What is considered "fair-use" and what isnt when writing an ebook?

[Ashley Gable]

Hello,

I am in the middle of putting together a membership site that works like a home study course ie content overtime for a specific time.

And some of the techniques presented (not IM related, but personal development) involve using NLP and a bunch of other therapy, personal development, behavioral understanding information. I got to wondering if I would be able to use these. Would I be allowed to present them to my members to use?

And now because of that I have gone on this ridiculously long mission of finding out the legal side of researching and compiling an "Educational" book that, although written by me, will contain 95% other peoples ideas, techniques, research statistics etc.

I do write down all the sources of my info, and plan to cite them for the credit. But how much can I use?

Can I present NLP patterns, therapists techniques and other research I find and not get sued?

I know that it is okay to look at other peoples work for inspiration or comparing, because on Jeff Johnsons videos on youtube about infocreation, he talks about buying the top clickbank ebooks and top amazon books on your subject to get an idea of what they have done and what you can do better.

I also understand that if no one was allowed to cite or use other peoples work an research than most of the books out there would not have been written, but how do you go about it legally and respectfully to the original "idea" person?

Thanks for your help (I would like everyones input, but if you have an authority in this issue could you please tell me that you do in your post, as it will make it easier to know who to trust!)

[Ashley Gable]

anyone? Maybe someone with a little writing background?

thanks

[LibertyUnc]

Well, I have answers, but my methods depend heavily upon whether or not you are ready to hear them.

Before I say anything, here is some background...
...I started studying law about four years ago now, my hunt beginning with delving into our onerous tax laws. I spent countless hours researching and my search spread out into a lot of other areas of law. While I have not dealt directly with the area you speak of, what I say I know to be true. That being said, if you do not KNOW the law, then you walk on thin ice no matter what you are doing in relation to it as you have to trust a paid agent of the state to defend you from another paid agent of the state...and that almost always ends up as a test of the depth of ones pockets (or failure if you are trying to defend yourself from the state).

So, here is what I see...

If you are copying what others have said verbatim:
You might soon find yourself under attack by those you have copied under copyright laws unless you are careful to use no more than what is considered to be "fair use".

Fair use is a slippery slope type of law, but when done properly you can use a certain amount of what others have said, especially when attributing what they have said properly.

You can actually copy entire reports and books and prevail, but you have to absolutely know the law, know how it works, know how it ensnares, and keep your eye on the ball when defending...and you have to do it yourself unless you have very deep pockets. Difficult, but entirely possible due to the nature of damages and strict proof.

If you are simply giving your amalgamation of the perceived facts which you have come away with by reading other authors and thinking upon what they have said:

Anyone who tries to sue you over such and has not concretely registered their methodology via patent can be easily fended off, though you will still be paying lawyers rate to do so in many cases.

The safest way is to be sure that you use no more than short quotes from any particular author and write things in your own words. This will be the least likely path to inviting a lawsuit against you.

Most people are not going to bother trying to sue you if you go this latter route unless they are representing a massive corporation out to prevent any and all competition.

The sad fact is that you can be sued no matter what.

• Microsoft can file suit against you for talking about windows in a house.
• Apple can file suit against you for talking about fruit.
• I can file suit against you just because I feel like it.

If I were to do what you are doing (and yes, I have), I would do one of three things...

1. Have a lawyer go over it with you before you start to sell...very expensive and probably not of much use unless you can afford a good lawyer (good lawyers don't charge 5k just to speak with you).
2. Take the time to research basic law and then copyright law. If you use normal sources, this could take you years and you still might not comprehend it properly.
3. Do your best not to simply copy others, put forward your final thoughts, limit your use of direct quotes, and attribute the quotes you do make. Perhaps stick a note at the end that if you are a quoted author and don't like your quote being used, to contact you so that you can discuss the matter.

"Fair use" differs by jurisdiction. It also differs by status. A free man can do a lot more than a U.S. Citizen or a U.K. Citizen or a Citizen of the State of Idaho. And what might be fine at the federal level might be "illegal" at the state level.

If you think there is such a thing as "the law", then you should go with option 1 or 3 above. I'd personally go with three, but we must each judge our own best interests against possible repercussions.

Sorry if this seems like rambling to you, but 99.9% of people don't even know what law is...and so talking about it to people I do not know is a bit hard for me. Real law is tragically simple...but what we are trained to believe is law is tragically complex.

Hope that helps at least a little.

Disclaimer: Any lawyer who comes along and wants to claim that this is legal advice is free to try. I enjoy a good game of paper soldiers. =P

[mikemcmillan]

Hi Ashley, I understand your concerns. I'm not an attorney and I'm not giving legal advice--just some thoughts. I'm sure you have visited the Copyright Office web site. The links at the bottom and the quote come from that site.

First, no one can tell you whether you can get sued if you use certain material. The copyright holder may sue you even if you think you have done everything right.

There is a "fair use" doctrine" but I question if it applies to your situation. I am paraphrasing--you should visit the copyright office and check out Title 17 U.S.Code.

Small quotes and excerpts can be used in for some purposes. But there are specific cases for this. The excerpt should be relatively small compared to the work as a whole. If you are using entire articles, publications, reports, etc., then you are not using relatively small excerpts. Citing references does not remove you from copyright issues.

Also they look at other factors such as if you are using the material for academic (not for profit purposes) as opposed to "for profit" purposes. It seems to me that you intend on using entire works (whatever they are), you are doing it for profit, and it is not for the purpose of critique, reporting, or analysis.

Another thing that is looked as is how your use of the material would impact future sales of the original publication. If using material on a subscription site might be construed by the original author as interfering, or perhaps reducing the marketability of the material from their end--I would see that as being very problematic.

I guess what I am saying is that if the materials you put up on your site are your original works, and you use brief quotes or excerpts, that might be one thing--but using almost entirely other people's works to profit from--well, to be honest--I would see that as being problematic.

Let's put it this way. If I had written a small 2-page paper on some topic, and I found it posted on your site without my permission--I would have an issue with that. Now, if you wrote and got permission to use it and I agreed, that would be fine. But based on what you described I would walk very lightly as I think you might be crossing the line. However, without seeing what you are doing it's hard to tell. Be careful!

U.S. Copyright Office - Can I Use Someone Else's Work? Can Someone Else Use Mine? (FAQ)

How much of someone else's work can I use without getting permission?
Under the fair use doctrine of the U.S. copyright statute, it is permissible to use limited portions of a work including quotes, for purposes such as commentary, criticism, news reporting, and scholarly reports. There are no legal rules permitting the use of a specific number of words, a certain number of musical notes, or percentage of a work. Whether a particular use qualifies as fair use depends on all the circumstances. See FL 102, Fair Use, and Circular 21, Reproductions of Copyrighted Works by Educators and Librarians

[LibertyUnc]

Originally Posted by mikemcmillan

U.S. Copyright Office - Can I Use Someone Else's Work? Can Someone Else Use Mine? (FAQ)

How much of someone else's work can I use without getting permission?
Under the fair use doctrine of the U.S. copyright statute, it is permissible to use limited portions of a work including quotes, for purposes such as commentary, criticism, news reporting, and scholarly reports. There are no legal rules permitting the use of a specific number of words, a certain number of musical notes, or percentage of a work. Whether a particular use qualifies as fair use depends on all the circumstances. See FL 102, Fair Use, and Circular 21, Reproductions of Copyrighted Works by Educators and Librarians

It is worth noting exactly what they are saying in the underlined part.

"There are no legal rules permitting..."

Is it unlawful to do that which is not specifically permitted?
If so, where is the law permitting one to breathe?
Or the law permitting you to have your heart beat?

Legal does not mean lawful, and vice versa.

If you don't know the difference between the two words, be sure to tread carefully.

As long as you act in good faith and invite offended authors to contact you, you should be fine if you keep quotes short. The best route is to simply use your own words.

You are free to have ideas and convey them. Just because others had them first does not mean that you cannot speak them. Were that so, there would have been no new writings in the last thousand years...if not longer.

[Virtual Banker]

The above good posters gave excellent answers.
A good baseline if you don't want to get too complicated about it is.....

<not legal advice>
When you are writing up your course, don't have the other books open., but work it off your memory.

In this way the techniques will come through in your own language and style and thus be yours. </not legal advice>

[LibertyUnc]

Go with Virtual Bankers advice...quick, concise, and exactly the right way to do it with minimal likelyhood of some claimed author (or their lawyer) smelling money in the water.

I'm far too wordy...*sigh*

[Martin Luxton]

If you really need your members to know about a particular work in more detail there is a simple solution.

"A N Other argues that NLP works best when the victim is in a state of . . .

To get a full understanding of his position read this book (Amazon affiliate link)"

Author gets credit and possible sale. You get possible affiliate commission and avoid legal trouble.

Martin

[Paul Coleman]

...an "Educational" book that, although written by me, will contain 95% other peoples ideas, techniques, research statistics etc.

Don't you want to "make it your own"? I mean, really digest the techniques of others, put those techniques to work, and then innovate. Find your own way, find your own techniques. Go beyond what you learn.

Paul

[stevenh512]

Originally Posted by LibertyUnc

IIs it unlawful to do that which is not specifically permitted?

It is if there are other laws prohibiting it.. for example, copying of copyrighted works. You need permission (either by law or from the copyright holder) to legally do that. Unfortunately there's no real "line in the sand" on what constitutes fair use and what doesn't. Best bet is to consult with an attorney, and if possible, maybe the original copyright holder whose work you want to use (if they consider it "fair use" odds are they aren't going to sue you or slap you with a DMCA notice for using it).

[LibertyUnc]

Originally Posted by stevenh512

It is if there are other laws prohibiting it.. for example, copying of copyrighted works. You need permission (either by law or from the copyright holder) to legally do that. Unfortunately there's no real "line in the sand" on what constitutes fair use and what doesn't. Best bet is to consult with an attorney, and if possible, maybe the original copyright holder whose work you want to use (if they consider it "fair use" odds are they aren't going to sue you or slap you with a DMCA notice for using it).

That is not entirely true, legally speaking. There are plenty of perfectly lawful ways to copy copyrighted works. Most of them have to do with status. I'd say that if you consult an attorney you will get about half of the truth...perhaps less. Not that they willfully lie to you in most cases, but that they simply do not fully know what they are talking about.

My main point is that if you consider statute and such as real law, then the law is unknowable to everyone...so the best you can hope for is to use good common sense and avoid running foul of those who might use it against you. Distill what you know, share it, and no one can rightfully claim that you were stealing their works.

[Bev Clement]

I'm answering this from the UK. I was commissioned by a publishing house in London to ghost write a book for them.

Accept as fact. The author wanted to quote from various sources in his book. The publishing house had no problem but we did have to not only say the author was xxxx, and the quote comes from chapter x, and page y.

The author wanted to quote from books which had been published originally in either the UK or the US.

Every publishing house had to be contacted, to find out what was classed as fair use. Every author had specified that a set number of words could be used, and that it had to be less than a certain %.

That is how it works in major publishing houses and a good way of ensuring you can use the material in your course.

[Adrian Cooper]

Originally Posted by AshleyAA

anyone? Maybe someone with a little writing background?

thanks

I am a best selling published author, and I consider fair use to be a few sentences or a paragraph or so. More if it is for a review.

The most important factor however is to quote your sources.

If you quote and credit your sources you will most likely be fine, but if you steal from a book you will most likely, sooner or later, be facing the consequences.

If in doubt contact your source and ask for permission.

I have spent too much time protecting my copyrights. Scribd seems a popular place to post entire books that were either eBooks or scanned paper books - I have nailed plenty of pirates there as well as other places.

I actually welcome people valueing from all my work, and do not ask anything in return if I am asked first - I never, ever refuse - but if my books get ripped off, I always get the person involved.

Keep in mind that my best seller is 560 pages and took me 2 years to write, edit and publish.

In summary - play it straight, quote your sources and you will be generally be fine.

[Ashley Gable]

Wow thanks so much for all your indepth replies! That is exactly what I was hoping for, all knowledgeable answers.

Originally Posted by LibertyUnc

If you are simply giving your amalgamation of the perceived facts which you have come away with by reading other authors and thinking upon what they have said:

Anyone who tries to sue you over such and has not concretely registered their methodology via patent can be easily fended off, though you will still be paying lawyers rate to do so in many cases.

The safest way is to be sure that you use no more than short quotes from any particular author and write things in your own words. This will be the least likely path to inviting a lawsuit against you.

Most people are not going to bother trying to sue you if you go this latter route unless they are representing a massive corporation out to prevent any and all competition.

Yes I think I gave the wrong impression, that I wanted to take a report or chapter, copy and paste it and then give credit and thats all. But that is not what I want to do, I would do exactly as you said here. I was concerned that just referring to or using someone elses techniques or research data would be a copyright issue.

What I mean is, and I will use NLP as the example, if I wanted to present to my members the NLP swish pattern in order to get rid of one of their habits. Can I do this? It would be in my own words, but it would still be the original persons ideas, so this is where I got concerned.

Can someone "Patent" and idea or theory?

Originally Posted by mikemcmillan

Small quotes and excerpts can be used in for some purposes. But there are specific cases for this. The excerpt should be relatively small compared to the work as a whole. If you are using entire articles, publications, reports, etc., then you are not using relatively small excerpts. Citing references does not remove you from copyright issues.

Okay i see.
I only, at the most, have about 5 quotes, and they are all short sentences or short paragraphs.

Originally Posted by LibertyUnc

As long as you act in good faith and invite offended authors to contact you, you should be fine if you keep quotes short. The best route is to simply use your own words.

You are free to have ideas and convey them. Just because others had them first does not mean that you cannot speak them. Were that so, there would have been no new writings in the last thousand years...if not longer.

This is what i was concerned about, I didnt know if there was a big difference between someones ideas and theories to that of someones actual inventions and writings.

As I said i would not just copy and paste, but rather read then write it in my own words.

Originally Posted by Virtual Banker

<not legal advice>
When you are writing up your course, don't have the other books open., but work it off your memory.

In this way the techniques will come through in your own language and style and thus be yours. </not legal advice>

This is exactly what i wanted to know, you and libertyUnc answered perfectly.
However as I stated above, can I still infringe on someones copyright even if i write it by memory? It seems from all the responses, that ideas and theories cannot be copyrighted (although inventions and products derived from such ideas can be).

I dont plan to, nor would I want to, completely copy and paste and then just quote someone elses work. It is the matter of presenting someone elses theories, ideas, research studies in my own words where I was concerned.

Hoever could you tell me, (obvioulsy not 100%), that this is true, that writing from my own experience and memory of such research and studies will be fine and not get me in trouble, also I will use the below methods that you all said about:

• I will cite all sources or info
• provide links to all authors or researchers sites
• put the note at the bottom for the author to contact me with a request to remove the information i used.

So with those 3 points and with working from memory, do you think I can go ahead and be relatively safe?

Thanks again! This forum is so great, it is without a doubt the best site I ever joined!

[seobro]

I would use copyscape and similar products to make sure that my book is different than what is already out there. Also please write your content in your own words. Do not copy a passage. Mostly, you can get in trouble if they can prove you lifted an entire segment of their work.