Copyright Questions

[longknife]

There are lots of questions about using “copyrighted material” on the internet. So, I was quite interested when I came across this article. The author, JA Konrath, probably the biggest selling author on the internet, presents a fairly clear discussion on the history of and the general rules of usage. In his article, he clearly implies the material is available to sharing with others, so I am posting some of the questions and responses he provides:

Answer these questions:

Have you ever recorded a TV show? That's legal.
Have you ever downloaded a TV show from a filesharing sight that aired last night because you missed it and forgot to record it? That's illegal.
Have you ever found an image on the Internet and put it on your blog without permission? That's illegal.
Have you ever borrowed a book from the library? That's legal.
Have you ever burned a friend's CD? That's illegal.
Have you ever bought a used video game? That's legal.
Have you ever downloaded a videogame without permission from the copyright holder? That's illegal, even if the game is out of print and unavailable for sale.
Do you allow people to lend your ebooks via the Kindle Book Lending feature? That's legal.
Do you use DRM on your ebook titles? That's legal.
Have you ever stripped DRM from an ebook title? That's illegal.
Have you ever jailbroken a device? That's illegal.
Have you ever heard a parody song? That's legal.
Have you written fan fiction? That could be illegal.
Have you every watched a cable TV show at a friend's house? That's legal.
Can you sell ebooks and mp3 songs you don't want anymore? That's illegal.
Have you ever listened to a live band that played cover songs? That's legal.
Have you ever brought a recording device into a concert? That's illegal.

Lot's of gray there, huh?

I think it's not only interesting but very informative. It seems to me that, unless a work has a © or ® on it and you are NOT using it for financial gain, you are not infringing a copyright. If you want to discuss or rebut or anything, the original blog post is at A Newbie's Guide to Publishing: Time to Reform Copyright