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As an author and former journalist, I thought I was pretty well versed in the fair-use defense. I thought that any short quotation from a copyrighted work is p
by jawns 11y ago
As an author and former journalist, I thought I was pretty well versed in the fair-use defense. I thought that any short quotation from a copyrighted work is protected under fair use, and I always assumed that a single line from a song would easily qualify as a short quotation.
But this article (and the article it links to, "Never quote a rock lyric in a book unless you're rich") suggest that you can be held legally liable for quoting even a single line from a song without permission.
That definitely seems to go against the spirit of fair use.
- ChuckMcM 11y agoThat challenge with Fair Use, and always has been, that it is not defined. Not to any legal standard, so every use where the rights holder and the user disagree over whether or not it was fair use, gets litigated. And unfortunately there isn't a lot of definition in the case law that helps.
- level3 11y agoA short length is just one of the criteria used for determining fair use. In general, it is necessary but not sufficient.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y agoLength is irrelevant. What matters is context - specifically a vague and nebulous dividing line between public service vs for-profit - and distinctiveness. People have been sued for using very short but recognisable samples. In extreme cases some artists have negotiated a slice of the publishing just for contributing a sample. (One of my favourite extreme examples is the Prodigy's Firestarter from 1997, where an entire team of writers and producers negotiated a co-writing credit solely for the use of a very short sample of a woman yelling "Hey!")