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A NOTE FOR AUTHORS ON
THE USE OF COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL
- General information
since you as author guarantee in your contract with the Press
that you will not use copyrighted materials without permission,
a manuscript received in final form for publication is assumed
to be cleared for use of all material from other sources, with
written permission and payment of any necessary fees.
However,
use of short quotations in scholarly books for accurate
citation
of authority or for criticism, review, or evaluation is regarded
by law as "fair use," and obtaining permission for such use
is not necessary. Authors should therefore save themselves
and publishers needless correspondence by trying to ascertain
if their use of copyrighted material comes under the category
of "fair use." There are four factors that Section 107 of
the Copyright Act specifies as determining whether any given
use is "fair" or not: (1) "the purpose and character of the
use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature
or is for nonprofit educational purposes" (that the Press
is a nonprofit publisher helps here, but if you receive a
royalty on sales, then that can weigh against a finding of
"fair use"); (2) "the nature of the copyrighted work" (use
of "expressive" material like fiction or poetry is less likely
to be "fair" than use of material that is more "factual" in
nature); (3) "the amount and substantiality of the portion
used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole" (important
here is not only the "amount" used in relation to what is
considered to be the "whole" work, but also the significance
or "substantiality" of the material used, even if relatively
short, if it contains the core or heart of the work's substance);
and (4) "the effect of the use upon the potential market for
or value of the copyrighted work" (here it is not only direct
competition with the original work as published that is of
concern, but also the potential market for licensing use of
parts of the original work). Another key point to bear in
mind, also highlighted in Section 107, is whether ot not the
work used is "unpublished"; "fair use" applies to unpublished
materials, but in a much more restricted way than for published
works. If in doubt about how to conduct this four-factor
analysis
for materials you want to reproduce in your book from copyrighted
sources, consult the editor of your book before writing the
copyright owner. The one category of work that can be used
freely in any amount by a U.S. author is any work of the
U.S.
Government (but not necessarily the work of foreign governments).
Whether
a work is still protected by copyright or is "in the public domain" (and
hence free to use without permission) is governed by a
complex set of laws that have come into effect from the
passage of the 1976 Copyright Act on to the recent past,
when
at the very end of 1998 a new law extended the duration of
copyright protection for another twenty years. This chart http://www.unc.edu/%7Eunclng/public-d.htm conveniently summarizes the rules now determining what is,
or is not, protected by copyright. If you have any trouble
applying these rules to any given materials you want to reproduce
in your book, please consult your editor.
Even when permission
is not required, it is a matter of courtesy to the original
source and a convenience to the reader of your book to give
a full citation indicating the source of the quoted material.
- When Permission is
Required
(1) When you reproduce
a complete unit, whether it be a poem, letter, short story,
article, complete chapter or section of a book, map, chart,
or other illustrative material. In the case of poetry, permission
is required to reprint more than one line of a short poem
which is still under copyright, or any words or music of a
popular song.
(2) When material
is quoted for its own sake no matter what the length, as in
an anthology of readings. The publisher of the material quoted
in this instance especially is justified in requiring a fee.
For this reason, when writing the publisher for permission,
you should give the exact location of the material requested
and a rough estimate of the number of words.
(3) When quoting
from your own work previously published in copyrighted magazines
or journals (or any other serial publication or collective
work) but, for works published after January 1, 1978, only
if you have signed a written agreement transferring copyright
to the publisher (for otherwise the copyright remains in your
possession and permission is not needed.)
(4) When making
arrangements for publication of a chapter or section of your
manuscript in a scholarly journal, after acceptance of your
work for publication here. In this case you should clear your
plan with your editor, who will advise you on what you need
to do in order to keep the status of copyright ownership clear.
Please
be sure, whenever you seek permission, to request "nonexclusive world rights in
the English language" and if a publisher cannot give you world
rights, ask for information about other organizations that
control
the rights in other parts of the world, particularly the British
Commonwealth.
Permission need not
be obtained for material that is not a direct quotation, but
material paraphrased or summarized from another source should
of course be clearly indicated as such (that is, it should be
kept clearly demarcated from the author's own statements and
credited to the original source). For an unusually extensive
summary, paraphrase, or digest, especially if used for its own
sake and not merely for criticism or illustration, the permission
of the original publisher is required.
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