The other day, I got an e-mail asking about a new opera called “Rothman’s Violin,” and if there was any connection. I had no idea – i’d never heard of it before – so I did a search.
And up came an excerpt from an 8th Grade textbook. They took the story, changed it considerably (this happened before I was born, yet I was put into it) and used it for a testing exercise.
It’s not really stolen – it’s a retelling of an actual event – but it’s odd to see. My grandfather would have hated it, since he disliked anyone getting anything about the story wrong.
I’d contact Random House about this. They’ve apparently copyrighted it, and they didn’t even give you credit, right? Yeah, it’s true, more or less, but that doesn’t mean that the author can just lift your story.
If nothing else, you need to establish YOUR rights to the story, since you published it first.
Beyond any editing errors, the quality of the writing in the adapted story is inexcusable. It’s actually pretty remarkable how they took a good piece and made it terrible.
If they are not using your words, this is not plagiarism, you are simply a source (it appears that there are two sources here, your web site and the textbook author’s imagination). In an academic publication, it would have been a bad breach of etiquette not to cite your page as a source, and arguably it is bad form anyway, but I doubt that any very clear conventions are established for passages written to be used in exercises in 8th Grade textbooks. (Especially when the source is a web page: conventions for citing web pages are still not firmly established even in academic work.) In this case, there seems to be enough in the textbook version that the author has simply made up, that they might even claim that it is a work of fiction “inspired” by the story on your site.
That said, if someone is actually basing an opera on this story (did they get the story direct from your site, or from the textbook?), it might be worth contacting them. You might get some acknowledgment from them.
No. In US law, copyright is assumed. I did not register the copyright, but you can put up the notice whether the copyright is registered or not. Also this isn’t a theft of my work – it’s been rewritten considerably. It could be deemed a derivative work, only the stories have appeared elsewhere, too, when my grandfather was alive (e.g., in interviews). I don’t own the facts.
To elaborate on what RealityChuck said earlier: an author holds the copyright to a creative work as soon as that work is “fixed”. “Fixed” means recorded or otherwise set down in a way such that it can be observed or reproduced. The term includes writing on a page, sculpting a block of clay, scribbling down a musical score, recording a football game, or whatever. As soon as a work is “fixed”, the author holds the copyright, and no notice or registration is required. Registration and notice are helpful, however, if you have to go to court in the future.
