I have about half a year’s worth of correspondence with one notorious, semi-famous individual who is currently in prison for the rest of his life. If I wanted to, could I publish this correspondence in the form of a book? If this is not allowed, what legal consequences would I face?
No. Current law says that, while you own the physical letter, you do not hold copyright. That goes to the author upon creation. (This ruling was due to a suit by J. D. Salinger, BTW).
Assuming you could get a publisher to publish it, the writer of the letters can order you to stop publishing them. Since the copyright is probably not registered, it will be nearly impossible for him to get any money from you, but he does have the right to force you to destroy all copies. If he finds out before it’s published, then the publication would be stopped.
Suppose he dies in prison. Would Argent then be able to publish the letters, or would the copyright revert to the prisoner’s heirs?
The guy has no “heirs” and as far as I know, no real connections with the outside world.
Assuming the letters were written after 1978, the copyright lasts for 70 years after the author’s death. If he has no heirs, I have no idea who would sue to enforce it, but that’s how long it lasts.
A semi-famous individual with no heirs? That means no fourteenth cousins eight times removed who might want to get their hands on stuff he touched if only to sell on e-Bay. There’s got to be one out there.
As Chuck says, you have no rights. None. They belong to the copyright owner or heirs for life of the author + 70 years.
Damn. I thought I was all set. Thanks for the answers.
What if you write it anonymously as fiction? How can he prove he wrote the letters? How can he prove he is involved at all? What if it is changed significantly? What if anything that would identify him specifically was deleted? Yet all the interesting parts could remain. Maybe changed a little. No?
I also know someone famous in jail:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Shxxxlichter
I don’t want anyone to Google this post by his name.
His book is doing quite well, but he will never see the money from it.
He would never find a lawyer to take his case on contingency.
He has no money. None of his friends or family trust him…
What if the letters were written to someone else that I have absolutely no connection to, except Art in common as a friend. They are personal letters that I would have no physical way to access, unless I were psychic or broke into the house where they are stored. Yet I know what the words are.
Do you have a second batch of material from this other guy, or are you just suggesting a strategy for the OP.
What you’re suggesting is called plagiarism. What you’re suggesting decreases the odds of the person finding out, but in no way changes your legal rights regarding the material.
If he discovers it, he could prove it using the discovery process that is part of a civil suit. You may be ordered by the court to produce any materials used in the production of the book. Then, in order to maintain the cover story, you will need to commit perjury and I don’t know how many other crimes as well.
Why wouldn’t you and/or the OP contact the writer and make a deal to publish and split the profits?
Argent, just letting you know that this thread suggested some questions to me about the nature of rules preventing convicted criminals from profiting from their crimes, so I started another thread about that.
Um, why not ask permission of the felon / copyright holder to publish? Even though he can’t profit from it, it bring him/her fame or notoriety. It’s worth a try right?
Assuming you didn’t rephrase everything, and used more or less his words, it’s plagarism and still a copyright violation.
There’s also the question of why anyone would buy Fictional Letters from an Random Anonymous Inmate. I mean, if you don’t identify the notorious writer, what’s the point?
But the OP could write a non-fiction book My Correspondence with <Actual Name of Person>, and as long as they only describe the letters and don’t quote them, there’s no copyright issue.
(It’s probably legal to quote small amounts of the letters, but no need to delve into that right now. The point is extensively quoting them is not OK. Describing them is.)
You also have the right to sell the original physical letters on eBay (or by other means), if you think that anyone would be interested in them. You just can’t reproduce them.
OK, what about this: could I publish a book about my correspondence with this person, which included excerpts from his letters, but not the letters duplicated in their entirety?
Excerpts from copyrighted material are allowed under the Fair Use Doctrine. That’s why we can quote from cites here without penalty.
You know that if you copy an entire article, though, the mods will delete it and cut it down to an excerpt. So there is a line.
Where does that line fall? There is no general guidance in case law. The only standard is not to take so much that it diminishes the value of the original.
Lawyers for publishers always take the conservative side. Have you ever seen a whole book of nothing but excerpted quotes from another person’s letters without permission? I doubt it. I never have. That’s because no mainstream publisher’s lawyers would allow anyone to start such a product.
What happens if you self-publish such a title? You’d have to ask yourself the big question. Is this project worth the risk of having it completely shut down with the loss of everything you put into it if a lawyer decides to sue? (It wouldn’t have to be a successful suit - you’d still bear the costs of defending it.) As has been said above, the only value of such a book is the actual words of the semi-famous prisoner. A book with a few excerpts and lots of your material is not going to sell anywhere near as well. It might sell some, and you might find some satisfaction or historic/social value of getting the letters into print in any form. Or you can roll the dice and print them all and hope. Only you can decide how badly you want to proceed.
But you’d be doing yourself a major disservice if you don’t check with a good intellectual property lawyer (accept no substitutes - general attorneys know nothing about this part of the law) first.
My immediate thought about this was not letters, but something similar. Remember the publishing of Kurt Cobain’s journals back in 2002? I don’t remember any legal issues about that, but it could be just because Courtney was legal heir to whatever relevant copyrighting limitations, etc. that existed
We’ve established I could sell the letters on Ebay if I had them in my possession. You cannot sell a copy of them in a book. But can you give away 1000 copies for free?
True.
False.
You can give the originals away. You can’t give copies away. That’s why it’s called copyright. You have no right to copy the material.
Instead of a letter, imagine your friend wrote a book and you have the only copy. You can give the book away, but you can’t copy it and give it away (for free or otherwise). The same is true for the letters.
Your previous hypotheticals were about ways of skirting the law and the rights of the intellectual property owner. There is no legal way to sell or give away copies of these letters.
As heir, she would have had to give her permission. The publisher would not have published the book without it.
That’s because Courtney Love possessed the copyright at the time, and gave permission to publish. And no doubt received a cut of the profit, as well, but I don’t know that for sure.
I vote “just ask him about it.” See what happens.