Personal quotes

Hi Scott,

> ...(The Science of Getting Rich) could you
> or I now take the original and do our thing
> and copyright it as well, or, has her
> copyright stopped everyone else from using
> the material?

You can still do whatever you like with the ORIGINAL work which is no longer under copyright. So you could get the original, rewrite it too and write your own introduction, and copyright your new version yourself.

However, you can't do anything with Rebecca Fine's version without her permission - you would have to find the original text.

> Also, I called the governmet printing office
> once and asked if their publications were
> copyright free and I was told that they are
> not. Something to do about some of the
> material might be copyrighted by an original
> author. Is there something you need to keep
> an eye on when it comes to gov. printing?

What I've noticed with U.S. Government documents is that they sometimes do use material written by other authors, but then the copyright is displayed clearly.

For example, the Federal Consumer Information Center is one source of US Government articles and reports you can use. But you have to check the individual reports to make sure it isn't copyrighted by someone else.

For example, one of the reports you can find at the above web site is Life Advice about Fitness and Exercise. However, if you scroll down to the end of the document, you will see

Text may be reproduced for nonprofit educational purposes only. Reproduction of any graphical image, trademark or servicemark is prohibited.

Copyright 1996 Metropolitan Life Insurance Company
All Rights Reserved

So you can NOT use this report for commercial purposes without the permission of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, who own the copyright.

However, the report on 66 Ways to Save Money seems to be copyright-free, as it was prepared directly by the U.S. Government.

Here's some more information when using U.S. Government sourced material for your works, which I got from a U.S. Government web site.

Copyright law (17 U.S.C. § 105) states that all materials created by the United States government are in the public domain. However, there are restrictions on use.

Anyone incorporating a work of the U.S. Government into a copyrighted work should be aware of 17 U.S.C. § 403. This section requires a copyright notice to contain a statement identifying what portions of the work consist of a work of the U.S.Government. Failure to do so could result in loss of copyright protection for the entire work.

(I got this quote from here.)

This doesn't affect you if you want to use U.S. Government documents as free reports or even sell them as books, and you can even rewrite them. But, if you want to place your own copyright on a work which partly comes from the U.S. Government, then you have to take this advice into consideration, and show which parts are originally yours, and which are not. You don't have to put any copyright notice on it at all, of course (which in some cases may be the easier option).

Knowing about how to use public domain materials is a powerful thing to know. It's a form of using leverage, for those who have read Michael Ross's report on The Art of Leverage. :)

- Dien Rice