Oddbean new post about login | logout I wanted to use a few images from a 1940 Popular Science article on comics. (This remains under copyright until 2036.) The licensing people said $3,240 to use in a book. I said, this is a modest circulation book and I want to use just a fraction of the article. The response: there’s no adjustment in the rate for any reason, including whether you reprint the whole article or not. And that is why people hate copyright terms. Do I have a fair-use stance to make? Possibly. Will I? ????
@bb1a99d2 I frequently use segments of articles and illustrations in my historical writing, on the basis that I am making valid criticism of the material presented. I feel like this would be fair use. On the other hand, I am not your lawyer, and I was not writing a book that would be sold!
Related: fair use just means you could make a defense if sued. It doesn’t mean you won’t be sued; we have no affirmative-filing fair-use system, though there are some experiments at the USPTO.
A follow-up! I found a reference online that suggested Popular Science had failed to file the then-required copyright renewal for its magazines. The U of Penn has digitized all the renewal books, the official source. For 1940, there would need to be a +28 renewal (could be 67, 68, or 69). No renewals for any issues any year. Suck up, PopSci, those are in the public domain.