Re: When does a summary infringe on copyright?

On 11/22/05, Chad C <chadcriswell[_at_]gmail.com> wrote:
>
> ... Now I want to go a bit farther and provide very brief references
> to printed articles in music education journals that are not available
> online. What I would like to know is when and under what circumstances
> could doing this get me into trouble?

There is no black and white rules that will answer your question. It requires some education on the difference between idea and expression and on the difference between uncopyrightable and copyrightable expressions. Your example of summary seems to be okay if you are using your own words to express the basic ideas in the article. But, if you copy some sentences from the article to your summary, then you will have to look at fair use and/or whether the sentences are uncopyrightable. There are plenty of information about fair use on Internet.

> Would it make a difference if I was linking to an article on another site
> instead of referencing a print article?

No, if the link will not bypass the other website's restrictions. If your link attempts to bypass the restrictions such as registration or password-protected webpages, you may or may not be in legal trouble.

> What I have in mind is something similar to this:
> ----------------------------------------------------
> Performing Arts Medicine and Music Education: What Do We Really Need To
> Know?
> Author: Valerie Trollinger
> Source: Music Educator's Journal - November 2005, pg 42-47
>
> Summary: Dealing with and avoiding physical injuries associated with
> instrumental and voice pedagogy as well as using this knowledge to better
> teach students how to play and sing correctly.
>
> Section Headings:
> Music Teaching, Physical Education, and Muscles
> Special Concerns about the Voice
> Concerns for Instrumentalists
> What Can a Music Teacher Do?
> Notes
>
> Insets:
> Performing Arts Medicine Resources
> MENC Resources
>
> With footnotes
> -------------------------------------------------------
>
> Could doing this get me in trouble with the copyright holder?

Based on that specific example and if you are using your own words to write summary, that looks fine to me. So that you will not be surprised, most of the reference in the example is uncopyrightable which means that anyone else can copy the uncopyrightable portion of your reference without asking you for your permission.

> Also, in
> general who holds the copyright for articles printed in a journal such as
> this? If I wanted to contact the individual authors and ask for their
> permission to print the entire article on my site would they be able to
> grant me such permission or does the journal retain copyright to the article
> that someone else wrote?

Most of the time, authors transferred their copyrights to the journals or publishers. So, you should check with journals or publishers first before you ask the authors for the permission to copy their articles to your site. It could be that authors terminate transfers and get their copyrights back but I don't know how many authors do that. Other place that you can check is to look for copyright notices in the articles. That will give you clue as to who owns copyright.

Joseph Pietro Riolo
<josephpietrojeungriolo[_at_]gmail.com>
<riolo[_at_]voicenet.com>

Number of days left until 1-1-2019 when all knowledge of 1923 in the land of the U.S.A. will be freed from their copyright owners' prisons: 4,787

Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this post in the public domain. Received on Wed Nov 23 2005 - 04:45:00 GMT