Question

Copyright in literature and anything else?

I know this may sound silly; it's just that I haven't been fed much information about the rights of copyright laws. Does this law prevent someone writing any kind of literature? Does copyright prevent people from the way they structure their sentences. Many sentences we type, just like what I'm doing here, is formed from what we have learnt in the past. The words and sentences can be identical at time or near the same right? So how does the copyright law take effect? A person reads a novel or article like "JK Rowling says her Harry Potter novels wil

Answer 1

A person reads a novel or article like "JK Rowling says her Harry Potter novels will be sold as e-books" then there's a copyright sign attached with it. That's just some basic sentence, can't we use it in the way we want to? Like "David says his "....." novels will be sold as e-books". This indeed does seem stupid but please excuse me for this type of question. I'm a little confused with these laws. I don't really care with this question which is circling in my head right now, it's just that I'm curious what the copyright actually means do not "copy" with physical or electronic etc. ways? Soon we might see them with a new law "do not copy mentally...". I know I got the whole concept of copyright wrong, could anyone please clarify? As in everyone learns word to word from others and use it in their kind of own way even if it's general or advanced type of knowledge. Did they copyright learning? :)

Answer 2

well i THINK that copyright laws were meant to prevent ppl from taking financial benefit of a certain book...like copying the original and selling it...but i don't think using lines from books is against that law..after all you're just quoting ...even if a friend has a book and you copy it...i think it would be okay..unless you sell it...
rather than that you should probably consult a lawyer ^_^

Answer 3

I don't know the law. But if you want to quote directly from a book, in an essay, you need to put a footnote and in the footnote you need to put where the quote was from. You also need to do this if the idea is from them. I don't quite know where it ends, but there is a limit...

It is very rare these days that a book is from a wholly new idea, most ideas have been used in some form or other, in a new situation or context...