Another Summary of Fair Use

[Tim Regan]

Hi All,

Carol wrote:

>>> there is no set amount of allowable copyrighted text since the 
amount used varies according to the nature of the work. [...] a 
dictionary of Shakespeare quotations would consist almost exclusively 
of Shakespeare's own words Granted, Shakespeare's works are now in 
the public domain, but a  similar work based on the works of, say, 
Tolkien or JKR (one living, one dead, but both still under copyright) 
would require substantial amounts of copyrighted text with only, 
let's say, notes and an introduction to add to the words of the 
author and substantial rearrangement, either alphabetical or thematic 
or both, to qualify as "transformative."
An index uses nothing but the words of an author and the page numbers 
they appear on, but the words out of context are no longer the 
author's property, so that's not a problem AFAIK. A concordance, as 
you know, also lists an author's words alphabetically but illustrates 
the use of those words with quotations from the original works. I've 
never heard of a concordance being regarded as a violation of 
copyright law; its nature necessitates its being mostly the original 
author's own words rearranged in a useful format. <<<

I'm glad you've picked up on concordances too, that's one of the 
things that has been bugging me. On another list I saw an analysis of 
the copyright around indexes:

>>> Indexes are recognized by law as creative works with separate 
copyright from the works indexed. The publishing situation with a 
typical back-of-the-book index is that the indexer agrees to have the 
index be considered a "work for hire" and does not retain the 
copyright, but there *is* a separate copyright and the indexer is 
considered the author of the index. More than one indexer has 
informed a late-paying publisher that they retain the copyright in 
the index until paid for their work, so that in theory the book 
cannot go to publication without their being paid. <<<

But let's get back to concordances. Carol mentions "granted, 
Shakespeare's works are now in the public domain" I wonder if that is 
important. Many of the concordances we've talked about (Cruden's and 
Strong's) use texts that were not copyrighted when the concordance 
was written (though the copyright to the King James version is a tad 
confusing). Plus, recent biblical concordances may be part of the 
original copyright: for example someone on the Leaky thread commented 
that the NIV study concordance and the New American Standard Bible 
concordance are research products of the original translating team 
and included in the original copyright.

Then I'm left wondering if the concordances that do cover material 
which I'd imagine was still copyright, for example "A concordance to 
the complete poems and plays of T.S. Eliot" by J. L. Dawson, may be a 
breach of copyright that the copyright holder chooses not to 
challenge?

Do we have an example of a concordance written about copyright 
material where the copyright holder did not want the concordance 
published but where publication went ahead anyway and was protected 
as fair-use? Then we'd know for sure.

Cheers,

Dumbledad.