New reason for rejecting a story

[LaRascasse]

My latest effort got rejected because of the reason shown below.

Out of respect for copyrights, please quote less than 50% of each copyrighted work (for song lyrics, poetry, etc. - longer works, less than 2 paragraphs) included in the submission.

Is this something new? Because I have seen songs and poems consistently quoted on many stories which get put up.

 

[lovecraft68]

My latest effort got rejected because of the reason shown below.



Is this something new? Because I have seen songs and poems consistently quoted on many stories which get put up.

Interesting. I know when you publish a work for $$$ you're not allowed to use much more than a paragraph or two, but didn't know lit had a rule.

No one would, because half of their rules aren't listed anywhere or if they are they're not easy to find and haven't been updated in forever.

As for your complaint?

Well get ready for another round of "Its only one person skimming a 100 stories a night...."

Followed by stop picking on the site and if you don't like it leave.

So watch how much you complain.

In the end, its not personal, its simply a case of lit being consistently inconsistent.

another thought, is that they could have possibly heard from someone regarding a similar situation and were warned and are being more careful.

Having said that, I still go with my first guess, of just an unlucky luck of the draw on your behalf.

 

[LaRascasse]

Interesting. I know when you publish a work for $$$ you're not allowed to use much more than a paragraph or two, but didn't know lit had a rule.

No one would, because half of their rules aren't listed anywhere or if they are they're not easy to find and haven't been updated in forever.

As for your complaint?

Well get ready for another round of "Its only one person skimming a 100 stories a night...."

Followed by stop picking on the site and if you don't like it leave.

So watch how much you complain.

In the end, its not personal, its simply a case of lit being consistently inconsistent.

another thought, is that they could have possibly heard from someone regarding a similar situation and were warned and are being more careful.

Having said that, I still go with my first guess, of just an unlucky luck of the draw on your behalf.

I'm not complaining. Just curious to whether this is a new rule or not.

 

[lovecraft68]

I'm not complaining. Just curious to whether this is a new rule or not.

Most likely an old rule that's been mentioned, but never officially put out there (see their very vague rape rule) and one that is enforced only when Laurel's eyes aren't so blurry that she is still seeing what she's looking at.

 

[oggbashan]

No. One of my stories was rejected in 2010 because I used too much quotation and not enough of my own words.

I revised it. Getting Nude With Chairman Mao

 

[PennLady]

My latest effort got rejected because of the reason shown below.

Is this something new? Because I have seen songs and poems consistently quoted on many stories which get put up.

It is true that Laurel scans a lot of stories and it's also true that it's likely she enforces this rule inconsistently. I've seen stories where a verse or two of a song is quoted at the beginning, and that's okay. I've also seen stories where the entire song is quoted, but it's spaced out more than yours was, so she may not have realized it was the entire song on those stories. You had it in one section, as I recall, with a few graphs between each verse or excerpt but all in one fairly small run.

I haven't seen this rule anywhere on Lit but it's probably there and I haven't looked too hard.

I have heard the real rule is that you'd need permission to quote more than two lines of a song, but I'm not sure about that. However, I think on this site (and others like it) you're relatively safe from anyone coming after you for it.

 

[geronimo_appleby]

there are rules?

that sucks all the fun out of life!

 

[LaRascasse]

There.. cut down to 2 paragraphs and reposted. Hope it goes up now.

 

[PennLady]

there are rules?

that sucks all the fun out of life!

No kidding. My son tells us that all the time.

 

[PennLady]

There.. cut down to 2 paragraphs and reposted. Hope it goes up now.

Make sure you put a note about why it was rejected and how you fixed it, just in case.

 

[geronimo_appleby]

No kidding. My son tells us that all the time.

the boy's a genius, a genius i say!

 

[LaRascasse]

No kidding. My son tells us that all the time.

Great minds think alike

 

[Saxon Stonedyke]

..............

 

[geronimo_appleby]

I used quiet a bit of a song in my Summer Lovin' entry but I put all the copywrite information at the front in an authors note. Maybe it was different because I gave full credit to the owners of the song?

i used lyrics in each chapter of my entry of ... 3(?) years ago. not a prob.

 

[PennLady]

I used quiet a bit of a song in my Summer Lovin' entry but I put all the copywrite information at the front in an authors note. Maybe it was different because I gave full credit to the owners of the song?

i used lyrics in each chapter of my entry of ... 3(?) years ago. not a prob.

I think it depends on how much of the song you use and it's likely inconsistent. Like I said, I've read stories where the entire song is quoted through the story, and others where it's mostly at the start, and I think much depends on Laurel.

 

[Boxlicker101]

Sometimes a copyright will have expired, and we should be able to quote from that song freely. I wrote a story "Ennery the Eighth" in a chain story, and probably quoted the entire thing over the course of the story. The song was written so long ago, over a century, the copyright has probably expired.

 

[rjordan]

If you're going to write, you have to know copyright law. It's a pretty basic part of the writer's toolkit. "I heard this" or "I heard that" isn't enough. If you are going to use something someone else created, you have to get permission, abide by "fair use" or be able to PROVE it is in the public domain.

Then you just have to provide that information with the manuscript. If you can't do this, you can't safely use it and you have to expect the site owner to protect themselves.

Look at all the whining when another site posts stories without permission, even with full credit. It isn't legal so why is it a surprise with lyric?

rj

 

[estragon]

There is a case (too lazy to look it up), where one sentence from a book was held to be an infringement of copyright. When I quoted a verse or two from Jim Steinman's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" in one chapter of a story, I put in the copyright info (actually bought a copy of the sheet music to assuage my conscience) and claimed fair use. Story got posted and haven't been sued yet.

But when I posted my first story on Lit, after I got a license from an author whose characters I was using, my story was rejected because of copyright infringement. I fired off a (rather adolescent) rant on AH, and Laurel finally relented and let the story post.

Yes there is a rule..but it's more honored in the breach than th'observance, to quote from a play in the public domain.

 

[Brandie69]

"Fair use" is messier than any variant of unprotected sex.

It is a speed limit that you can only know after you have long ago parked your car in the garage. Think about that for a minute. No one, and I mean no one, advising you in advance, can tell you whether your quotation will or will not satisfy the legal definition of fair use, because the legal definition of it is just so fucked up and messy.

The result is that you have to either stay so damned far inside the lines with your crayon that no one could possibly doubt it's fair use, or else, just decide (as I do) not to quote other writers at all.

It's a travesty, I know, and it stifles free speech, if you ask me. But that's not something you or I can do anything about.

B

 

[Bramblethorn]

There is a case (too lazy to look it up), where one sentence from a book was held to be an infringement of copyright.

If you find a cite for that one, I'd be curious to read it.

The only case I can find along those lines is Stern v. Does where the plaintiff tried to claim for copyvio over the forwarding of a one-sentence email. The judge slapped him down pretty hard; she commented that a single sentence might contain enough creative expression to warrant protection, but the one in contention didn't.

When I quoted a verse or two from Jim Steinman's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" in one chapter of a story, I put in the copyright info (actually bought a copy of the sheet music to assuage my conscience) and claimed fair use. Story got posted and haven't been sued yet.

Yep, I recently posted material with three lines excerpted from Einstürzende Neubauten's "Sabrina", with a fair-use disclaimer at the bottom, and that went through fine.

Be glad we're not on YouTube, where the copyright trolls have figured out how to monetise other people's amateur work. A friend of mine posted a video of herself singing a song written three hundred years ago, and within hours she started getting hit by bots reporting her for "copyright violation" - her options are to take it down, dispute the claim, or let them monetise it with advertising content. When she disputes it, another bot pops up to make the same claim... I assume the strategy is to harass people until they give up and let the scammers make a few cents out of somebody else's work.

 

[RodenAddison]

I'm not complaining. Just curious to whether this is a new rule or not.

I think it's a matter of what's considered 'reaonable use' (or some other such terminology). With something in public domain, no issue. Something like a fictional work there's quite a bit of leeway because it's a long piece of work. With a song, that that's a whole other issue because quote one verse can easily be a quarter of the entire work. Granted it doesn't include the audio element, but words are the issue.

If a songwriter is good, there will actually be meaning to it, not just a jumble of teenage angst with no root. That means you've taken a whole pile of meaning and used it for yourself in another work. It's almost the same issue as epublication without the DRM. An artist wants their work seen and heard, but it's nice to be paid for it so you can afford to create more and don't have to use up all your time working at the seven eleven.

An artist is worthy of their wage.

 

[RodenAddison]

I used quiet a bit of a song in my Summer Lovin' entry but I put all the copywrite information at the front in an authors note. Maybe it was different because I gave full credit to the owners of the song?

That's a great point Saxon. If you use it, state somehow where it came from. It IS required (writers whether of song or prose like to be recognized). Wouldn't you like to see your name up in lights if someone used a quote from it?

 

[LaRascasse]

I used quiet a bit of a song in my Summer Lovin' entry but I put all the copywrite information at the front in an authors note. Maybe it was different because I gave full credit to the owners of the song?

In all fairness I did mention at the beginning of the story that I would be liberally using John Mayer lyrics.

 

[PennLady]

I googled "using song lyrics in published fiction" and will post a few of the links I found here. The general feeling and answer seems to be: don't do it. You need permission unless the song is in the public domain. I'm not saying these are all correct or that you shouldn't investigate more, but they do all say pretty much the same thing.

This is something I've always avoided. I've written several stories based on songs, where I get a story from the lyrics but I don't quote the lyrics. My last long story was about a musician but again, I never quoted lyrics. Nor did I make up my own -- I know my limitations.

All that said (and more below), I think you can get away with a little bit of it here. Quoting an entire song is probably more than you should do, but I know it's done.

From Stanford University: http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter1/1-b.html

A thread at AbsoluteWrite: http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8231

From a site called WritingWorld: http://www.writing-world.com/dawn/lyrics.shtml

Here's an excerpt from the essay at the third link

"Another point to consider is why are you using the song (or poem)? If it is to create mood or atmosphere it might be worth thinking again. The mood or atmosphere you experience when you hear a song is not necessarily going to be the same for the reader because they will have different experiences from you. Unless you have permission you should find other ways to create the mood or atmosphere you want.

"One thing to consider. Imagine you wrote a brilliant paragraph describing, say, a sunset, then a songwriter lifted it from your novel, put it word for word as a verse in a song and it became a worldwide hit, and you were not asked for permission and you were not offered any compensation. Most of us would go straight down to the lawyer's. A song or a poem is written by someone who expects payment for their work just as most of us hope to receive payment for our writing; using somebody else's words without permission is stealing. Don't try the 'public domain' argument either unless the songwriter has been dead for many years (75 years for novels in the UK I believe). [Editor's Note: Visit http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm to determine when copyright in a work expires.]

 

[geronimo_appleby]

That's a great point Saxon. If you use it, state somehow where it came from. It IS required (writers whether of song or prose like to be recognized). Wouldn't you like to see your name up in lights if someone used a quote from it?

it'd be great also if the cunts who stole complete stories from Lit to use on their own sites had the courtesy to mention the original author.