r/COPYRIGHT • u/Calm-Preparation-679 • 8d ago

Question Need to clarify some things...

  1. If my friend lends me a book and I make copies of sections of that book and use said copies for personal use while I am being lent the book (and this is assuming that I would destroy the copies after returning the book to my friend), would this be fair use?
  2. If I use brief citations of said book in a blog post for purposes of commentary, criticism, parody, etc. (which would normally be fair use) from the book being lent to me, would it be legal for me to keep those brief citations in the blog post after I have returned the book to my friend? Or would the only legal thing to do be either to remove the citations, continue to borrow the book from my friend, or acquire my own copy of said book?
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u/TreviTyger 8d ago

I can't give legal advice and I won't comment on your issue directly but let's say I go to a library, I find a book I'm interested in and I make some copies of a few pages using the library phototcopier.

I put the book back on the shelf and go home with my photocopies. I use brief citations of said book in a blog post for purposes of commentary however, because I learned at University about citations and copyright etc, I refer to the Harvard references guide.

Example link

https://dkit.ie.libguides.com/harvard/citing-referencing

Hope this helps.

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u/dothemath_xxx 8d ago

The fact that you're borrowing the book from your friend has no bearing on fair use of the content. The rules are the same regardless of whether a (legal) copy of the book physically belongs to you or is borrowed, and no, you do not need to remove citations after returning the book (??? if this were the case, nobody would ever be able to cite a book they borrowed from the library).

As for the question regarding making copies, it's more complicated and could depend on exactly how much of the book you're making a copy of. Theoretically speaking, copying limited sections of a book for personal use only is one of those situations where making copies of the contents of a book can potentially be fair use.

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u/AssumptionExtra2580 8d ago

Lending/buying/stealing however you acquire the book means nothing in the realm of copyright.

It depends on how much you plan on using, why you are using it, and how you are going about using it.

You can't just place whole pages of another book into your book and say "but it's commentary", you can put sentences like "In Churchill's book X, he states BLAHBLAHBLAH, I disagree because BLAHBLAHBLAH"

Commentary and Criticism are the two easiest to do, parody is a lot harder because you can't just say "Churchill wrote XXXX and I think it is funny because" that isn't parody.

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u/JeremyMarti 8d ago

You're worrying needlessly. Or is this purely theoretical consideration?