- Joined
- Jan 26, 2007
- Messages
- 648
- Reaction score
- 327
This whole discussion seems insane. Surely you can quote from any work so long as you identify the author and your quote is part of a legitimate original work. Song lyrics are freely available for download on the internet so why all the fuss? It isn't as if you're making a recording of the song or offering the lyrics for sale as lyrics.
If this is the case then any quote from any work, including prose and poetry, should be cleared AND paid for if used by anyone, in which case things would become very sticky indeed, particularly for critics, academics and students who have quote published copyrighted material extensively.
Umm, actully you do have to pay when you use other pieces of prose and poetry in your work if they're not in the public domain. So if you use a snippit of a poem form 1850 or something then no, you don't have pay but if you use a poem from 1970 then yes, you owe someone money.
Of course this only really applies to money making operations ie books for publication. Acadamia is a diffrent beast entirly and really has no place in this discussion/
And technically everytime you download a song from a music sharing website you're stealing. That's why napster got shut down orginally and now you have to pay for it.
I was thinking about Stephen King when I stumbled across this thread too. He does use a lot of songs in his books but then again, he's Stephen King.