Is a table of contents copyrightable? - Page 2

Dutchbook · 10-09-2017, 04:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

I do believe you still need tm which is for trademark on certain things and this thread has taken a rather silly turn.

Like the copyright notice, you don't actually need the trademark notice for it to have legal effect. They both serve only as reminders for the user that copyright/trademark is in effect.

However, I believe that in the US the (R) symbol is protected for use for registered trademarks only (ie. using it without the trademark being registered is illegal). This is not the case within the EU.

Hitch · 10-09-2017, 04:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

I do believe you still need tm which is for trademark on certain things and this thread has taken a rather silly turn.

Hooookay:

As Steve rightly pointed out, lawsuits are out of the question until the aforementioned publisher pays his $35 (or whatever it is, in his country of origin). In the US, no $35, no lawsuit, period.

Secondly, the copyright symbol is UTTERLY unnecessary, as is the copyright declaration inside the book, but it's tradition.

A copyright in the USA "vests" the moment you've completed writing the work. An idea--like an outline, or a TOC--is not a "work." It's a partial work at BEST. As someone else here said, it's the execution, the actual book--not the idea behind the book. As others posted, you can have the same ideas as other people, but your book won't be the same as his book, and so on. Honestly, I don't think that the Copyright Office would even accept a TOC/Outline, only.

Don't confuse REGISTRATION of the copyright for when it vests. It vests upon completion; but registration is necessary for a lawsuit to be FILED. (And there are other legal considerations, as well, vis-a-vis damages; if you can afford it, file it. Don't be fooled into nonsensical garbage like "the poor man's copyright" and all that bollix. Worthless as a basis for a lawsuit.)

Yes, you can trademark things like titles, characters, and so on. Hogwarts, Harry Potter, and the like. But the general idea--child wizard goes to special wizarding school--and the concomitant "Hero's Journey" is not copyrightable. If you write the book, that's copyrightable.

This is one of those topics (asserting copyrights, trying to prevent "friends" and the like from "stealing" your stuff) that tends to really get up my nose, not because of Arjaybee's friend, or his friend's grandiosity, etc., but we get this type of crap ALL the time. We get manuscripts submitted, so covered with watermarks, "confidential" all over it, and so on--the people sending them obviously don't realize that were I the nefarious sort, I could remove those with two clicks. OR, I get the ubiquitous "will you sign an NDA?," question, which for me, is a tooth-gritter, as the implication is pretty g*ddamn insulting. (Not to mention--I could count on one hand the number of books that I've seen, in a decade, of the 5K that I've quoted, that I'd remotely consider "worth" stealing, were I so inclined.) It's just sooooooo irritating, that people think that their ideas are soooooo valuable.

Not to mention--if they sent their precious manuscripts, to agents and publishers, did they mark those as "confidential?" Did they ask the agent or publisher for an NDA? Of course not--so it's only book formatters, apparently, that are utterly untrustworthy, even if they sent it out to 100 unknown agents on the Net, whose entire set of credentials amount to "has a website."

My bogglement about why authors don't understand the concept of "piracy:"

Spoiler:

And before anyone says "oh, but, did you see that story..." yes, of course, I've read the story--a few--about authors who discovered that their works had indeed been truly ripped-off; some wanna-be found their book, read it, loved it, and "homaged" it. In other words, rewrote the location, the scenes, the characters' names and appearance, and published it. Hell, may have even started out as a writing exercise, and then descended into crookery.

But FOLKS, that has been a real thing, forever. We can all recall seeing allegations like this, decades ago, long before Amazon. Before, it was harder for someone to do that, because basically, all books passed through gatekeepers--and now they don't. Now, we are dependent upon the "New Gatekeepers," aka, Amazon customers, to find them--and I would take heart, were I an author, that they ARE being found. That, to me, is the remarkable thing--not that it happens.

I mean, for the love of...how many romancey vampire books, came out, on the heels of Twifright? How many romancey werewolf books? (Not to mention, apparently, mountains of supernatural porn.) How many wizard books emerged, post-Harry? There is never a lack of emulators, once someting is successful, and the other truth is, when people discover a new niche, they want MORE in that niche, so in some ways, the emulators are serving a purpose. People discover Harry Dresden...and they want more urban paranormal mysteries. If there's only Harry, they're going to be disappointed after consuming his backlist of books. Ditto any other enormously successful series or genre or oeuvre by X.

Anyone here ever see that movie, "White House Down?" (I hope that I remembered the right title--there were two very similar movies released the same year, but I think it's this one--it's this or Olympus Has Fallen.) Apparently moderately successful, or something? (Had a sequel, I see.) It's "Under Siege," remade. No argument. You can watch US, and then watch WHD, and you can predict the scenes, the beats, even the DIALOGUE. Hell, if the WHD people didn't pay fees to the screenwriters, etc., for US, I'd be shocked. Same exact movie--different lead, different setting, but nearly damn verbatim.

I watched a movie the other night (sad for me, believe me) that was "Die Hard," in a different setting. {shrug}. Not as blatant a lift as "WHD," but damn near.

It is ever thus--not everybody has great ideas. Some folks' "great ideas" are reimaginings, (cough cough) of someone else's idea--great, mediocre, or otherwise.

:-)

Hitch

Cinisajoy · 10-09-2017, 05:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hitch

Hooookay:

As Steve rightly pointed out, lawsuits are out of the question until the aforementioned publisher pays his $35 (or whatever it is, in his country of origin). In the US, no $35, no lawsuit, period.

Secondly, the copyright symbol is UTTERLY unnecessary, as is the copyright declaration inside the book, but it's tradition.

A copyright in the USA "vests" the moment you've completed writing the work. An idea--like an outline, or a TOC--is not a "work." It's a partial work at BEST. As someone else here said, it's the execution, the actual book--not the idea behind the book. As others posted, you can have the same ideas as other people, but your book won't be the same as his book, and so on. Honestly, I don't think that the Copyright Office would even accept a TOC/Outline, only.

Don't confuse REGISTRATION of the copyright for when it vests. It vests upon completion; but registration is necessary for a lawsuit to be FILED. (And there are other legal considerations, as well, vis-a-vis damages; if you can afford it, file it. Don't be fooled into nonsensical garbage like "the poor man's copyright" and all that bollix. Worthless as a basis for a lawsuit.)

Yes, you can trademark things like titles, characters, and so on. Hogwarts, Harry Potter, and the like. But the general idea--child wizard goes to special wizarding school--and the concomitant "Hero's Journey" is not copyrightable. If you write the book, that's copyrightable.

This is one of those topics (asserting copyrights, trying to prevent "friends" and the like from "stealing" your stuff) that tends to really get up my nose, not because of Arjaybee's friend, or his friend's grandiosity, etc., but we get this type of crap ALL the time. We get manuscripts submitted, so covered with watermarks, "confidential" all over it, and so on--the people sending them obviously don't realize that were I the nefarious sort, I could remove those with two clicks. OR, I get the ubiquitous "will you sign an NDA?," question, which for me, is a tooth-gritter, as the implication is pretty g*ddamn insulting. (Not to mention--I could count on one hand the number of books that I've seen, in a decade, of the 5K that I've quoted, that I'd remotely consider "worth" stealing, were I so inclined.) It's just sooooooo irritating, that people think that their ideas are soooooo valuable.

Not to mention--if they sent their precious manuscripts, to agents and publishers, did they mark those as "confidential?" Did they ask the agent or publisher for an NDA? Of course not--so it's only book formatters, apparently, that are utterly untrustworthy, even if they sent it out to 100 unknown agents on the Net, whose entire set of credentials amount to "has a website."

My bogglement about why authors don't understand the concept of "piracy:"

Spoiler:

And before anyone says "oh, but, did you see that story..." yes, of course, I've read the story--a few--about authors who discovered that their works had indeed been truly ripped-off; some wanna-be found their book, read it, loved it, and "homaged" it. In other words, rewrote the location, the scenes, the characters' names and appearance, and published it. Hell, may have even started out as a writing exercise, and then descended into crookery.

But FOLKS, that has been a real thing, forever. We can all recall seeing allegations like this, decades ago, long before Amazon. Before, it was harder for someone to do that, because basically, all books passed through gatekeepers--and now they don't. Now, we are dependent upon the "New Gatekeepers," aka, Amazon customers, to find them--and I would take heart, were I an author, that they ARE being found. That, to me, is the remarkable thing--not that it happens.

I mean, for the love of...how many romancey vampire books, came out, on the heels of Twifright? How many romancey werewolf books? (Not to mention, apparently, mountains of supernatural porn.) How many wizard books emerged, post-Harry? There is never a lack of emulators, once someting is successful, and the other truth is, when people discover a new niche, they want MORE in that niche, so in some ways, the emulators are serving a purpose. People discover Harry Dresden...and they want more urban paranormal mysteries. If there's only Harry, they're going to be disappointed after consuming his backlist of books. Ditto any other enormously successful series or genre or oeuvre by X.

Anyone here ever see that movie, "White House Down?" (I hope that I remembered the right title--there were two very similar movies released the same year, but I think it's this one--it's this or Olympus Has Fallen.) Apparently moderately successful, or something? (Had a sequel, I see.) It's "Under Siege," remade. No argument. You can watch US, and then watch WHD, and you can predict the scenes, the beats, even the DIALOGUE. Hell, if the WHD people didn't pay fees to the screenwriters, etc., for US, I'd be shocked. Same exact movie--different lead, different setting, but nearly damn verbatim.

I watched a movie the other night (sad for me, believe me) that was "Die Hard," in a different setting. {shrug}. Not as blatant a lift as "WHD," but damn near.

It is ever thus--not everybody has great ideas. Some folks' "great ideas" are reimaginings, (cough cough) of someone else's idea--great, mediocre, or otherwise.

:-)

Hitch

Seen all 4 and yes they are similar.

Now, I have found some self-published non-fiction books that were blatantly copied either directly from someone else's website or book.
One dingbat's excuse was "he puts the information on his website so everyone can use it as they want". I looked later and got a 504 error when I looked for the book on Amazon.

The most popular ones to steal from appear to be Dave Ramsey, Steven Covey, (may have misspelled his first name), Deepak Chopra, Mark Victor Hansen (spelling), and Jack Canfield. Or on the last two, from their website.

crich70 · 10-09-2017, 05:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HarryT

Not true. In any country that's a signatory of the Berne Convention, copyright exists automatically (where it applies) and does not require a copyright notice. What you say was true at one time in the US, but has not been true for many, many years.

As far as I know it's the same here in the U.S.

Hitch · 10-09-2017, 05:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Seen all 4 and yes they are similar.

Now, I have found some self-published non-fiction books that were blatantly copied either directly from someone else's website or book.
One dingbat's excuse was "he puts the information on his website so everyone can use it as they want". I looked later and got a 504 error when I looked for the book on Amazon.

The most popular ones to steal from appear to be Dave Ramsey, Steven Covey, (may have misspelled his first name), Deepak Chopra, Mark Victor Hansen (spelling), and Jack Canfield. Or on the last two, from their website.

The White House Down thing is more than just similar. When we were watching it (at home, thank goodness I didn't pay actual ticket money for it), we got about...I don't know, 15 minutes into it, I turned to the other half and said "It's Under Siege!" For the remainder, I'd say "and now this will happen," and sure enough, it would happen. Even down to the bit with the helicopters, one nearly going off the roof (like the ship deck)...it was seriously like a beat-for-beat copy. Even bits of dialogue, albeit reworded, were the same.

It was ridiculous.

I'm not surprised that "Dare to be great!" people are copied. Hell, isn't that their entire premise? Copy me, do what I do, and you'll be great, too?

Hell, don't see how they can complain, really.

Hitch

crich70 · 10-09-2017, 05:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hitch

Hooookay:

As Steve rightly pointed out, lawsuits are out of the question until the aforementioned publisher pays his $35 (or whatever it is, in his country of origin). In the US, no $35, no lawsuit, period.

Secondly, the copyright symbol is UTTERLY unnecessary, as is the copyright declaration inside the book, but it's tradition.

A copyright in the USA "vests" the moment you've completed writing the work. An idea--like an outline, or a TOC--is not a "work." It's a partial work at BEST. As someone else here said, it's the execution, the actual book--not the idea behind the book. As others posted, you can have the same ideas as other people, but your book won't be the same as his book, and so on. Honestly, I don't think that the Copyright Office would even accept a TOC/Outline, only.

Don't confuse REGISTRATION of the copyright for when it vests. It vests upon completion; but registration is necessary for a lawsuit to be FILED. (And there are other legal considerations, as well, vis-a-vis damages; if you can afford it, file it. Don't be fooled into nonsensical garbage like "the poor man's copyright" and all that bollix. Worthless as a basis for a lawsuit.)

Yes, you can trademark things like titles, characters, and so on. Hogwarts, Harry Potter, and the like. But the general idea--child wizard goes to special wizarding school--and the concomitant "Hero's Journey" is not copyrightable. If you write the book, that's copyrightable.

This is one of those topics (asserting copyrights, trying to prevent "friends" and the like from "stealing" your stuff) that tends to really get up my nose, not because of Arjaybee's friend, or his friend's grandiosity, etc., but we get this type of crap ALL the time. We get manuscripts submitted, so covered with watermarks, "confidential" all over it, and so on--the people sending them obviously don't realize that were I the nefarious sort, I could remove those with two clicks. OR, I get the ubiquitous "will you sign an NDA?," question, which for me, is a tooth-gritter, as the implication is pretty g*ddamn insulting. (Not to mention--I could count on one hand the number of books that I've seen, in a decade, of the 5K that I've quoted, that I'd remotely consider "worth" stealing, were I so inclined.) It's just sooooooo irritating, that people think that their ideas are soooooo valuable.

Not to mention--if they sent their precious manuscripts, to agents and publishers, did they mark those as "confidential?" Did they ask the agent or publisher for an NDA? Of course not--so it's only book formatters, apparently, that are utterly untrustworthy, even if they sent it out to 100 unknown agents on the Net, whose entire set of credentials amount to "has a website."

My bogglement about why authors don't understand the concept of "piracy:"

Spoiler:

And before anyone says "oh, but, did you see that story..." yes, of course, I've read the story--a few--about authors who discovered that their works had indeed been truly ripped-off; some wanna-be found their book, read it, loved it, and "homaged" it. In other words, rewrote the location, the scenes, the characters' names and appearance, and published it. Hell, may have even started out as a writing exercise, and then descended into crookery.

But FOLKS, that has been a real thing, forever. We can all recall seeing allegations like this, decades ago, long before Amazon. Before, it was harder for someone to do that, because basically, all books passed through gatekeepers--and now they don't. Now, we are dependent upon the "New Gatekeepers," aka, Amazon customers, to find them--and I would take heart, were I an author, that they ARE being found. That, to me, is the remarkable thing--not that it happens.

I mean, for the love of...how many romancey vampire books, came out, on the heels of Twifright? How many romancey werewolf books? (Not to mention, apparently, mountains of supernatural porn.) How many wizard books emerged, post-Harry? There is never a lack of emulators, once someting is successful, and the other truth is, when people discover a new niche, they want MORE in that niche, so in some ways, the emulators are serving a purpose. People discover Harry Dresden...and they want more urban paranormal mysteries. If there's only Harry, they're going to be disappointed after consuming his backlist of books. Ditto any other enormously successful series or genre or oeuvre by X.

Anyone here ever see that movie, "White House Down?" (I hope that I remembered the right title--there were two very similar movies released the same year, but I think it's this one--it's this or Olympus Has Fallen.) Apparently moderately successful, or something? (Had a sequel, I see.) It's "Under Siege," remade. No argument. You can watch US, and then watch WHD, and you can predict the scenes, the beats, even the DIALOGUE. Hell, if the WHD people didn't pay fees to the screenwriters, etc., for US, I'd be shocked. Same exact movie--different lead, different setting, but nearly damn verbatim.

I watched a movie the other night (sad for me, believe me) that was "Die Hard," in a different setting. {shrug}. Not as blatant a lift as "WHD," but damn near.

It is ever thus--not everybody has great ideas. Some folks' "great ideas" are reimaginings, (cough cough) of someone else's idea--great, mediocre, or otherwise.

:-)

Hitch

Two examples of reimaginings are the stories told about Robin Hood and King Arthur among others. People told and retold the stories over and over sometimes putting a new spin on the tales as they were told i'm sure. Of course back then few could read and even fewer could afford to buy a book plus the audience was limited to the local villagers.

Cinisajoy · 10-09-2017, 05:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hitch

The White House Down thing is more than just similar. When we were watching it (at home, thank goodness I didn't pay actual ticket money for it), we got about...I don't know, 15 minutes into it, I turned to the other half and said "It's Under Siege!" For the remainder, I'd say "and now this will happen," and sure enough, it would happen. Even down to the bit with the helicopters, one nearly going off the roof (like the ship deck)...it was seriously like a beat-for-beat copy. Even bits of dialogue, albeit reworded, were the same.

It was ridiculous.

I'm not surprised that "Dare to be great!" people are copied. Hell, isn't that their entire premise? Copy me, do what I do, and you'll be great, too?

Hell, don't see how they can complain, really.

Hitch

Oh Hitch,
As to the similarities, there were a couple of minor differences.
There is only one Steven Seagal. Though Vin Diesel and Jason Statham are close.

I didn't mean copying as in paraphrasing, that I am fine with. I mean copying as in copying word for word.
Can't remember them off hand but yes the 7 habits are good ideas.
If you want to write a book about them, more power to you. Just don't copy them exactly and try to tell me they are all your ideas. At least show a minute of creativity.

issybird · 10-09-2017, 06:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by crich70

As far as I know it's the same here in the U.S.

The U.S. is a party to the Berne Convention.

HarryT · 10-09-2017, 06:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by crich70

As far as I know it's the same here in the U.S.

Of course it is. The US is a Berne signatory

.

Hitch · 10-09-2017, 08:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by crich70

Two examples of reimaginings are the stories told about Robin Hood and King Arthur among others. People told and retold the stories over and over sometimes putting a new spin on the tales as they were told i'm sure. Of course back then few could read and even fewer could afford to buy a book plus the audience was limited to the local villagers.

Well, first of all, we're talking about legends, that were carried verbally before they were written down (although there's argument about Geoffrey versus La Morte d'Arthur, yadda, but we don't need to digress on that). It's hardly surprising that oral legend would adulterate. That's not the same thing as lifting a story, in toto, and mooching it. (IMHO). Not in today's era, when it's not even remotely "accidental," as in, you heard some story someplace, metabolized it, and think you came up with something new.

Reimagining, I can take. Outright recycling or regurgitation is something else altogether.

Hitch

SteveEisenberg · 10-09-2017, 09:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HarryT

The US is a Berne signatory

.

The US Congress passed a law, in 1988, saying that, but subsequent legislation didn't fully follow what our signature pledged.

For example, in fifteen months, books published in 1923 come into the US public domain, even if Berne says otherwise. One example is The Murder on the Links, by Agatha Christie. According to the detailed precis of US copyright law here, the fact that Agatha Christie will only have been deceased for 43 years, while Berne has a Death + 50 clause, will make no difference.

Googling this issue a bit, it sounds like Britain will be able to successfully sue the US, in the World Trade Organization, if The Murder on the Links is openly put on US web sites without payment to the copyright owner, and the US government does nothing to stop it. We'll see if that happens, but I doubt it will.

P.S. Several posters previously predicted that US law will change to block our planned January 1, 2019 public domain day. I doubt that also, but, again, we'll see.

P.P.S. I apologize to the writers of Writers' Corner for having slightly hijacked the thread in a reader-focused direction.

arjaybe · 10-09-2017, 09:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

P.P.S. I apologize to the writers of Writers' Corner for having slightly hijacked the thread in a reader-focused direction.

Don't worry about it on my account. I'm enjoying this.

JSWolf · 10-10-2017, 09:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hitch

I mean, for the love of...how many romancey vampire books, came out, on the heels of Twifright? How many romancey werewolf books? (Not to mention, apparently, mountains of supernatural porn.) How many wizard books emerged, post-Harry? There is never a lack of emulators, once someting is successful, and the other truth is, when people discover a new niche, they want MORE in that niche, so in some ways, the emulators are serving a purpose. People discover Harry Dresden...and they want more urban paranormal mysteries. If there's only Harry, they're going to be disappointed after consuming his backlist of books. Ditto any other enormously successful series or genre or oeuvre by X.

Don't forget all the 50 Shades of Rubbish clones that came out.

Dr. Drib · 10-10-2017, 11:35 AM

I like that title.

Can I use it?

HarryT · 10-10-2017, 11:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

I like that title.

Can I use it?

Ask yourself this question: "Would the immortal Dale M. Courtney use it?", and then act accordingly

.

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10-10-2017, 11:35 AM	#29
Dr. Drib Grand Sorcerer Posts: 44,748 Karma: 55645321 Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Peru Device: Kindle: Oasis 3, Voyage WiFi; Kobo: Libra 2, Aura One	I like that title. Can I use it?

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