question: the cut-throat field of calligraphy law

[devi]

Say I designed a poster with a piece of text on it (for example, a poem by Leonard Cohen or a paragraph from 'On the Road'), printed a small number of copies and sold them on places like ebay or to friends. What would the legal issues be there? Could I only use text that was in the public domain? If I did use text from a book or poem, would I be covered by just adding in a copyright symbol, or would I be expected to pay royalties and end up getting sued by men in suits? If so, is there a time limit (100 years after the author's death or something like that) after which it's OK to reproduce their text?

Any ideas?

Comments

De minimis curat lex

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

Copyright persists for 70 years after the author's death (with various qualifications for anonymous and multiple authorship).

Copyright inheres even in small extracts - as you will have noticed in the acknowledgments on the verso of title pages whenever a song lyric is quoted in a novel. I assume that these acknowledgments imply a fee has been paid to the publishing company.

Whatever you do, don't listen to anyone who says 'fair use' - it is a defence against copyright infringement, but not a guaranteed defence.

On the other hand, how are they gonna find out?

Re: De minimis curat lex

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

I was wondering about fair use, but the only context in which I've dealt with it before is academic writing which I certainly didn't get paid for, so yes, too risky..