Quote:
Originally Posted by cc_in_oh
This sounds bizarre - it would be illegal to send my friend a meatloaf recipe from a copyrighted cookbook via phone or email, or to record myself reading a children's book to my child?
|
Ah but there is also the idea of 'fair use' as well. With the example of the recipe you are only sharing 1 recipe of perhaps hundreds rather than the whole book. And those who write non-fiction do the same thing at times. They take little snips of text from other books (as supporting research etc) but they don't quote the whole of a book verbatim as they do so. If I were writing a book about the villain in literature and wanted to quote some lines from Steven King's works such as "The Stand" and "Misery" for example I might be able to claim fair use if I took just a few snips of text from here and there but it wouldn't be fair use if I quoted large chunks of Mr. King's text right out of the books themselves. Fair use of that sort is easier to do with long works of course. A song or poem is harder to fit under that umbrella as they are so short to begin with. Then you have to get permission from the author. An example of that is in movies. If a given song (or its performance by a given singer) is wanted for a movie then the movie makers have to get permission first from the songs owner. A good example of what can happen if you 'shift format' a copyrighted work is the old silent film 'Nosferatu.' The film makers didn't get permission to use the story of "Dracula" as written by Bram Stoker before making their movie and so Stoker's widow sued them in court. She won the case and an order was given to destroy all copies of the movie. We only have the movie today because someone somewhere missed a copy or two of the film.