Brick Tower question for Athos

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rogue27
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Brick Tower question for Athos

Post by rogue27 »

Athos, (or anybody else who can answer this),

I am unfamiliar with the Dark Tower series, so please forgive my ignorance. I see you have text to go with your Brick Tower pictures. Is this direct text from the story, or is it paraphrased in your own words?

If it is the former, are there any legal issues involved? I mean, are you illegally publishing a copyrighted work on the internet for public viewing?

If it is the latter, how much of the text do you change or leave out to avoid any legal hassles?


I am asking this because I have been interested in re-creating scenes from another author's stories with LEGO, but I don't want to find any lawyers hounding me a year or so into the project.

Thanks
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Post by Commander Redbeard »

Lots of folks have quotes from Lord of the Rings or other books in their sigs or avatars, I don't think you'll really get hasseled.
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Post by rogue27 »

Commander Redbeard wrote:Lots of folks have quotes from Lord of the Rings or other books in their sigs or avatars, I don't think you'll really get hasseled.
You can always get away with displaying a small quote or excerpt. However, a small quote is a far cry from posting 50+ pictures each with several full paragraphs of text beneath them. If reading those paragraphs from beginning to end is a copy of the story, word for word, up to the point Athos is at, I can assure you that there will be some people somewhere who would be very unhappy about it.

... unless the book is old enough that the copyright is expired. I know, for example, that you can post HP Lovecraft stories on the internet because the copyright is expired. The same is true for the Bible. However, Stephen King is a bit more recent, so I don't know if it is legal to do that.

**********

Regardless, my question was not whether or not it is legal to post copyrighted material on the web, my question was whether that is what Athos is doing.
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Athos
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Post by Athos »

Sorry I didn't reply to this sooner. I somehow missed it. I figure it is probably skirting the edge of legality at best. One of the reasons I gave it up.

I might be covered by fair use to a certain degree, since it is kind of a parody, and I haven't taken very much (percentage wise) of the book. And its not for profit. Maybe I should drag out my old Intellectual Property book and see for sure.

Steve

P.S. Please don't report me to Mr. King :)
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Post by ottoatm »

I'd be suprised if anything dramatic or terrible happened, especially since your not trying to make a buck off of it all. Anyway, I think a lot of people would encourage that kind of activity to generate interest in the subject.
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Post by Lord_Of_The_LEGO »

ottoatm wrote:I'd be suprised if anything dramatic or terrible happened, especially since your not trying to make a buck off of it all. Anyway, I think a lot of people would encourage that kind of activity to generate interest in the subject.
However, someone else could possibly copy the text and then try to make a buck. When they are confronted, they could always point back to the original site and cause more trouble. :?

Bruce, you do LEGO illustrating of the LOTR books, how do you deal with this?
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Post by Athos »

It'd be hard to actually copy the text. Its imbedded in the picture, so I don't think they could just copy and paste.

After all this talk, I'm actually starting to consider taking the pictures down to avoid any problems.

Steve
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Post by Azaghal »

Lord_Of_The_LEGO wrote:Bruce, you do LEGO illustrating of the LOTR books, how do you deal with this?
I'm (obviously) not Bruce, but I believe his exerpts are paraphrased and/or edited.
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Post by ottoatm »


After all this talk, I'm actually starting to consider taking the pictures down to avoid any problems.
Really, I don't think you have anything to worry about - at the very worst you'll probally get some sort of formal demand that you take it down, and most likely, nothing bad will happen at all. Either way, you're not going to randomly get a piece of mail one day saying you have to pay money or something. :)
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