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

[triskellian]

Firstly, kauket is right, secretrebel has hit this problem. She wanted to reproduce a small chunk from a poem at the beginning of each chapter of a book, and she had to find out whether or not each was within copyright. For the ones that were, she had to personally approach the copyright holder asking for permission to reproduce, and then (at least for most, and possibly for all), she had to pay a fee. Some of the fees, IIRC, ran into the hundreds of pounds, and in at least one case, she was refused permission to use the extract.

If you're just selling stuff by word of mouth, among your friends, you're probably OK. If you're not, bear in mind that some paranoid large corporations employ people to trawl the internet looking for various intellectual property infringements.

Secondly, a possible useful resource in finding stuff that's in the public domain: Project Gutenberg. They have downloadable text versions of thousands of books that are in the public domain.