Re: more copyright ponders

On Jul 23, 12:39 pm, mir...@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Mirjam Bruck-Cohen) wrote:
Thank you for verifying that story , i was sure i read about here on
this ng ,,,,,
mirjam

On 7/21/07 1:21 AM, "Ericka Kammerer" <e...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Mirjam Bruck-Cohen wrote:
The story of somebody who took a XSt pattern and made a quilted
bedspread from it and `lost` in court ,,,, seems a bit strange if
infact she only made it for her personal use .....

She entered it in a show/competition. Copyright holders
own the right to publicly display a design. "Publicly display" is
defined in the (US) law as:

"To perform or display a work ³publicly² means ?

(1) to perform or display it at a place open to the public or at any
place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle
of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered; or

(2) to transmit or otherwise communicate a performance or display of the
work to a place specified by clause (1) or to the public, by means of
any device or process, whether the members of the public capable of
receiving the performance or display receive it in the same place or in
separate places and at the same time or at different times."

Best wishes,
Ericka

And there was a large cash award with it.

ellice

Hello all,

As an amateur writer, in addition to my stitching, I've looked into
copyright laws for my own protection and also to try to clarify what
the limits are if I use a portion of another's work. Naturally, if I
incorporate a few lines of Longfellow's poetry in my book, I would
cite that source. But if I use a phrase that another writer has used
as well, such as "shivering water" (P.D. James) or "soughing of the
pines" (Gabaldon) and don't mention that source, surely I am not in
violation. As the saying goes, (no idea of the source) Geat minds
think alike. We all might inadvertently come up with the same phrase
in a sentence, the same elements of design in a stitched work.

Obviously one violation of copyright laws means the violator makes a
PROFIT by reselling the original design - the pattern, not the
embodiment of it, or the stitched work. That is not the case here.
None of us would ever do that. What about sharing a pattern with a
friend? I hadn't thought that to be wrong, but maybe it is.

Now, I have some specific, more public situations for all of you.
These are very likely to affect all of us. If I have somehow missed
the answers in the above posts, I apologize.

First, if I stitch a pattern, either precisely or slightly modified
which I often do, and then display it at say, the county fair, am I in
violation?

Second, if I take that same stitched work and post just its picture
out on some site like RCTNP (Yahoo) or Webshots am I in violation?

If the answer is yes to both, then must I hide my work on my living
room walls, allowing no one but friends and family to view such work?

Or, Fourth, if I state the source of the pattern and mention any
modifications I personally made, then am I ok?

Fifth, if I stitch a pattern, modified or not, then sell it to a local
decorator for her resale purposes, neither mentioning the designer nor
representing myself as designer, am I in violation?

While the following points in the excerpted article below apply to
written work, the law does consider all creative works, as we have
been discussing. Incidentally, I have the entire article with all the
details and will be happy to email to anyone. I sure won't post it!

In the article A Writer's Guide to Fair Use in Copyright written for
Writer's Digest by Howard Zaharoff, a lawyer in Waltham, Mass.(see
www.mbbp.com), he writes - "Section 107 of the Copyright Act states
that 'the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by
reproduction in copies ..., for purposes such as criticism, comment,
news reporting, teaching ..., scholarship, or research, is not an
infringement of copyright.'"

The law also states that in determining whether a use is fair, at
least four factors must be considered.
1. The purpose and character of the use...Be aware that even experts
often disagree on what's "transformative" and what's merely an
infringing derivative.
2. The nature of the copyrighted work.. Works of fact, such as science
and history, receive less protection than works of fiction and
imagination.
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to
the work as a whole. While the courts apparently cannot categorically
state an acceptable percent, they do say : If the use includes the
"heart" of a work, this is generally not fair use even if the number
of words copied is insignificant.
4. The effect on the market.

It seems to me, in summary, that a great portion of the decision
making in these lawsuits is deductive. It would boil down to this:
Did the end user intend to make a profit or present the original work
as his or her own?

Deb :-)


.

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