Dec 28 2008
Why Should I Give a Hoot about Copyright, Anyway?
This isn’t the post I’d originally planned as my next entry, but this seemed like an appropriate time to write this down. That’s the nice thing about blogging-you can adapt more quickly than when you are writing a book.
I had a visitor today, and the conversation got around to what I did for a living. Since I work from home, this is a question I am used to being asked. But since my visitor was genuinely interested in what a permissions editor does, I explained by showing her some of the legal documents that pass through my hands. After she left, what stuck with me most was the thought that this college-educated, intelligent woman had no idea that permission needed to be asked whenever you wanted to use someone else’s material in your own work, even if what you were quoting was no more than a definition in a dictionary. Oh, she knew about plagiarism, and that it was wrong, but she had no idea that there was a procedure involved in obtaining permission to use even simple things.
I mainly work with publishers of college textbooks, and the publishers are aware that obtaining permissions is serious business. Individuals may not always understand the details, but in general, employees of publishing houses know that permission must be obtained before someone else’s work can be used. Unfortunately, the writers of the textbooks, although they know permissions need to be obtained, usually have no idea what rights to ask for or how to go about asking for the rights, and often don’t understand why they cannot use this “great article” when permission has been denied. What I find even sadder is that the authors of many articles used in these textbooks have no idea that they can request money for use of their material. Since the publisher hires me as a freelance permissions editor, my obligation is to the publisher. When someone grants all rights for this edition and all future editions of a textbook, and doesn’t request a fee, I cringe. On behalf of the publisher, I gratefully accept the largesse. But sometimes, especially when I know that the person granting the permission could really use the extra funds, I do bend the rules slightly.
My goal for this blog, then, is to simplify for an ordinary person the concept and process of asking for and/or granting permission to use written material. I’m not a lawyer, and won’t get into complex legal issues, but there is no reason an ordinary person can’t use copyright law to their advantage.
You still think this doesn’t apply to an ordinary person? Here’s an actual example. I’ve omitted names for the sake of privacy. I was working on the 5th edition of a text, and as part of my job I track down copyright owners. The article in question was written in 1986 for a well-known women’s magazine. This particular magazine has always been good about putting me in touch with article writers, but this time the magazine no longer had contact information about the writer. I spent some time each week searching for the writer even though the article had been used in the previous edition of the text without permission. (Thanks to the Internet, searching is so much easier today than it was years ago, but even today it is sometimes necessary to use an article without permission. This is permissible as long as a paper trail is kept showing that the copyright owner was searched for diligently.)
It took about three months of intermittent searching, but I did track down the writer of the article. The woman was now 91 years old and living in a nursing home. When I explained why I was contacting her, she was glad to sign the paperwork granting permission. And when I explained to her that she could get paid for use of her work, she was so excited. The amount wasn’t much, but in her circumstances, it was a blessing. This was an ordinary person who earned money for work she had written twenty years ago.
© 2008 Anne Wallingford
