I am new to this listserv, and was referred to it when I posted a question to another listserv (evaltal, the listserv of the American Evaluation Association) that no one knew the answer to. The Copyright Management Center at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis suggested the question might be of interest to this listserv, so the original problem I posted is now described (between lines of *************) with a few modifications that were called to my attention for clarity.
I was forwarded a story (570 words) by email from someone who got
it from someone else by email, etc. The story turns out to be useful to
illustrate a methodological point in a long scholarly book I am writing
(although scholarly, the book is likely to make nontrivial royalties for
me), and I would love to reprint the story. However, I immediately
thought that I don't know what the copyright issues are. So I'm writing
to see if anyone has a clue about where to look to find answers about
copyright issues on email and the www.
Obviously the story was not copyrighted in the email. I contacted the
person who sent it to me, who wisely went to Yahoo and searched the
title of the story, and found it at
(http://www.tec-2000.com/ttow23pc.htm); it's a very cute story, and you
might want to look at it for fun. I then checked that www site and
found the copyright of the company at the bottom; and I have written
them to see if they really own the copyright and can grant permission.
However, the context leads me to think they didn't invent the story
either, but rather just routinely placed their copyright on the bottom
of every page on their WWW site. So I'm anticipating that my contacting
them won't really solve the problem.
So I'm still puzzled about copyright issues here. What is the copyright status of stories that get passed around on the www and email? Given that one might never really know who invented the story, or if anyone does have the copyright on it, is there anything one can do to use such a story and be legally safe?
I should clarify that I do understand that the work may be copyrighted even though no copyright mark appears--that's part of the reason I'm pursuing this.
The advice I received was quite varied, ranging from don't use it unless you get specific permission from the owner, through use it if you think it meets the four fair use criteria and you are willing to risk being sued, to acknowledge whatever source you found it in and then use it as is. Of course, the key problem here is that it seems unlikely to me I'll ever find the true owner of the copyright, given the way these stories get passed around.
If you have any advice on this problem, please let me know. If your listserv has addressed this problem before (in which case I apologize for cluttering your email), please let me know a few keywords I can use to search your listserv archive to recall that discussion.
Thanks.
Will Shadish
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