COMM 150: A quick-and-dirty guide to copyright law for journalism students

It pays to know something about copyright.

For example, country singer Willie Nelson sold his rights to a song called "Family Bible" for $50 when he was just starting out in Nashville. He needed the money right away. But over the long run, he got screwed blue. Don't laugh. The song has been worth millions in royalties over the years.

But not for Willie Nelson.

Let's give it a working definition: "Copyright" boils down to this, it's the right to make a copy of something you created. Most of the stuff that most of us write - that would include me, by the way - isn't worth enough money to copyright. Sad, but true. Worrying too much about copyright, e.g. registering your rhymed verse about Aunt Gertrude that begins "Roses are red, violets are blue / Aunt Gertrude rocks, / Through and through" with the U.S. government can be interpreted as the sign of an amateur.

For an unusually clear introduction to the whole copyright schmear, go to the Washington State University copyright page at http://publishing.wsu.edu/copyright/ ...

Some points for writers (that would be us), distilled from Washington State and elsewhere:a

• You don't have to register a work with the Library of Congress anymore. You just publish it. "Publish," by the way, means something different in copyright law than it does in libel law. In this case, it is "the distribution of copies or phonorecords of a work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending. " Job tip: Little inconsistencies like that make work for lawyers!
  
• It's still a good idea to register with the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress. Its Web site at http://www.copyright.gov/ tells how.
  
• Books should be registered with a company called Bowker, which issues them an International Standard Book Number (ISBN) and gets them listed in an authoritative catalog of "Books In Print" available at most libraries (including Becker) and on line.
  
• When you sell an article to a magazine, they buy the right to copy it unless you specifically negotiate secondary rights. If you write something on the job, the law assumes you assign all rights to your employer unless you negotiate a more favorable arrangement. That arrangement is called "work for hire," and it's what most professionals are bound by.

Some points for users of copyrighted material. Copyright infringement, unlike plagiarism, is a violation of the law. It is similar to plagiarism in that it consists of the use of another person's intellectual property without permission. It is different in that you can be sued if you violate copyright. [Also see the footnote about fair use and plagiarism below.] The practices you learned in school about avoiding plagiarism, however, will help you avoid infringement. Giving credit, not quoting too much, etc. Here are some things I learned on the job:

• Be very, very careful with the words to songs. Best bet: Always seek permission to quote song lyrics, and never quote more than two or three lines. stuff. Musicians and recording companies are most vigilant about protecting their copyright because the words to a hit song, obviously (think about it), have value.
  
• If you're publishing to the Internet, for example blogging, be very careful. (Are you beginning to see a pattern here?) You can link to other pages without permission, but if you want to copy their stuff, email them and obtain permission first.
  
• Seek permission for anything you use. See the pattern?
  
• Some stuff is copyright free. Examples: U.S. government documents (but not necessarily state government, so be careful). An interesting development in Web publishing is Creative Commons licensing. It's not really mainstream yet, but it's especially useful for bloggers. There's a post on how I use Creative Commons on the Mackerel Wrapper for March 31, 2009.

Two big exceptions for journalism students fall under the legal doctrine of fair use (which is not the same as fair comment in libel law). Fair use, according to Wikipedia, "... allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, such as use for scholarship or review." And covering the news.

So if you're writing a review of a published work for publication, you can quote from it under the doctrine of fair use. (You can say mean and nasty things about it under the doctrine of fair comment, but that's another issue.) Practically everything you write for class falls under fair use, because it's considered scholarship. But if you publish your old term paper, you have to secure permission for extended quotation, pictures and other intellectual property.

Footnote on plagiarism. Quoted from Wikipedia's discussion of fair use: "While plagiarism and copyright violation are related matters—-both can, at times, involve failure to properly credit sources—-they are not identical. Copyright law protects exact expression, not ideas: for example, a distant paraphrase that lays out the same argument as a copyrighted essay is in little danger of being deemed a copyright violation, but it could still be plagiarism. On the other hand, one can plagiarize even a work that is not protected by copyright, such as trying to pass off a line from Shakespeare as one's own. Plagiarism—using someone's words, ideas, images, etc. without acknowledgment—is a matter of professional ethics. Copyright is a matter of law. Citing sources generally prevents accusations of plagiarism, but is not a sufficient defense against copyright violations (otherwise, anyone could legally reprint an entire copyrighted book just by citing who wrote it)."