"You Can't, Like, Own A Potato, Man . . ."

It stands to reason if you want $3.99 for your ebook and $6.95 for the paperback, you publish this on the flyleaf of your book:

I do not pretend to understand the ins and outs of copyright law. But this is pretty clear: You cannot copyright an idea.

What’s an idea, you might ask?

I have no idea. The copyright office doesn’t offer a definition. The copyright office does say this (same link as above):

How do I protect my idea?

Copyright does not protect ideas, concepts, systems, or methods of doing something. You may express your ideas in writing or drawings and claim copyright in your description, but be aware that copyright will not protect the idea itself as revealed in your written or artistic work.

 This site is a bit gimmicky, but the guy who wrote it purports to be a patent attorney, and he expresses the difference between an idea and a patentatble (or by extension, copyrightable) item:

Ideas are a dime a dozen. What is valuable is not the idea that it would be wonderful to have this or that functionality, but rather the valuable piece to the puzzle is how to specifically provide that functionality you identify.

There’s so much snake oil on the Internet when it comes to patents and copyright (imagine that) it’s hard to sort the truth from the marketing gimmicks.

Yet here is another explanation that mirrors the one from above.

Paraphrased: Two people coming up with the same idea and writing articles based on said idea aren’t copyists or plagiarists for using the same idea. If one mirrored wording from the other’s article, that’s plagiarism. Writing on the same topic is not.

So the guy who put this anti-copyright disclaimer in his book is half right. You can’t own an idea. But I’ll wager if someone went around handing out free copies of his book – even if it was meant as flattery – he might have issues with that.

Also, copyright law does not restrict the free flow of ideas, as ideas cannot be copyrighted. Copyright protects authors, such as this one, from anyone copying his work and selling it as their own. To think otherwise is to think you can put your dirty feet on the table in proximity to someone’s food, and then argue that it’s not really their food.

Respecting Copyright

Here’s more evidence why the Internet can’t have nice things.

And by “can’t have” and “nice things,” I don’t mean to side with those using Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes comic strip characters without his permission, whether the resultant art is good, bad, or mediocre.

 

Techdirt is all aflame over Universal Uclick/Andrews and McMeel’s polite copyright infringement notice sent to an artist who was taking the Calvin and Hobbes characters from the famed comic strip and putting them in “real photos.” (Example at the TechDirt site.)

 

What makes Techdirt’s arugment so laughable is that they compare the takedown of the Calvin and Hobbes artwork with the production of the “Garfield Minus Garfield” comic strips, in which Garfield creator Jim Davis embraced that concept of the strip and urged his publishers to cooperate with the creator – effectively giving the creator of the strip permission to move forward with the project. There is no such cooperative urge on the side of Watterson and his publishers.

 

Creators of derivative works – ranging from Garfield Minus Garfield to the parody songs of Weird Al Yankovic – have varying bits of copyright law they can run to for protection – but I admire the approaches of the Garfield Minus Garfield creator and of Yankovic, who always seeks permission from the artists to be parodied before he proceeds. He could clearly proceed without permission, but does not do so out of respect for those he parodies. 

Seeking forgiveness rather than permission might make for a good saying, but it hardly works when you get copyright takedown notices. 

To his credit, the creator of the Calvin and Hobbes art mashups is now going about things the right way, per his blog.

This is a real concern for creative types. I myself need to pursue the use of songs and song lyrics in two books I have written before I proceed much further with getting them published, whether through an agent or on my own. I don’t have the money it would likely take to get a license to use the works if such a license is required, and will have to re-tool my approach – but I won’t move forward knowing I could violate copyright law. Because I wouldn’t want someone to turn around and do the same to me for something I’d created.

A Tiny Crack Appears in the Fair Use Law

Wired.com reports that a federal judge has ruled that in one particular case the posting of an entire newspaper article – including headline – by a poster hoping to start a discussion on the nation’s financial crisis falls under the umbrella of the Fair Use doctrine.

Cautions abound, however. Fair use is still determined on a case-by-case basis; what defense works in one case may not work in another. This demonstrates the capriciousness of the fair use law, and also the caution bloggers and other Internet denizens must exercise when citing fair use as a reason for using another’s creative media without prior authorization.

US District Judge Philip Pro said Righthaven, a Las Vegas-based “copyright litigation factory,” per Wired, and the Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper didn’t provide ample evidence to show that Wayne Hoehn’s posting of a Review-Journal editorial on a medjacksports.com discussion post drew enough eyeballs away from the original article to damage the plaintiffs financially. Pro also ruled Hoehn used the posting for a noncommercial purpose.

This is a significant case in that the fair use law has never defined how much of an article may be quoted even for noncommercial, educational or commentary purposes. And though that will still be decided on a case-by-case basis, that an entire article was allowed to be used under the fair use law in this instance is significant and could set a precedent for other jurists who are weary of the law’s vagaries.

Still, caution is the better part of valor here. One ruling won’t make the law’s capriciousness disappear.