If you are saying just for your writing, I reccomend NOT using the offical quotes or anything, take it and make it your own. But just be sure to give credit to those who deserve it.
The original quotes are in the public domain. If you're using a translation, there may be an extant copyright in the translation.
If your story world is madey-uppy and you are attributing the quotes of real people to your made-up ones then try to reword them. If your story world is our world, the world in which Buddha and Socrates exists, then you should attribute it to them anyway.
Yes. Dear lord, I hope those aren't considered ancient texts. It's like turning on a classic rock station! Could be fair use, depending on the facts, but King Jrs. texts are still under copyright.
As a side note, keep in mind that some of the quotes attributed to Buddha were never actually said by him. Apparently people love putting his name at the end of everything.
"Keep in mind that some of the quotes attributed to Buddha were never actually said by him." - Buddha
Hello everyone, I would like to have a character who quotes famous lines from different movies and books, such as Wizard of Oz, or Gone With the Wind. This is something I do myself, and I thought it might be fun to have my character do the same. Is it legal? Or is it something a person needs legal rights to? Is it a copyright thing? Sorry, writing is pretty new to me. I don't know the legal ins and outs, so I'm not even sure how to word the question I'm trying to ask....eek.
It's fine. The book I'm reading right now has quotes from famous people, books, and movies at the beginning of every chapter. Lots of stories have characters that make pop culture references.
awesome, thank you. i'm always telling my dog to be off before someone drops a house on him lol....anyway, i think it will make the book more fun.
I'm pretty sure you could! My current WIP has many quotes and verses from the Bible. Not sure if that counts as quoting but it is very useful in my story.
Depends on what you're quoting. What people often don't realize is that with books you buy in the store, the publishers have cleared all that stuff and obtained permissions where necessary. For short quotes from long works like novels, you're probably on safe ground. Arguably as between quotes before a chapter and dialogue from a character the latter is safer. If you're quoting something shorter like song lyrics before a chapter you're a lot more likely to run into trouble.
Yes. But sometimes a new translation of an old work will come along, and the new translation can be under copyright even though the underlying work is not.
Don't I know it! I went to a lot of trouble to produce an instruction book, on astronavigation, in e-book format; the author having been dead for well over 70 years. Uploaded to my website only to be told to get it down 'or else'. Turns out copywrite was in the hands of the publishers who published revised copies every decade or so.
Yeah, that can happen as well, though in some cases those publishers may not have as much protection as they think (though they usually have more money to fight over it). If you look on Google Books, a lot of times you can find scans of the actual old copies of those books, so you know they're in the public domain. There are a few on sailing/navigation, including multiple versions of Bowditch.
If you get this published you probably will need to get copyright for the quotes. A colleague of mine was writing an academic focussed book for students - a guide on writing dissertations. He had the idea of prefacing each chapter with a suitable quote from various contemporary songs (chosen by his daughter). The publisher rejected the quotes on the grounds of the copyright costs.
Songs are more difficult than quoting longer works like books. It is harder to make a fair use argument. If you quote song lyrics the publisher is going to want to clear them.
A character doing this throughout a novel would probably bug me. Is this really adding what you think it is to your story?
Fair use would probably be more applicable to an article or commentary piece. It might be difficult to justify fair use in a work of fiction. I am no expert in this aspect. If this story was going to be published and generate revenue then it would be wise to spend a bit of money getting expert legal opinion. If it was published online as a hobby story then I would suspect that the copyright owners would take no interest, or at worst, they would ask for it to be deleted. That assumes they ever get to find out about it.
Mostly, yes. I had to check into this for my WIP, and found that after a certain amount of Scripture quotation, the publishers of the version you're using require you to cite them on the copyright page, or even to get permission. But I doubt any of us will be reproducing, say, the entirety of The Apocalypse. As for the OP's question, that kind of casual cultural reference (a house falling on a dog, re: The Wizard of Oz) doesn't even rise to the level of quotation. But as @Steerpike also points out, the sticky part comes when we want to quote lines from songs. Then you'd better tread lightly through the legal maze.
it's just silliness for the most part. like a lot of people will say "go ahead, make my day"....my family does it for fun. that's what my aim is. it's nothing serious at all. but you know whoever wrote that line is certainly still alive, so i suppose i would run into a copyright issue with it. what i'm trying to write isn't about my family, but there is some of my family's silliness in it. i remember when my boys would rewind particularly rude comments in movies, just to hear them said again, and fall off the couch laughing. we are a weird bunch. there is some old stuff that you can't get, because families have copyrighted it. i wanted to read the book "Rebecca." I searched everywhere, finally found it on an obscure website and spent a whole evening copying and pasting just so i could read it. never understood what the fuss was about, but it was the only way i could find it. maybe i was doing something wrong....
