without violating copywrite laws and all that?
You could post the complete works of William Shakespeare without violating copyright laws, because it is out of copyright. (But you might get into trouble for other reasons if you do that).
The guidelines for Fair Use get a little complicated, but around here you’re generally safe with posting no more than a paragraph or two–really as little of the text as you can while still providing the gist of the point you are trying to make. It is appropriate (and usually required) to then provide a link back to the source material so anyone who wishes to read more can do so. Print materials should be handled the same way, along with proper attribution. This should not be taken as authoritative; the rules may have changed unbeknownst to me. But, this is my understanding of the approved standard for quoting copyrighted material.
Pet peeve: it’s copyright, not copywrite.
Thanks…I’ve given up on ever getting that copywrite vs. copyright thing write.
Hint: it’s the right to copy, and may not involve writing at all: pictures, films and music can be copyright.
How are you with playwright? 
This question (and many others) has been answered in sticky threads in this forum. e.g.
What’s the policy on copyrights?
Just to add something, from past discussions where I unwittingly gave false guidance:
You are not safe presenting a quotation of no more than 200 words or 10% of the text, whichever is less, as a court may find that that indeed exceeded fair use. However, it is a commonly presented guideline that is often considered valid for longer works (excerpt from book, long essay, etc.) and a court will take that you at least tried to honor your understanding of Fair Use law into account if you apply it. Fair use quotations must have a valid educational, moral, or critical purpose for their use, and may never accrue the quoter financial gain (except in the case of a paid critical review, a clergyman or educator using a quotation in connection with teaching, etc., where the financial renumeration is incidental to the use of the quotation).
And sexism once again rears its ugly head. Why couldn’t a woman of the cloth be equally capable of fair use quotations with a valid educational, moral, or critical purpose? Curse you, legislators! :mad:
Clergyperson just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Perhaps a non-gender specific newly coined PC term like ‘Clergian’ or maybe even the old word Cleric would work? We cannot use Clerk as that meaning now brings up the concept of an office drone or storekeeper.
Polycarp, my understanding (and I am not a lawyer) is that the rule was 5% of a long text. Note that even then, I don’t think you could get away with quoting 10 full pages of a 200-page book… that seems excessive, doesn’t it?
Basically, the link that Arnold provided is the SDMB guideline. We don’t want a situation where we think we can win a legal case; we’re trying to avoid law suits and court cases altogether… so we want to be cleaner than clean here.
Also, let me just add, from a practical point of view, it’s usually silly to quote at great length. Yeah, I can quote the entire text of the Declaration of Independence, but why would I bore readers so? If I want to make some point, I’d just quote the specific lines that back me up.
And, by the way, just because something is old doesn’t mean it’s out of copyright. Again, I ain’t a lawyer, but my understanding is that the “entire works of William Shakespeare” as noted above is a case in point: there are at least three different “original” versions of Hamlet (early 1600s), and there are a variety of scholars who have put forth their own edited versions which are copyrighted. Lengthy quotes from the Folio are permitted; lengthy quotes from the Arden edition are not. Similarly with a translation of something not in English: the original French version of The Three Musketeers could be quoted ad infinitam, but the new English translation by Richard Pevear is subject to US copyright.
Right. It’s a myth that one can copy some predetermined amount of text, music, drawing, or what have you. The test is mushy, and a big part of it has always been the quality of the portion copied. If you copy the “heart of the work” it can weigh against a finding of fair use in many cases. Measuring Fair Use: The Four Factors - Copyright Overview by Rich Stim - Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center; http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=search&case=/data2/circs/9th/9555261.html; http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?
And see, Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?navby=volpage&court=us&vol=471&page=564#564
Some years ago, I decided that I would only use “Chair” to refer to the person in charge of a meeting; “chairman” being regarded as sexist by many. I use the same rule WRT ministers (a good, neutral term for Protestant clergy, that I think could be expanded, as the religious leaders of any faith have ministering to believers of their faith as their objects, right?); I call 'em Clergy, period.
There is a very specific exclusion on mathematical proofs, detailed by Gfactor in this thread.
This article talks about the legal doctrines involved: Pamela Samuelson, Questioning Copyrights in Standards, forthcoming in BC Law Rev: http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/~pam/papers/BC%20questioning%20standards.pdf (pdf at p. 13).