Skirting Reproduction Issues

About those family photos I wrote about in the previous post, I just had a devious idea.  If I donate the whole box of photos to the Summit Historical Society, I'm sure that they'll grant me reproduction rights to the two or three I want.  Then their provenance on eBay becomes irrelevant.  :)

I found lots of interesting illustrations, including the ad below, at the Historical Society.  When possible, I do follow up.  In this case, PSE&G was kind enough to permit me to use their images and recipes however I wanted in the cookbook.

I do try to observe the proprieties, but what kind of a researcher would I be if I gave up immediately and said, "Oh, I'll probably never be authorized to use that?"

For one thing, the cookbook wouldn't have as many pictures.  Remember, order your advance copy now for $20.

Will these pictures get me in trouble?

Please don't bid against me, but yesterday I bid on a lot of photos on eBay.  They're supposed to show a family in Summit, NJ, in the '40s and '50s.  According to the seller, there are a few of the kind I want, that is, photos of kitchens, dining rooms, and of people eating home-prepared food in Summit.

What if I win the bidding?  Can I use the pictures in my church cookbook?  Obviously, I can.  I have a scanner.  But may I?  I'm hoping the seller can either get the subjects' permission or give me permission as a family member.  What if he doesn't know the subjects because he bought a box of snapshots at an estate sale?

Who holds the copyright then?  If you have any helpful thoughts on this, please let me know.  Otherwise I'll do my customary desultory research.  Then I'll probably conclude that I'm running out of time because I need to get the file to the printer and run the pictures anyway, hoping that the subjects or their descendants never notice.

What was I saying about ignorance of the law being no excuse?

Another reason to respect copyrights

I sing, both in choirs and as a soloist. The sheet music salespeople are well primed to explain copyright issues to choirmasters. Choirmasters in turn explain to choirs that if the choirs are discovered to be singing off unauthorized photocopied music, the choir is liable for thousands of dollars in fines.

People who sell large quantities of text have face-to-face contact with their buyers (choirmasters and academics come to mind). During those visits, they can to explain and threaten (maybe over a nice lunch). Amazon’s and Barnes & Noble’s relationship to their buyers is far more distant; it’s harder for them to stress the copyright issue to us.

Choirmasters and academics are probably more likely to want to cooperate with publishers for another reason: both want to publish before they perish. If they succeed in publishing one day, they don’t want to think that they may lose royalties because somebody thought it was cheaper and easier to use the photocopier than to order new copies.

Handel and Haydn should be in the public domain, right? Maybe. But publishers are businesses. They need reasonably profitable backlists in order to take chances on new composers. One of my favorite choirmasters published a few choral works. I think I’d have heard if they were runaway successes. Probably not. But what a thrill it was for him and for those who knew him to see his success, which was only possible because the publisher was making money from better-established works.

So, yeah, people may wish that sheet music were cheaper, but they don’t begrudge publishers their profits. If Hal Leonard moves into the Fortune 5000, though, let me know. I may change my tune.

An interesting note about musical copyrights: One of the first copyrights in England belonged to composers Thomas Tallis and William Byrd. In 1575, Queen Elizabeth granted them a patent to print and publish music, a decent monopoly, I’d say.

Three reasons why PR cares about copyright

Your PR department is probably the department most concerned about copyrights (outside the legal department, of course).

Here are three reasons.

Many PR people come from professional journalism backgrounds.  They’ve published or broadcast their thoughts and research.  They don’t want to see someone else casually benefiting from the fruits of their labors.

Even PR people without publishing or media experience are writers.  Humble and anonymous though the press release be, a PR person actually does write each one.  

Professional journalists and flacks, we all hope to produce a sentence, poem, paragraph, essay or book that lives on after us.  And when we do, we want our names on it, not the name of the person who hits the “copy” button or control-C.

Most pragmatically, PR people need positive relationships with media people.  Media people count on royalties or higher payments based on how many people read or see their work. 

What if I were a journalist and I discovered that the website of a company that was wooing me contained reproductions of my copyrighted work?  I’d be indignant.  I probably wouldn’t give that company good coverage. 

Unauthorized reproductions happen all the time.  A well-meaning and unsophisticated person scans a magazine article and puts the PDF up on the website.  Or the person exceeds the “Fair Use” doctrine and plagiarizes.  This happens in print, too, but it’s harder to spot.

If I were a journalist, I’d know that the job of the PR person at that organization was to cozy up to me.  I’d expect her or him to defend my copyright on my behalf, to stay on my good side.

Sometimes, as the PR person, I’ve noticed shocking plagiarism.  One example is a news site in a developing country reproducing entire articles without attribution.   I’ve pointed those violations out to the reporters whose words were stolen.  I didn’t do it to be righteous.  I did it because I wanted to strengthen the bond between the reporter and me.

As a PR pro, then, I occasionally make myself unpopular pointing out that, no, we can’t just reproduce copyrighted material.  I do it because it’s important in media relations.  But I also do it because I hope, one day, to write some immortal words.  And when I do, I don’t want Jim Bob’s Blog ‘n’ Bait Shop to take credit for them.

Copying Copy

The point of a blog is to update it frequently, with interesting content that invites readers to stick around, leave a comment, and return to read more.

I don’t have that much to say.  If I had, I’d write a book.  The truth is, my noteworthy insights are rare.

Most of what you find here is what the legacy media would call evergreens, articles that you can hold in a drawer (or on a thumb drive) and run any time.  Many professionals already know what I tell you about the basics of SEO, for example.  It’s true--it’s just not really news.

Then why do people from all around the world read this blog? They can easily find information about SEO or public speaking on better-known, easier-to-find websites. 

Could it be the very obscurity that draws them here?  Search engines look constantly for fresh content, as we’ve said.  So everybody wants new words on their websites.

At the same time, search engines penalize duplicate content.  If they find the same text on multiple websites, the search engines figure that somebody’s trying to game the system.

So what’s a site owner to do?

a)      Write fresh material every day.  It doesn’t have to be newsworthy.  It just has to be new

b)      Find fresh material, um, somewhere else and copy paste it

c)      Find fresh material, um, somewhere else, and mash it through article rewriting software to change the nouns and the verbs

d)      Offshore the process

A relatively obscure blog like this one is a good place to find words to copy, because other people are unlikely to find it and copy it.  

I'm not really worried about duplicate content yet.  I am worried about looking ridiculous.  Spammers have run my press releases through rewriting software before.  The results would have been hilarious--if my name hadn’t been on them. 

If this blog is your, “um, somewhere else,” and you’re here to borrow copy, I can’t really stop you.  All I ask is that you

e)      Take only the evergreens.  They have better search terms anyway.

f)        Make substantial changes, like more than 40%

g)      Please, leave my name off your final product.

If you’re here to read, hi there and welcome!  Please leave a message and tell me what else you’d like to read about.

To Every Cow Her Calf

"as to every cow her calf, so to every book its offspring"

Having now taught, bought, begged for, and bartered copywriting, I enjoyed reading Intellectual Property, edited by Jennifer Peloso.

Jeff Beale reminded me of the 6th-century copyright decision above in Broken Links and Broken Laws: Copyright Confusion Online.

The most interesting article in the review was Plagiarism by Denise Hamilton, with its profile of the students most likely to copy their essays and why.

Fair Use/Abuse

As a content writer, I am very much interested in the issue of copyright abuse. With screen scraping, it's easy to do. (CNN might even accuse me of it for my posting on McCain and Fannie Mae.) And, what the heck? It's just words. I hear that a lot: "Just put in some content," as if no actual work was involved.

I had to work for that content. I had to gather and organize all the material, then try to inject some original thoughts. The stakeholders had to approve it, and then I had to get the legal department to sign off on it. It's not "just" content. It's work and you should respect it.

An article in the New York Times points out that publishers object to extensive quotes, even if the writer who appropriated them gives back links. The person reading the rehashed article may not follow the links, so the original publisher is not getting the eyeballs he or she needs to win advertising dollars. Another point the Times did not bring up is that Google takes points off PageRank for duplicated content. That's why everybody wants original content, both for their readers' pleasure, and for better search engine rankings. But, as I said before, conceiving and delivering original content is a lot of work. Which is why it is so much easier just to scrape someone else's off the screen.

Chris Crum of WebProNews invites us all to weigh in on this matter.

What Does Copyright Abuse Say about an Organization?

When I find a potential business opportunity, I check out the organization's website. If I can't find it, that certainly says something.

But if I find their website and they cite press references, I check them. And I look for a "reprinted by permission..." note at the bottom. If I do not find a permission notice, that says something else. If the site violates copyright, they warn me instantly that I do not want to do business with them. If they do not respect the work of the publisher or writer who broadcast the information to begin with, I doubt they will respect mine.