A short time ago I wrote an introductory to the Poetry Foundation discussion on best practices in Fair Use of Poetry, which should serve as a guideline on the creation, licensing and transmission of original materials.
” Fair use, a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work, is a doctrine in United States copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders. Examples of fair use include commentary, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship. It provides for the legal, non-licensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author’s work under a four-factor balancing test. The term fair use originated in the United States. A similar principle, fair dealing, exists in some other common law jurisdictions. Civil law jurisdictions have other limitations and exceptions to copyright“.
That link on Fair Use and current discussion on the creation of a new Irish Version of 3.0/BY-NC-SA/Draft Creative Commons Licence (UCC) have prompted a short piece at Writing.ie regarding the treatment of the Poet’s original work, both ours as poets, or as we review or translate the original writing of fellow writers in our blog-spaces or in other online modes of transmission. I’d like to thank Vanessa O Loughlin who requested the piece.
Introduction to The Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute discussion here:
“During 2009, the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute convened a group of poets, editors, publishers, and experts in copyright law and new media, with the goal of identifying obstacles preventing poetry from coming fully into new media and, where possible, imagining how to remove or mitigate these obstacles. Embracing the overarching value of access to poetry as its theme, the group saw that business, technological, and societal shifts had profound implications for poets publishing both in new and in traditional media, and also that poets have an opportunity to take a central role in expanding access to a broad range of poetry in the coming months and years. The resulting Poetry and New Media: A Users’ Guide report covers topics such as copyright and fair use; royalties, permissions, and licensing; estates; access and lifelong engagement with poetry; and engaging educators, institutions, and communities.
The Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute invites poets, publishers, and everyone involved with poetry as an art form to consider this report, the upcoming Best Practices for Fair Use in Poetry document, and other available resources as they make their own thoughtful and conscious decisions based on their values and priorities in relation to these topics. As the new-media environment is ever changing, we present the Poetry and New Media report and the upcoming Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Poetry in the spirit of an evolving conversation on a timely topic.”
Chris Murray 