Sunday, December 05, 2021

Coals In My Stocking

Imagine "Coals In My Stocking" rinsed and repeated to a refrain from Carole King's "You're So Vain", and you will share my earworm of the day.

One cannot copyright a title, but one can trademark it.

It is quite possible that Carole King could have trademarked her metaphor involving “clouds” and “coffee” (from "You’re So Vain"), so although that line of that lovely song is in my head, I consider coals in my stockings to be a safer choice.

There’s a copyright related point or three to this. 

Use of other people's words, quotes, lyrics seems to be on several fora and copyright-related legal blogs that I have read in recent days.

Science writer John Iovine has a really succinct and helpful 5-minute read on quoting lyrics or song titles to advance your plot and/or add mood to your story.
https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-legally-quote-song-lyrics-in-your-stories-books-and-articles-b0e62510ed55

That particular article is also a very good example of how to give proper credit, he walks the talk (to coin a phrase.)

By the way, "to coin a phrase" is irony. 

Wise, generous and canny author Milton Trachtenburg suggests wrapping a Disney movie quote within his character's dialogue in order to avoid copyright problems.

"Like The Wicked Witch said in Wizard of Oz, 'How about a little fire, scarecrow?' You get my point?"

Presumably, there would be a "So-and-so said" tag, either before the "Like..." or after the "...point?" 

I added the italics. Personally, I would have given "Scarecrow" and upper case first character because it appears to be used in the vocative case.


Characters, or for that matter, narrators can quote old movies, and even not-so-old movies. For instance, in the movie "Man Up" it is essential to the economy of various scenes, and to giving the audience a greater insight than the characters have, that both the hero and the heroine know "Silence of the Lambs" by heart, and saying, "Quid Pro Quo, Clarice" or even "Quid Pro Quo" is a verbal ticket to getting on (well).

Similarly, the characters in the same movie appear to be completely oblivious to another interest they have in common as they argue their way through the dance moves to Duran Duran's "Reflex".

My remarks plus text links come under fair use for commentary/reportage/critique/review.

The copyrightalliance has a very helpful article on how to legally use images, videos and the written text of others in blogs. 
 
Crystal Everson, JD, for Legal Zoom explains the difference between parody versus satire.  Parody is the use of someone else's original work in order to comment on it, or criticize it. Most copyright owners do not like being the butt of someone else's humor, or vitriol, so are unlikely to grant permission. So, there is a Fair Use exemption. Satire, not so much, because with satire, one uses one person's work to poke fun at another. 

It is an important distinction, and the article is well worth reading.

For anyone wondering where coals or clouds fit in at all, there's Disney, to wit, #DisneyMustPay. SFWA appears to be spearheading an effort to stand up for Science Fiction and Fantasy authors who may not be being paid royalties by Disney. Everyone is asked to support the principle that WritersMustBePaid by using the #DisneyMustPay hashtag, and spreading the message.

There is also the allegedly copyright-infringing "Internet Archive", but there is good news. New Zealand has paused its plans to donate foreign authors' copyrighted works without the consent of the foreign authors to the "Archive", thanks to publicity and the protests received from copyright owners.

Finally, and a propos of absolutely nothing, except perhaps that the Christmas stockings are a mixed bag, SFWA posted a great link to an article about how to make aliens and robots fight more convincingly.

https://www.sfwa.org/2021/04/20/spec-fic-fu-how-to-make-aliens-and-robots-fight-better/

All the best,

Rowena Cherry  

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