important disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer. This isn’t legal advice. But to quote Jay-Z’s song “99 Problems,†“I ain’t passed the bar, but I know a little bit…†These are guidelines to help you better understand an overview of copyright. I’ve seen my own work appear on Web sites, in books, and referenced in lectures, sometimes without giving me credit, and sometimes giving me credit, but permission was never asked. Bottom line: it’s illegal, it’s unethical, and it’s sloppy on the part of the person doing the stealing, or the publisher producing the work. Here’s the easiest rule of copyright that I can come up with: if you didn’t write it, draw it, paint it, compose it, sculpt it, take the photo yourself, or commission any of the above with the understanding that you would own the work, then it doesn’t belong to you. There is such a thing as fair use and citation when it comes to others’ work, and I’ll get to those shortly. In fact, I’ll get to them right now… Public Domain When a work is in the public domain, it means that you are free to use it, and no reproduction permission is required. However, you still need to cite the source and give credit where it is due no matter how long ago the author/artist who created the work died. If something was published before January 1, 1923, then there’s an extremely high chance that the work is in the public domain. There are exceptions on both sides of that date, so you’ll need to do your research on whatever work you want to include and/or reference. For a good article on public domain, check out Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain Fair Use “Fair Use†is a legal term meaning you don’t need permission from the work’s author and/or publisher, but you do need to cite your source. There are limitations, of course. For example, you can’t take the latest copy of Harry Potter, write your own one-paragraph introduction, and slap quotes around the whole book and call it fair use. In a book-length work, you can quote up to 300 words of text as long as you give full credit to the author, source, and publisher. There are varying styles on how to do this, but give credit to all three and you’ll be okay. Example: In Jeff Belanger’s book, The World’s Most Haunted Places (New Page Books, 2004), he writes, “…up to 300-word quote here.†With magazine, newspaper, and online articles, you’re limited to 150 words, and you still need to cite the author, source, and publisher. Here’s a good article to check out on copyright and fair use from the Houghton Mifflin company: http://college.hmco.com/instructors/ins_custompub_prepare_script_permission.html People Just Don’t Get It “You should be honored I used your work.†“Putting your work on my Web page helps get you exposure.†“I don’t see what the big deal is.†All arguments I’ve personally heard from people who have infringed on my copyright. These arguments come from people who generally don’t make money at writing, don’t understand the value of good content, and are new to the realm of research and writing. The goal of publishing anything, be it movies, a Web site, a magazine, a book, music, or any other media, is to provide unique content that people can’t get anywhere else. If you’re good at publishing, you build a big audience, you can sell advertising, you can sell subscriptions, and everyone in the food chain makes money from the publisher on down to the author. If you’re bad at publishing, you go out of business quickly. So if I put an article on my Web site, the value of my Web site goes up, because there’s nowhere else on earth that a reader can go to see that content but right here on my site. If someone copies the article and pastes it into their Web site or message board, now people can go elsewhere for that same content and the value is diluted. It’s unfair to the publisher who paid for the unique content, and unfair to the author who agreed to do the work knowing it would only appear in a specific publication. It’s also against the law. How Do You Know Something is Copyrighted? If someone gets completely drunk at a bar and jots a poem down on a paper napkin using pink lipstick to write with, it’s copyright protected. Now, if the person didn’t sign their work, and you found it on the ground while cleaning up, it’s impossible to know who the copyright belongs to. But it’s still not your work. If you wanted to reproduce that drunken poem somewhere, ethically, you should still cite the source: i.e., I found a napkin on the floor of TK’s bar in New Haven, Connecticut on March 8, 2007, it read: “Blah, blah, blah…†When it comes to litigation, the person whose work was infringed upon simply needs to prove that they created their work before you did. If their work appears in a book, magazine, newspaper, or other dated material, it’s pretty easy to prove, and you will lose the lawsuit if you took their work without asking. Even if an article doesn’t have the little “c†with a circle around it (©), the work is still copyright protected. What About Linking to Articles on the Web? You never need permission to link your Web site to an article on another Web site. In fact, one wildly popular Web site, www.drudgereport.com, has made a name for
