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Re: Quoting copyrighted material in a tech manual?
Subject:Re: Quoting copyrighted material in a tech manual? From:Robert Lauriston <robert -at- lauriston -dot- com> To:Jim Witkin <jameswitkin -at- gmail -dot- com>, techwr-l <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Tue, 17 Jun 2014 08:57:09 -0700
The rules on fair use are dangerously fuzzy, so I'd ask permission
before using excerpts. Look at the copyright page, contact the
copyright holder. Generally that will be the author(s) rather than the
publisher.
At my last job, for certain things I cited an O'Reilly book on the
open-source version of the product I was documenting. No excerpts, no
permission needed. Basically the message was "for more information,
buy this book."
On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 7:06 AM, Jim Witkin <jameswitkin -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
> I'm writing a manual that provides a fair amount of context material. For
> some of this material, I'm hoping to use excerpts from a published
> scientific book (quite well known in the field) which I assume is
> copyrighted material. If I provide a footnote and full attribution to the
> book and publisher, does that cover me legally? Or will I need to approval
> from the publisher to quote the book?
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