Copyright Issues

One potential landmine self-published authors can hit is copyright infringement.  This is unlikely to be a problem with royalty-published authors because the publisher will catch the problem and make sure it doesn’t get published.  This situation highlights one major difference between self-published and royalty-published works.

Royalty-published books – go through multiple reviews and edits to catch mistakes (and copyright issues)  

Self-published books – not so much; reviews and edits usually severely strained by author’s budget

So as self-published authors we have to make sure there are no copyright infringements.  This all came to light in my almost-finished novel Consenting Adults Only.  The protagonist, a young physician in Las Vegas, plays guitar in local jam sessions.  In one scene he takes his girlfriend to a jam session at Gilligan’s, a coffee house.  The jam leader announces the first song will be The City of New Orleans, and tells the assembled audience some background about the song:

      “There’s a little story,” he said.  “Goodman found Arlo Guthrie in a bar alone one night, and asked him to listen to the song.  Arlo reluctantly agreed, on the condition that Goodman buy him a beer; he would listen to the song as long as it took to drink his beer.  Well, Arlo liked the song and next thing you know, he recorded it.  Became a smash hit in the early 70s.  Let’s play.”

 Then I quote the first two stanzas of The City of New Orleans, which the audience sings while the musicians play the music.

 I did this for several other songs as well, including This Land is Your Land, You Are My Sunshine and When the Saints Go Marching In.

All old songs, no problem, right?

Well, Yes, there is a problem.  As I learned through some belated research, they are all currently copyrighted!  The lyrics were all written after 1922, which is the cutoff for existing copyright on song lyrics.

 

All works published in the United States before 1923 are in the public domain. Works published after 1922, but before 1978 are protected for 95 years from the date of publication. If the work was created, but not published, before 1978, the copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years.  http://www.pdinfo.com/copyright-law/copyright-and-public-domain.php

 
(See also:  http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/faqs/copyright-basics/)

I really liked the lyrics I chose, as they played into the interaction with the doctor and his girlfriend during the jam session.  So I (naively, it turns out) looked up the copyright holders on the internet and e-mailed them for permission.  I got only a single response, from Sony/ATV, which holds the copyright to Saints (lyrics I wanted to quote date from 1937).  I was asked to fill out a form requesting permission, but the form asked for information impossible to state at this point:  name of publisher, name of editor, print run, release date of work, and price of work. 

So I did the obvious -- changed all the songs to those written before 1922 (actually, before 1900).  Although I liked my first choices, they were expendable.  My new (old) songs include Simple Gifts, Down in the Valley and Buffalo Gals (Won’t You Come Out Tonight).  They are listed as “traditional” in folk music, and have no copyright. 

So be wary of song lyrics.  And in other copyright areas as well, such as quoting from books and magazines.  Do your research and make sure you are not infringing on someone else’s work. 

(This blog will resume on Monday, June 29)